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Fadzayi Maposah Correspondent
I was in a shop admiring a box of crayons and slowly debating whether to remove something from the shopping basket so that I could take the crayons home.
As I admired the crayons, the person behind me asked if I was buying the crayons for a grandchild!
“They were good crayons,” the person continued without waiting for my response.
I agreed that the crayons seemed good but did not answer the part on buying them for a grandchild.
I really was not in the mood to explain I was considering buying the crayons for myself. I smiled and put the crayons back in their place and stood in line waiting for my chance to be served.
I asked myself, “So there are some things that I cannot buy for myself because of my grey hair?”
I recalled an incident when I was buying a new range of yoghurt and another fellow shopper just after a polite greeting noticed the yoghurt in my trolley and commented that the yoghurt was an instant hit with her children.
Now those who know me, know how much I love yoghurt. I buy yoghurt all the time when I can afford it. I am unapologetic! I just love yoghurt. As far as I am concerned yoghurt is good for all ages and I am still to understand why some people label yoghurt as babies’ food!
One may bump into me in the supermarket and think that I am shopping for some young children when it is all just mine. I have developed this habit of being on my best behaviour when I am in supermarkets.
I have realised that there are many people who just like looking at other people`s baskets and trolleys and give unsolicited comments and advice.
Better still, I now use the time while waiting to pay, to read something on my phone or just recite something silently. I really do not want to end up in a war of words because at my age my hormones are really misbehaving and affecting my emotions. As I always say hormones have no manners.
At times the emotions are so overwhelming. When the emotions are flooding me I have no explanation for my behaviour. One moment I am my bubbly self, an active member of the Bubbly Trio.
I am all smiles and ready to give the world the very best of me. If you meet me at this moment you will immediately fall in love with me and you could have actually advocated that I get many St Valentine`s Day presents even if you do not actually believe in the day. I will be so adorable.
I hope that you get the chance to meet me when I am in this phase!
When I am in this happy and bubbly mood, I am a wonderful citizen. When I get greet people, it is like that I have been energised by some invisible force. When I am in this phase I can dance to music with a lot of energy with no guilt and actually celebrate enjoying my life. I can just look at those attempting to burst my bubble, ignore them and then continue to be happy.
Then from nowhere I can feel low. The whole mood then changes. I become very teary and anything very small can just put me off. When I am in this phase I am put off by tardiness. I am not a perfectionist but I have noticed that when this mood persists I am so particular about so many things.
Even the way someone chews their food can be irritating! On a very bad day and depending on who it is, I may tell the person that I do not like the way they chew although I may have known them for a very long time!
To be honest I am not really a bad person but at times, these moments just hit me. When these moments hit me, it is like I have a horrible identical twin who occasionally turns up and wants to affect my good relations with the people that I care about.
This horrible twin can stay for some time while the well behaved twin is nowhere to be seen!
When I feel that the horrible twin is taking over my life, I attempt to deal with her quickly. I do not want to lose the people I care about just because of mood swings that are part of the menopausal package.
I have a jar full of crayons at home just by my favourite seat. When I feel overwhelmed by the emotions and cannot understand the mood I am in, I will take my colouring book and start colouring. I colour until I feel calm.
Some days are easier than others. On some days, I will colour a whole page while on other days it would just be a part of the page.
I sometimes get irritated because I cannot find the colour that I thought would make the flower stand out well, only to later to discover that I left the crayon in the kitchen when I was looking for a knife. Then I will ask myself why the crayon would be in the kitchen. In the process of thinking why the crayon is there, I may totally forget why I needed the knife.
Other women do not sit and colour, they go outside and slave away in the garden. When someone suggests that they should rest they always have something to finish off yet they go on and on. That is their coping mechanism or way to deal with the mood swings! Fatigue follows…
A friend suggested hormone replacement to counter the mood swings and other pre-menopause symptoms. I am open to the idea, I just need to read more about it first. Never thought that I would need medication to counter mood swings. Warring against hormones…
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