In Twilight Regalia

I am burning up.  I’m not talking this time about the fact that we’re million years old carbon or anything, not like the meteorites. But maybe it’s part of the reason the global warming issue is having special meaning for me.

(This is such an asinine topic, I think to myself.  What have I been driven to.)

But no one who is not inside my skin seems to understand what the hell is going on.  Not really.  Most all my friends are younger by a mile.

I’m so hot that I’m not thinking straight, but I have to say it.

People will make fun of me if I say it. They do, you know.

But the truth is, menopause makes you loopier than a Great Pyrenees with fleas.  You are going into a furry blurry death spiral and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’m sweating so much I can’t put makeup on in the morning.  Liquid makeup turns into watercolor puddles that don’t smooth out.  The undermost layer of my hair has been stuck to my neck for weeks.  I’ve thrown all the polyester out of my wardrobe.  It doesn’t make any difference.  I’m radiating so much that a bra is overload.

For a while, I thought that the heat I felt was just within my own sentient self; that no one else would feel it.  It was just my reaction to life in the southern sun of California.  Ya, even in the dark.

NO.

My husband put his hand on the couchback against which my kidneys had recently been pressed (I was pulling myself off it, panting to the floor to collapse and flail out all limbs to allow for air flow, like a starfish flopping on the carpet).

It was BURNING UP.  He asked if I had a fever.

No dear, just me.  Just me flaming forward into the universe.

There’s a feeling that accompanies it — it’s the thing that wakes you up at night, not just the mere, sheer force of wanting to escape the heat.

It’s a sort of whirling YIKES sensation, rather like the feeling you get when something pulls you STRAIGHT UP suddenly into the blue on an Oct-o-pus ride at an amusement park, or a very fast elevator in Sears Tower.  It makes you inhale because you literally brace yourself.  You know it’s starting again.

Here we go!  HANG ON!!

You feel like a 10-ton pressure of prickly hot embarrassment flush compounded with a washover of UGGGGGGHHHHHH I’m being turned into a PPPPPPAAAAAANNNNCAKKKEEEE.  And when you’re at the bottom and you feel certain you might be able to fit through a mail slot, you realize you need to TAKE OFF ALL YOUR CLOTHES.  NOW.

But you can’t. So you turn on a fan, if you’re lucky to be sitting near one, or lying next to one in bed (which will be on continuously for the next 5 years). (Buy a good one.)

If you can’t turn on the AC in the car or immediately throw yourself in the nearest Italian fountain, since you’re already a coin’s width, you might as well be prepared for the comments you will receive:

“Are you ok?  You look sick.” (Actually, I always look like this anymore.  The teenager in my head is protesting it too, trust me.)

“It’s chilly in here, aren’t you?”  (Ah, so that’s why I’ve been functioning so well.)

“Please, there’s no need to be anxious.”  (No, really, it’s just me grimacing over the fact that I’m quietly combusting.)

“Are you expecting?”  (Thanks, no; it’s just the belly fat that’s compounding my inability to ventilate.  But thanks for thinking I’m that young.)

“Wow, have you been running?”  (No, actually at that point I would be turning a bright red color and wouldn’t still be in 4-inch heels, fool.)

“You should really check out my Weight Watchers book, it’ll help a lot.”  (Can I just hit you a small bit, right there?)

“Hormones suck, but I just got on the program with the progesterone, now I’m good.”  (I’ll see that you get flowers in the cancer ward in 2020, dear.)

“Have you tried Black Cohosh?  Works for me.”  (Yes, but it’s not all that effective; and I keep forgetting that I have to take it.  And then I forget to stop taking it, since you’re only supposed to take it for a short period of time.)

“I know this great herbalist…” (Oh GAWWWWD… here we go….)

But the most fun occurs when you get asked questions involving your short-term memory, which no longer exists, since you spend your nights waking up drenched, rolling over throwing off a blanket or sheet, falling slightly asleep, discovering you’re now freezing, throwing on the blanket, falling slightly asleep, waking up steaming and wretching, and lather-rinse-repeat.  Not to mention having to take a leak a couple times.

Your short-term memory on the average day after such a bout (particularly after two or three nights of this) is really a crap shoot.

Your synapses have entirely gone Helen Keller on you.

Your boss might say: “Remember the Vantage contract paragraph that went through three sets of revisons and we had changes to that third revision?  Where is that?”

And your first instinctive mental reply, having been pulled from some rusting, exhumed mental file cabinet by your myopic midget memory who, after a long waddle down a dimly lit passageway, standing for a bit with thumbs hooked in his belt, scratching his balding head, and fumbling with a boney finger through some dustbunnies and a flinging mouse, and finally holding up a yellowed crumbling card, would read: “Darling argyle funnel fruitbat??”

At which point your external reply to cleverly buy time would be:

“I’m sure I have it here, I’ll bring it in to you.”  

(Thankfully you still possess a rational superego that can still process on some basic survivalist level.  Lying to one’s mother in childhood actually proves a useful ingrained resource once again.)

But your dripping swamp of a face would show you’re lying. 

It is too busy responding to your internal metabolism that is dancing clockwise chanting WOOOGUM-OOOGUM BRROO-HOO HA-HA, WOOOGUM-OOOGUM BROU-HOO HA-HA, you’re going to come out just the right degree of tenderness if we poke you with a stick into this pot just a little bit further.

In short, you are doomed. 

You realize this is your body’s way of getting you ready for the torments of old age. 

Not the physical ones - but the external ones: The blows that come from people who will no longer have any respect for you as a human being and will treat you like the blithering fool you have inexplicably, helplessly become.  People who will make remarks about just leaving you out on the ice.

People who will laugh when you put a 911 autodial button on your cell phone screen.

Hahahhahahahaaa!  They will point and jeer.  “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”  Hahahhahahahaaa!  What idiot can’t dial 911!

Hahahahahahahaaaaa.  Why would you need that?!!!

Hahaha.

Ha.

And then they will see your furious red dripping face with the flaring nostrils and slightly skewed look in the eyes from 3 hours’ sleep and they will leave you alone.

Forever, quite possibly. 

It will get you acclimated to your new life of peace and solitude, and basket weaving.

That’s what it’s for. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.