Life Cycles – or How I Became a Teenager Again

002 crop House is decorated for Halloween! Always makes me happy. I’ll even be home for Halloween night this year, for the first time in a couple of years.

I’m over at What the Cat Read today, with a variety of quotes about writers and cats.

The post ahead might be a bit TMI. Fair Warning.

I’ve been hitting a funny place in my life lately. Now that I’m in my late 40s, I’m looking at the whole menopause thing, though I’ve had blessedly few symptoms. More in the radar sites right now is dealing with my blood pressure. It’s just a little high. “Pre-Hypertension,” they call it. Not high enough to medicate, but high enough to be of concern. So far, I’ve been doing about everything I can. My diet is good – low fat, veggies, no fast food. I exercise. With the treadmill desk I’m walking 7-8 miles/day. No caffeine. Trying various herbs.

I recently switched practitioners and she suggested that I should go off the birth control pills, as a next step. It’s funny because I’ve been on the pill for over 30 years. I started on it when I was 16 and had met the guy I wanted to lose my virginity to. And I’ve never looked back. Taking the pill every night has acted as a calendar for my adult life. Likely what I’ll do is get a copper IUD. I still have my biases left over from the IUD horror stories of the 80s, but apparently they’re tons better now. Funny to me that I never tracked those changes.

For the time being, however, we’re using condoms. The other day, I went to the pharmacy and bought a box – for the first time in my whole entire life.

Because, back in my youthful, non-monogamous days, STDs weren’t emphasized so much. AIDS really became a major concern by my junior year in college. But even then, we tended to think in terms of exposure and whether or not we’d been tested. Because I was on the pill and reasonably discriminating in my lovers, we just didn’t use condoms. In fact, I never had sex with a condom until I met David and I was on antibiotics at one point, that could interfere with the efficacy of the pill.

So I never had that rite of passage until just the other day. And yes, I felt totally like a teenager. Plus, with my ovaries and uterus waking up from their long sleep and positively throbbing, I feel like I did when I first started getting my period when I was 12. Also, “they” seem to be right that the pill suppresses desire. While I never felt like I didn’t want sex, now… let’s just say I’m feeling teenagerish that way, also.

Not really what I thought I’d experience in my late 40s, but also cool in many ways, to revisit my youthful feelings. I feel like I’ve come full circle.

And that’s a nice place to be.

12 Replies to “Life Cycles – or How I Became a Teenager Again”

  1. Oh my gosh you now how to make me smile. I miss the pill for mood control the most. It has been about 9 years since I was on it. I have read so many of those pamphlets in the doctor’s office while waiting for the doctor about new options for birth control. It is amazing what they have come up with.

    P.S. I started typing a bunch of stuff and then remembered this was your blog and not a personal email to you. Had to delete a lot. 🙂

    1. I’ll be interested to see how the mood stuff goes, since everyone mentions that aspect. So far I don’t notice much. It IS amazing how the options have changed – very cool, actually.

      Very funny about the deleting! Though I don’t mind if you post stuff here. Still, you might not want *everyone* to see it…

      1. Exactly – I don’t want people to search for my full name and then find all the comments I left on people’s blogs. I don’t want to be THAT transparent. A little anonymity would be good.

  2. the pill suppresses desire? Really? Never noticed anything like that luckily enough.
    Also… I might have to buy condoms just to be able to say I too have bought them, because I can’t remember ever having done so.

    1. Well, such is the common wisdom. I never noticed an effect, either – so I’m surprised to feel some rebound now.

      That’s so funny that you’ve never bought condoms either! How did we miss out on that??

      1. I’ll confess to having only had one other serious relationship before meeting the OtherHalf and being a control freak who doesn’t like being touched by people I do not trust, that limits my experience in having to think about birth control and such :-p

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