Droplets of Rain Black & White

Rain

It’s funny how anger feels when it is bottled up. Sometimes I imagine my chest is a mason jar and the heat of my emotions just continually push, condense, drip and reform inside the glass walls.

That is how I have been feeling lately. Trapped inside my jar. I know part of all this is perimenopause; slowly creeping in, at least five years earlier than I imagined it would. If you have been through this fantastic stage of life, you understand how anger stays on the fringes of everything. Chipping a nail now becomes something that makes your blood boil. Your child making the most normal child-being-a-child comment makes you wonder why you ever wanted to be a mother.

Then, add shifts in friendship, pressure at work… and a general feeling that there is nowhere to go with these feelings.

Trapped.

In addition to perimenopause, my bad ear can now inform me of changes in the weather, just like the ankle I broke nearly a decade ago. Both of them switch off aching when it is going to rain, like a teeter-totter blissfully reminding how old I am. I woke up yesterday with a rhythm, a quick staccato beat: head foot head foot head foot.

Last night it poured buckets.

It’s still raining today, but I can tell it is going to end soon because my ear and ankle feel better.

I also started talking about my emotions. I told my husband that sometimes I get so angry with no where to go, I just want to run out into the backyard and scream my head off. This would surely surprise the neighbors, but I bet I would feel better – in my heart at least.

I opened up to some close friends over the past few days about how I was feeling and it was like a release valve. Some of the pressure in my chest has lifted.

I still feel sad as the drops of water roll down my window. I have never been good at change… and getting older, losing friends, new challenges – they are all big change.

But I know I am lucky. I have wonderful people in my life. They are here to help me. And while the aches and pains are totally that – aches and pains… I am trying to turn around my thinking. They are warning signs. They help me see what is coming. In this case, I need to talk and let things go.

I need to recognize that if I pay attention, I can see more clearly when it will rain… and when the skies will clear.

This article has 26 comments

  1. julieanders40

    Hugs, lady.

  2. anne

    love you. sorry you’ve been struggling. know you have friends who think you’re the bees knees.

    • Aimee

      Thanks for being there for me, love.

  3. Laura

    lots of hugs. You are not alone.

  4. Zak

    I so get it, I really do.

    xx

  5. gorillabuns

    I could have written this post. Just not as wonderfully descriptive and more true to form on how I feel as you have. I feel like I am slowly losing my mind. and the rain? I makes me feel even more trapped and confined. Like nothing will be clean and whole again.

    • Aimee

      It’s comforting to know that other folks understand how I feel. Love ya babe.

  6. Zipper

    Feel better soon

  7. Ben D

    Sending this to my aunt who is going through something very similar.

  8. Giu

    I can’t say I am at in the same phase of this curious life, but I can empathize with your state of mind, and I know that with your noted support group you can glide through this rainy time like a child on a Slip’N Slide. Stay strong and wonderful my beautiful friend. *Küsse

  9. monstergirlee

    Oh friend, I wish I lived closer so we could vent together. Big hugs to you. Love ya babe!

    • Aimee

      I need to remember to email you more, lovely gal! xo

  10. Carrie Hilliard

    Aimee, I think we all have been there. Your descriptive prose is spot on. Peri menopausal? Oh please tell me no! I think us women deal w enough …premenopausal, childbirth, post par tum depression, etc. Plus we tend to really be attuned to and feel effected by friendships more. But we’re human and your human! Hang in there girl! Hope the skies lift soon!! Xoxo

  11. magpie

    Damn. I feel like I could have written this (except for the bad ear and broken ankle). For weeks, months, my refrain has been “I hate everybody and everything”. Damn.

    I too have to let it go.

    • Aimee

      Let’s just scream it up together!!!! 😉

  12. Anonymous

    This isn’t depression. It’s anger issues.

  13. Lucretia

    We need to go have coffee soon.
    I keep telling people that when they did that whole “what to expect” about menarche and periods and birth and whatnot in elementary school sex ed? They totally never talked about the whole “what happens when it starts winding down” and it’s amazing how many bits of perimenopause/menopause you don’t know about until they land slap on your doorstep and someone else says “oh, well, of course that happens…”
    My favorite was finding out that it’s totally normal for your -cholesterol- levels to swing about wildly. 😛

    • Aimee

      Exactly! It’s like the only warning we get is the Menopause play!

  14. J

    I remember going through a period like this several years ago. I felt like I was contunuously churning inside, and it stressed me the hell out. I was taking a yoga class at the time, and one class we learned about the Niyamas, rules by which to live your life. One of them was surrender. So I started keeping that word in my head as I went through my poses, and it really did help. That and learning to breathe. What I learned was to surrender….to what is good in life, to joy and love. Let it in completely. Surrendering to the moment can often diffuse a tense situation and lighten your load.

    I don’t feel like I’m explaining this very well, but for me, it was worth some meditation, and it did help.

    • Aimee

      No, I totally get what you mean and it’s great advice. Thanks so much. <3

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