You Might Be in Midlife If…

You eat protein like it’s your part-time job, your give-a-damn is breaking or entirely broken — and hard pants are your nemesis.

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So I’m 50. I’m not sure how I got here, because I just graduated from college, but apparently I already had a bunch of kids and built a life and career and did the damn thing. I guess I was married for twenty-six years and divorced in 2020. I am two months away from 51 and I have a boyfriend. Wtf. Now I am in a place where I cannot imagine life without retinol.

Midlife is awesome. And also weird. It snuck up on me, you guys. Hand to God, when my period went missing two years ago, I took a pregnancy test. My friends were like bitch, your eggs are as old as the dinosaurs. When I asked the internet how to have a baby in my late 40’s, it said: “Oh honey, bless your heart. You are in perimenopause.” WHAT. But I just graduated from college!

Anyhow, in case some of you are precious like I was and unclear on your own fertility and stage of life, here are some clues you might be approaching menopause:

Covers on. Covers entirely off. Full body sweats. Full body chills. Covers back on. One leg out to keep the heat wave at bay. Move body around to find cool sections of the sheets. Change shirts in the middle of the night. Threaten to dismember anyone who touches the thermostat. We need it at 67 degrees. Don’t like it? Move out and get your own house.

Why did I walk into this room?

A deep sense, nay, a knowing that everyone around you is conspiring against you, actively working to harm you, in on it, and without question, no one loves you. You are an island. You are a lone wolf. No one understands you or cares. Something is deeply wrong with all these people. You built your house on an eroding cliff. Oh wait. It passed. Everyone is fine.

Readers on your head, on your face, hanging on your collar, in your purse, on your nightstand, in your car, on the kitchen counter, and strangely, in the shower. Necklace clasps are your crucible. Dosage instructions on pill bottles? Let’s just take two and hope for the best.

You are waging an increasing war on hard pants and prioritizing what I like to call “home pants.” Home pants are good enough for the grocery store and Walgreens and, frankly, church.

Your give-a-damn is breaking or entirely broken. You don’t like me? The back of my hair isn’t brushed? You can see the hair on my legs glistening in the sun? You’re cold in here? You don’t want this for dinner? The other moms are doing that? The other moms aren’t doing that? Idgad. Be well on your journey.

You will entirely skip an activity because “the parking will be weird.”

If someone offered you seventy-four million dollars, you could not name all the people on the cover of US Weekly. Who are these children??

Something is happening with your neck. You grab your skin and pull it back and up in the mirror and consider taping it behind your ears. Why is it drooping like that? Why is it wrinkled like that? Why is it falling into your chest? You just got out of college.

You cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, remember all your kids’ elementary teachers. These people used to comprise the entirety of your inbox. They were your life for nine months. Was it Mrs. Anderson? Mr., um, starts with a V?

When someone cancels plans, you feel like you won the lottery.

Where did all these bruises come from?

You have a new part-time job and it is called protein. You have the powders, the shakes, the Quest chips, the Kodiak waffles, the Built bars. You succumbed to the cottage cheese propaganda. You order “double meat, no bread” for the first time in your life. You feel murderous toward chicken breasts.

You are fully uninterested in Hot Girl Summer. Give us SPF 50, a good smut novel, a bathing suit with full ass coverage, and an umbrella. If a swimsuit can wrangle the boobs into place, it deserves the Pulitzer.

Your teens have met their match. They can open up a fresh sassy mouth to you, but they will find out what it means to go toe-to-toe with a hormonal middle-aged lady suffering from hot flashes and shrinking patience. Try me once, fools. Oh I’m being “unhinged”? I’ll show you unhinged and you can take it up with Jesus.

What is going on with your vagina? It is the Sahara Desert down there, and your OB said you are experiencing “laxity.” God in heaven. Do kegels three times a day?? We can’t remember why we walked into this room, ma’am. We can’t be expected to send our vaginal muscles to the gym every day. Best of luck to our vagina’s visitors. BYOA(stroglide).

There is very little you wouldn’t do, pay, trade, perform, relinquish, attempt, offer, try, agree to, barter, or give for one uninterrupted night’s sleep. Eight straight hours and you would trade away your family.

So all I am trying to tell you, darlings, is that you aren’t pregnant. Your uterus is a dusty tomb of dried eggs and the two remaining hormones you have left. Welcome to midlife! At least there are millions of us here. There are also some amaaaaaazing parts. But I’ll dedicate a whole thing to those, because guess what? The broken give-a-damn is a portal into a badass second half.

In the meantime, I’m over here with my “cottage cheese bagels,” a clear sign of the apocalypse. Jesus, send the rapture. They’ve taken over our bread.