Hellish hormones and the God factor

Day 7

The thing about hormones is that they're like computer viruses - on the outside, everything looks ok, then you try and do something and it all goes belly up. After nineteen years of gradually gettting mine back into line, the menopause has hit, and proved the existance of God - He is definately a man, who has been dumped, and has a vengeful sense of humour. No other way to explain it.

Sad fact number 1 - Chocolate does not always get you through, despite what it says in the movies. Though it is quite nice to be given some after you've had to apologise for yet another un-deserved outburst, and it's still only ten o,clock in the morning.

Sad fact number 2 - It isn't everybody elses fault either. Even though they are driving you up the wall (and somehow they wait to pick this day to do it), they are not causing the way you feel, they are only adding that 'final straw'. Not their fault.

Sad fact number 3 -My mother did not know this - everything was our fault, and in the days before Post Natal Depression was known about, and PMS years away from being discovered, she had only her feelings to go on.

Sad fact number 4 - Feelings are not always that accurate at this time because, as I said, wobbly hormone levels = human computer virus.

Check it out - you wake up feeling rotten and nobody has done anything yet, then the cat pukes in your shoes and world war three breaks out in your head. My advice - wait a few days and if you still think everything in your life is a disaster and everyone you know an insensitive moron, then your feelings are probably worth listening to. If not, try to cut them some slack on the bad days.

My mother was not a bad person, but she wasn't a good one either. She spent her time as a wife and mother raging at the world for all the terrible injustices it (by which I mean us) was heaping upon her. She never thought to apologise. She never tried to undo the damage that she did. Her own sense of self-worth was so buried and destroyed that self-blame was unconsionable to her. She could never allow herself to take responsibility for her actions as it would have been too much, so everything was our fault, constantly. Even bad weather, apparently.

I remember she used to say "When you're grown up and have kids, they'll do to you what you've done to me, and when you come to me for help I'm going to laugh in your face". I used to think "you're the last person I'd go to", but one never answered my mum back, so I just internalised my feelings into stupid thoughts about my own lack of worth instead. It's what kids do.

Roll forward many years and I have some understanding now of the turmoil she must have gone through. I still can't condone her actions, nor do I believe I should, but I can empathise with her condition. I hope I've done a little better than she did. I hope my children manage to do better than I. My husband has had to tolerate several hours of my roller-coaster emotions to day and he's gone to do the grocery shopping while I write this. I apologised again before he left. He will probably bring me back chocolate, even though I didn't ask, and we are budgeting carefully. When he asked me this morning what was wrong I shook my head to indicate 'nothing'. "It just is", I said.