Dear Hormonally Challenged...

RESPONSE TO A POSTING IN THE "MENOPAUSAL MUSINGS" FORUM...

Dear "Hormonally Challenged",

You make an astute observation in your first answered inquiry; that two of womanhood's greatest challenges, menstruation and menopause, are prefaced with the word "men". I would add to yours my own assertion that these challenges keep women as dizzyingly occupied in the 'bottom half of the ninth' of life as they do during the national anthem. However, a portion your experience with the marvels of menopause has proved, in my circumstances, at least, oppositional to many of my own.

I underwent a natural but abrupt menopause at age 43, only to find that with the "change of life", my heretofore languishing libido was shifting into overdrive ~ with a vengeance. This evolution proved to be the birthing process of a new, vibrant, dynamically charged life force demanding to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, I also soon discovered that males in my own age group (men of sufficient chronological attainment to consider the 50's a meaningful decade rather than the tail end of the Ice Age) were, in terms of libido, experiencing a corresponding 'dawn of decline'. It occurs to me now, a full decade later, that R.O.D.S. ("Reversal of Desire Syndrome") represents the embodiment of yet another of God's little guffaws in life; something akin to His droll annual birthday tidings of, "Wrinkles are My little way of saying... I'm stepping on your face."

This peculiarly polarized set of your menopausally-induced experiences and mine may well be product of my opting to take HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) with an accompanying comprehension and acceptance of the risks associated with same. (Given the deleterious impact of menopause on my short-term memory, the foundational precepts of this decision were swiftly distilled to a bottom-line issue of 'estrogen vs. forgetting where I put my face'.) Now age 53 and at an unprecedented pinnacle of sensual awareness, I find myself in a mirror-image position compared to that which I resentfully occupied as a younger woman... my desire is insatiable but the men are pooped! It is widely reported that Charlie Chaplin fathered a child at age 90. My experience, however, strongly suggests that this conception MUST have been the result of some sort of enormously rare planetary alignment; some wholly random, once-in-a-billion-century event. Perhaps a chance episode of cosmic improper backing or celestially-induced nocturnal emissions is to blame ~ perhaps abundantly fertile women truly CAN conceive from ill-timed toilet seat contacts when such celestial prompts prevail. The truth is out there...

Seek out younger men, you say? I frequently ponder that option ~ often with, shall we say... intense fervor. But my pesky preference for maturity, intellectual capacity exceeding that of toadstools, and a life philosophy transcending "The Peter Pan Big Bang Theory" in a potential 'significant other' overrides even the most ear-splitting shrieks of unrequited passion with inexorable and oft-lamented consistency. I inevitably ultimately opt for leaving the cradle to my younger 'sisters in femininity' to rock. Viagra, then, emerges as the only viable option ~ provided an unsuspecting suitor is willing to risk a stroke for a fleeting (albeit memorable) encounter involving multiple 'strokes of the enjoyable kind'. Out of respect for the concepts of healthy living and informed choice, I'm reduced to beating my breast and crying out to the gods, "What price, late-stage sexuality?!" But then, I digress...

My intended though now bifurcated point is simply this: menopause often plays its cruelest card in the form of immensely enhanced and heightened libido, ladies ~ so gather thy petals while ye may! For I am here to attest that post-menopausal existence can strew your path with naught but seed pods... abundant, prolific, burgeoning with promise ~ and not one of their number destined to find fertile soil. Ain't life a gas?

Yours in menopausal meanderings,
Of Fire Born