My peri-menopausal years are a blur of madness and rage. I didn’t even know what peri-menopause was back then. I chalked up my radical mood swings to going cold turkey on cigarettes and booze. Being trapped in a situationship with a sociopath certainly didn’t help matters.
The melancholia that followed that uncoupling was beyond any previous descent into depression that I’d ever experienced, worse than the postpartum depression that pushed me to suicidal ideation while trying to care for two under two in my early 30’s. Zoloft, therapy and copious amounts of alcohol numbed me enough to ignore my then husband’s extracurricular sex life and subsequent trip to prison for trying to fly a commercial airplane while intoxicated. It made national news—viral before the term was ever coined. 
I raw dogged menopause and eight years post-menopause I am not on a single prescription medication. No HRT, no patches and no GLP-1, just me, for better or worse. And that’s something I’m really proud of, even when most days I look like a swamp witch, but I’m a swamp witch who is still here, still fighting and eternally grateful for. it. all.
#menopausal #depressionsurvivor #womenover50 #storiesofmylife
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