9 Jun
Okay so I want to tell you all about the most unexpected villain in my menopause story. Not the hot flashes. Not the 3am wake-ups where I lie there cataloguing every regret since 2009. Not even the meno belly that arrived uninvited and apparently has a lease. No. It's the thing nobody at any point in my entire life mentioned was going to happen to my body. The dryness. The total, bewildering, where-did-everything-go dryness. And with it, the way intimacy just quietly... changed. Without asking me. Without sending a memo. My husband and I have been together for nineteen years and suddenly I felt like I was navigating something completely unfamiliar in a body I thought I knew. I didn't say anything to him for months. I didn't say anything to my OBGYN either, because I sat in that office and when she got to the "any other concerns" part of the visit I said "nope, all good" like a complete liar. Because how do you even start that sentence. I've been writing things down now. Actual notes in my phone. Private symptoms I keep skipping out loud. I'm going to try to actually say them at my next appointment instead of performing wellness at a medical professional. Anyway. If anyone else has felt like intimacy changed without warning and didn't know how to name it, I just want you to know you're not alone and also that I apparently needed nineteen months and a notes app to get here. 😂