Overextended Metaphors Are Another Symptom

But no one talks about it. Thank goodness that here at King of States! we speak truth to hormones.

Imagine: Brenda and Eddie reconcile after the summer of ’75, move to the Jersey burbs, probably Morristown, and have a baby. It’s 1978 at this point, so let’s say the baby’s name is Debra. When she’s born, Brenda and Eddie think, “Well, she might want to go into aerospace component manufacturing one day,” so they take the windfall they got after Eddie had a slip and fall accident in a Red Lobster parking lot and build a fully-functioning factory stocked with all the materials an aerospace component manufacturer could need, at least as understood by people in 1979.

The factory stands there ready but inoperative year after year, waiting for Debra to come of age. A cleaning crew comes in once a month to give it a once-over and make sure the raccoons that like to nest in the HVAC during the winter aren’t getting too big for their britches, and once every couple of years workmen pop in to make sure the wiring and plumbing are still functioning and up to code. When Debra hits adolescence, Brenda and Eddie hire a security guard; it’ll be Debra’s factory one day, but in the meantime the factory will not be a place where Debra can go to smoke weed with the raccoons. Eventually, Debra grows up and goes to college, where she studies English Literature. She goes by “Debbie” because “Debra” feels dated to her. Brenda and Eddie sign over ownership of the factory as a graduation present.

Alas! Debbie never wanted to go into aerospace component manufacturing and had been hoping her parents had gotten the hint when she declared English Lit as a major. They had not, because Brenda and Eddie have always been more than a little self-centered along with being financially illiterate.

Lucky for Debbie, her dad’s friend Craig works in commercial real estate and agrees to help her dismantle and sell the factory for a below-average commission. She signs all the necessary paperwork and pretends not to notice when Craig, who’s always been a little skeevy, honestly, lets his hand rest on hers a little too long during a pen hand-off. The market’s hot and he unloads the property and all the equipment in six weeks or so — everything’s unused, in pristine condition, there are no employees to deal with, it’s been well-maintained. At the end Debbie gets a direct deposit of several million dollars, which she uses to move to Amsterdam and open a cat cafè.

What a strange yet ultimately positive story! Hooray for Debbie, whose parents made some weird-ass decisions but hey, it all worked out in the end!

And what an unnecessarily detailed metaphor for expressing my profound irritation with perimenopause. Because here’s the thing, the deserted aerospace component manufacturing plant is my uterus. (Is that not how you think about yours?) I got it at birth along with the associated parts because one day I might want to produce other human beings despite the fact that human beings are the worst people in the world. I lugged it around for years, keeping it clean, letting workmen in as needed. I came of age and decided, much like Debbie, that I really just wanted to read books and hang around with animals.

(Full disclosure: I’m not totally sure what the raccoons represent. I feel like there are several options. Feel free to leave a comment.)

But! Can I shut it down, cut my losses, and move on with the next phase of my life? I cannot! It takes TEN YEARS+ to close this factory down, even thought it is entirely unused. Closing the factory is the next phase of my life. And not ten years of the odd meeting with attorneys and realtors to sign papers, which is tedious but minimally invasive. Ten years of literally every symptom a human body can experience, because apparently being a woman between the ages of 45 and 60 is wondering “Is this a problem for which I should seek medical assistance or is this a symptom of perimenopause that doctors will write off?” as your full time job, and also no one pays you and you never actually get an answer. (If you’re a woman of the appropriate age in the year 2024, you also get to ask “Is this Long Covid or perimenopause?” You know, for bonus fun. There’s still no pay.)

Joint pain? Memory loss? Mood swings? Fatigue? Insomnia? Osteoporosis? Pee problems? Weird periods? Fidgety kidney? Sudden-onset liver ennui? Farkakte concentration? Painfully overextended metaphors?

And I haven’t even gotten to the hot flashes. If the good lord’s willing and the crick don’t rise, I never do. Mom, I’m sorry I ever looked at you funny when I found you standing in front of the open fridge at 3AM.

I do not want your advice about what worked or did not work or might have worked for you to deal with it. (Especially don’t tell me to talk to my doctor about hormone replacement therapy, because I can’t use it because of a genetic blood-clotting disorder, yay for me.) I do not want your science-person explanations of what’s going on in my body. I simply want to say, from where I am standing as a 46-year-old woman with inexplicably lax ankle ligaments that used to be just fine, that this is a terrible system that was obviously created by a dickish man-god as a prank. And I want your yawps of anger because seriously, this is some primo bullshit.

And that’s all I heard about Brenda and Eddie.

*None of this is meant to imply that people who have chosen to activate their manufacturing plant should be subject to perimenopause! No one should! I’m just extra cranky today.