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This is what a crone looks like (131/365)
May. 11th, 2021 07:11 pmI am 47 years and 3 days old, and as of today I am officially a crone*. I went swimming this morning to celebrate.
It's strange, not knowing that your last period is the last. I knew I'd been perimenopausal for years; when I came off the Pill in 2014, my cycles were significantly shorter than they had been in the past (around 21 days); then they got more erratic and there were a couple of 2-3 month gaps interspersed with stretches when they were more regular. A couple of years ago I started getting hot flushes, and then I had a period in January 2020, a gap long enough that I had started to wonder if that had been the last one, and one more in May. When it got to six months, I started counting seriously, and for the last couple of months I've been keeping my fingers firmly crossed that my body wouldn't chuck one last surprise my way. (To be honest, if I had started bleeding after 11 months, I'd have been getting it checked out medically anyway.)
I've always loathed being lumbered with a female reproductive system. I started my periods when I was 10 years and 11 months old, which is far too young, and spent my teens struggling with horrendous PMS. (The first time I went on the Pill was to try to regulate my hormones so that PMS wouldn't affect my A-level performance.) I spent years running packs of pills back-to-back so I didn't have periods, and worrying about accidental pregnancy despite being an almost perfect Pill user. And now I am utterly delighted to be done with the whole thing. No more cramps, no more PMS, no more dripping gore all over the bathroom, no more even theoretical possibility of pregnancy. Menstruation was a burden I never wanted, and I'm glad to have lost it so soon.
*post-menopausal
It's strange, not knowing that your last period is the last. I knew I'd been perimenopausal for years; when I came off the Pill in 2014, my cycles were significantly shorter than they had been in the past (around 21 days); then they got more erratic and there were a couple of 2-3 month gaps interspersed with stretches when they were more regular. A couple of years ago I started getting hot flushes, and then I had a period in January 2020, a gap long enough that I had started to wonder if that had been the last one, and one more in May. When it got to six months, I started counting seriously, and for the last couple of months I've been keeping my fingers firmly crossed that my body wouldn't chuck one last surprise my way. (To be honest, if I had started bleeding after 11 months, I'd have been getting it checked out medically anyway.)
I've always loathed being lumbered with a female reproductive system. I started my periods when I was 10 years and 11 months old, which is far too young, and spent my teens struggling with horrendous PMS. (The first time I went on the Pill was to try to regulate my hormones so that PMS wouldn't affect my A-level performance.) I spent years running packs of pills back-to-back so I didn't have periods, and worrying about accidental pregnancy despite being an almost perfect Pill user. And now I am utterly delighted to be done with the whole thing. No more cramps, no more PMS, no more dripping gore all over the bathroom, no more even theoretical possibility of pregnancy. Menstruation was a burden I never wanted, and I'm glad to have lost it so soon.
*post-menopausal
