Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels
Next year I will hit the big five-oh milestone. This year, I can feel my aging bones. For the past few years, I’ve been feeling slower, and I’m feeling more pain in my joints. At first, I chalked it up to being out of shape from the pandemic. And then, as I read and heard more about it, I begin to wonder if I had officially hit perimenopause.
Brain fog, hot flashes, waking up at 3 in the morning, mood swings. I was feeling it all. I’d hit the perimenopausal lottery.
Is this what middle age is like, then? I kept waiting to have the fatigue and the general malaise pass. I was waiting to get back to normal.
But maybe this was my new normal?
The CDC notes that the average life expectancy for a woman in the US in 2022 was 80.2 years. Realistically, my middle age should have been when I hit 40. New research has shown that our body goes through major molecular changes when you hit your mid 40s and then again in your 60s.
This was it. This was what I was feeling.
I was feeling old.
I suppose this is why there are the tropes of middle-aged men buying sports cars; they just want to feel more alive, less like their body’s cells are slowly dying. It saddens me that the stereotype for middle-aged women is the naggy, grumpy old lady. A sudden desire for snazzier cars would be much more interesting, although I have now gotten a new urge to travel the country via luxury trains. If folks knew the battlefield our body had become to cycling hormones, perhaps they’d be more understanding.
I’ve felt the slide into middle age as more of a freefall. I was laid off from my job that I had gotten better at and more confident in as I aged. I have felt my body starting to rebel against the youthful activities I used to participate in with no thought to the consequences (like going out for a night of drinking). My mind now ruminates and gets angry. It feels overwhelmed and forgets things.
It can seem like a hopeless thing.
But I have read up on building up my muscle through weight-bearing exercises and improving my flexibility through yoga to help maintain my mobility rather than killing myself doing hours of cardio. I have learned how to increase my fiber and protein intake rather than killing myself counting carbs and cutting calories. I have learned how to take moments to breathe deep, to luxuriate in quiet reflection rather than kill myself trying to be “productive” and grind and hustle every second of the day. I’ve basically learned how to stop killing myself and start living my life more thoughtfully, more purposefully.
This weekly blog is one of those ways that I’ve learned how to deal with this “midlife crisis.” I am able to write down my thoughts and work through them instead of ruminating and letting bad thoughts stew and rot in my brain.
My editing, my writing, my family, the books that I read, the art that I create, the music that I listen to, the friendships that I tend to, these have all allowed me to realize what a rich life I’ve created for myself at this middle point in my life’s journey.
And with that, I have managed to solve my midlife malaise in the span of one blog post!
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