I’m late, I’m late, I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about you.

About this post.

I miss chatting.

Who knew writing a memoir would take up so much head space?

Oh, and then there’s the bloody Mister demanding to know which cloth he’s meant to use to clean the windows, while my head is all full of words and sentences and what I want to write to you.

‘Just choose a cloth,’ I snap, heading upstairs to escape as he mutters and demands to know which cloth is the window-cleaning-cloth.

What do I look like, the fucking cloth fairy?

My tolerance for everyday life is low. My bandwidth for dealing with demands is pencil-thin and what energy I have I’m not spending on…well for the sake of marital bliss, I’d better not finish that sentence.

It seems I’ve been rude all around – and for rude let’s just assume I’m being a woman setting boundaries on her time and space.

At a recent event, I was asked what I was working on.

‘As well as a memoir, I’m writing a book of Women’s meditations,’ I answer brightly. ‘I hold a women’s meditation circle’

‘Oh,’ laughed the man asking all the questions. ‘Do women meditate differently to men, then?’ There was a hint of sneer in his voice as he looked around at other men, laughing.

‘I wouldn’t dare to presume i know how men meditate. Or how to write a men’s meditation circle,’ I replied smiling. ‘Being a woman, I wouldn’t want to speak of men’s experiences. I’m a woman,’ I pause and make myself look him in the eye. ‘So, I write about women’s experiences. I’m sure you’d be able to write for men, if you feel that’s what you need.’

‘Can you imagine what ‘they’d’ say if we set up a men’s meditation?’ this man bristled, all faux swagger, looking around for support, but I didn’t hear the rest as I’d wheeled away in a totally none-mike-drop-way.

I didn’t tell him about the brilliant men’s walking group in town, or the Men’s Shed project that helped men talk about mental health.

I really wasn’t being facetious at all.

Telling my daughter about this encounter on the phone I heard her mouth fall open, but not in a way I’d anticipated.

Laughing she spluttered, ‘You said it like that? Brutal.’

‘What?’ I asked, genuinely surprised. ‘Was that rude?’

More laughing and guffawing and suggestions that she wouldn’t have said it quite like that.

‘It sounds like when men complain about why there isn’t an International Men’s Day, and you respond with, ‘Er, Patriarchy!  And let me turn the Internet on for you!’ she howled.

Again, my response was, ‘What? You’re not trying to tell me that’s rude, as well?’

Despite the tone of this blog, I’m not particularly sassy or combative. Most of the time I am extremely tolerant and polite.

I wasn’t trying to be rude, or ‘feisty’. I was simply trying to be extremely clear that, – One, I wasn’t interested in this conversation, and Two, that I genuinely would not presume to write a man’s experience, because, obviously I’m not a man.

 *I hate all those words we use to describe women – feisty, sassy, fiery, highly-strung – who are simply standing up for themselves.

This inability to suffer fools is the superpower of both menopause and a late diagnosis of Autism.

In the great unmasking that comes with a late diagnosis, you realise you’ve lived your life trying really hard to pretend you are something you are not.  Once you stop pretending or using up all of your energy trying to squash yourself down as small as you can, well, you find that you’ve somehow lost the skill.

Unmasked, I simply don’t fit back into the box I’ve sprung from, – think trying to get hair mousse back into the can after you’ve squeezed it all out.

And liberated, I now find I cannot tell if stating things clearly and openly is being rude.

To be fair, I think I may have always been like this, only the combination of Crone and Autism is so magnificently powerful that I now need to come with a warning.

Maybe it’s writing a memoir about the stories that are told about us as women. (I can’t speak about men’s experience – I think I mentioned that earlier.)

The memoir is about all those stories told about women, – that we are too much, too loud, too smart, too sexy, not sexy enough, not smart enough, too quiet. That we should be mothers but not be ‘motherly’. That we should work but not abandon our children. That we should have a full time job, a career, and organise playdates and childcare and dentist appointments and cook meals made from scratch and keep the house nice, with neatly folded piles of ironing on the ends of neatly made beds. We should be liberated and be a ‘boss.’ Be ready to justify why we didn’t have or want kids, or explain who will look after us in our old age.  We should still have time to do the yoga, or the running, and be hydrated, and watch our weight, and be shaved and plucked and avoid sugar and carbs and food in general, and dont wear this or that, and don’t go out late at night, and dont be asking for it, oh, and obviously be available for sex, which is, of course, great sex.

All of these stories and more that are told about women, – the memoir is about how we live our lives in the constant pull and tug of these stories, and my experience at different stages of womanhood, of getting sucked in and conforming, and then battling to resist.

And I know from this blog you are thinking, ‘Her? Conforming?’

But none of us are perfect.  

Sometimes it is hard to live in this world as a woman.

So, maybe writing all those stories down, shining a light into all the dark corners, has wiped away some cobwebs. Maybe writing down all those stories has set me free, rising from the dust as the mistress of my own tales.  

Maybe writing all those stories down has just worn me out.

(Spoiler Alert – I have never been ‘just’ anything.)

If menopause gifts us anything it is the power to absolutely sing with pride, ‘FUCK THAT SHIT.’

Sing it loud and proud, my sisters. Whisper it with me now.

FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

Newly unmasked it is, ‘FUCK. THAT. SHIT. PLEASE. AND. THANK YOU.’

If you need it, take this as a warning.