I'm obsessed with not being obsessed

Menopause made me super chill and I'm here for it.

Yesterday I was perusing some prompt ideas for blog-writing and I came across an interesting one: “Make a list of what you’re obsessed with right now.” It made me stop and think. I’m not obsessed with anything right now, and that’s yet another change in my personality I can chalk up to menopause.

Yes, I’m only 45 years old (46 soon) and that’s young for menopause. Like most early-menopausers, mine came about via surgery. I had a hysterectomy a year ago, and even though there was no need to remove my ovaries, too, I experienced what’s known as “surgical menopause” anyway. It doesn’t usually happen when your ovaries are preserved, but it’s also not unheard of.

I’ve noticed some amazing changes in my personality post-menopause. I deal with stress so much better. It’s almost comical, how unflappable I am now. All my life, I was both very anxious and very passionate. Everything that happened to me or around me moved me in big ways. I felt others’ fears and perils as if they were my own. Their happiness, too. And my own experiences were like blown-out photographs, every high so high it was blinding and every dark place so exposed that I couldn’t help but stare at it. I didn’t dislike this about myself. My big feelings had to be expressed, and I learned how to express them in ways others could feel, too. I turned those personality traits into a career as a novelist. I achieved my dreams, and I was happy, except for the occasional freight train of a depressive swing that would hit me out of nowhere and throw me back into suicidal ideation (that’s the bipolar II life for you, folks. It is what it is.)

After menopause, the edge came off everything, and now every day and everything I do feels different. Not bad, not inferior. Not better, either. Just markedly, noticeably different. I still experience joys, ambitions, desires, frustrations, anger, sadness… all of it, like any normal person. But my keel stays notably even, which it never did before.

Case in point: a few days ago, I felt a depressive swing beginning to take hold, the first bout with my BDII I’ve had since my hysterectomy (and going a year without feeling any bipolar symptoms is new, too.) For the first half of the day, I felt a bit of dread. “Here we go. Here it comes. How long will it last, and how bad will it be?” Always the question I’ve had to ask myself throughout my life. But then I thought, “Wait a minute. I don’t want to be flattened by depression right now. I’ve got too much shit going on, too many deadlines, too much to do. And too much gardening to enjoy. And too many knitting projects I want to finish. And there’s too much bullshit happening in the world—that’s enough depression for anybody.”

For no real reason I can name, I decided to try meditation. Not to cure my depression (it doesn’t work like that with this condition, alas) but to get my head in the right place to meet what was coming sensibly and with some kind of game plan.

I walked out to one of my favorite spots and sat on the earth and closed my eyes, and just like that, far more easily than I’ve ever done it before, I slid into a meditative state. If you’ve ever practiced meditation before, you know it’s notoriously hard to do at first, and “at first” can last years for some people. I’m one of those people. It’s not the natural state of Homo sapiens, the Thinking Man, to not think. Meditation takes lots of concentrated and deliberate practice before you’re able to do it reliably and effectively—that long learning curve is something you’re told to expect when you first begin meditating.

Usually, I’m never entirely successful at halting my thoughts and just sitting there in stillness. This time, it was instant and deep and, to my surprise, healing. I dropped at once below the surface of my mind, and for a long time—maybe twenty or thirty minutes—I was just existing, listening to the birds and the tree frogs and feeling the sun on my head, feeling the breath moving in and out of my body, feeling my body making contact with the damp earth. I did nothing but exist for a while. It’s something I’ve never been able to do before. And after I came up out of it, I sat in the same place and thought calmly about myself, my life, all the things I’d been concerned about that had preceded that onrush of depression. I worked out a very sensible and rational way to frame all of it. I ended up feeling good—more positive than I’ve felt about these specific concerns for a long time.

There has never been a time in my life when I’ve been able to sidestep a depressive swing and send it on its way without allowing it to touch me. These incursions have always been something I’ve needed to endure with the knowledge that they would eventually pass, no matter how brutal and vile my thoughts might get in the midst of them, no matter how darkly despair might cloud my usual joys. And even though I know better than to let my guard down—I’m not “cured” of bipolar disorder just because I was able to meditate my way out of a depressive swing—it’s comforting to know that I now have a tool in my toolkit that has been proven to sometimes be effective at evading a downturn.

I have to credit this experience to menopause. I don’t know what else could have done it. This is the only major change that has come into my life since my last wrestling match with BDII. And I’ve been noticing all the other ways my personality has changed—or, let’s say, evolved—since my hysterectomy.

I used to be the kind of person who took great pride in being capable and efficient. I could get lots of things done at once, and all with a high degree of excellence. I genuinely enjoyed being a slugger who could handle a dozen spinning plates at once. This made me feel proud of my independence and capability. Speeding through a whole list of tasks and completing them to a high standard of quality gave me real pleasure and boosted my self-esteem.

I probably still can do everything and do it well, but I no longer want to. Since menopause, I’ve found that I now take more pleasure in deeply involving myself in every small step of a task. The sensory involvement, the total immersion of my body and mind into everything I do, no matter what I’m doing, now bring me far more enjoyment than that younger, more hormonal drive toward seeing the finished product.

While I’m working in my garden, I’ll spend minutes at a time with my hands deep in the soil, feeling it—the coolness and dampness, the gentle passage of worms against my fingers. I will sift dirt a handful at a time, picking out grass rhizomes, and never get tired of the work. When I knit, the tactility of the work is more important to me now than finishing a nice new garment as quickly as I can. The tension of yarn against my fingers and the motion of the needles, the way the wool interacts with my skin, is more important to me than what I’m making. And cooking—! I’ve always loved to cook, but it’s an entirely new experience now. I take my time assembling the ingredients and tools. I perform the ritual of mise en place as if it’s a sacred act, placing all my ingredients in small, beautiful dishes which I array across my butcher-block island. I allow myself to sense everything about the process—the smells and the sounds, the evening light coming through the kitchen window, my cat’s tail moving in a slow rhythm on the windowsill as he keeps me company.

Nothing feels frantic and urgent anymore. Even all the horrors going on in the world—I’m not insensate to these outrages and injustices. I merely know that each one is to be dealt with as they come, that together they make up a greater work that all of humanity is now undertaking together, and that each of us has a role to play in building a new world. We won’t do it quickly, even though we’d all like to. We will do it by means of this deep immersion, all of us living and working in the moment, making even the small and seemingly insignificant things we do in every moment count and mean something greater.

There are times when I feel I should grieve for the old Libbie who no longer exists, the one who was all fire and drive. I always loved her, and I love her still. She was admirable, unstoppable, bursting with life. She’s still in there, I know, and I am fairly sure I’ll be able to call her up if the need should ever arise to put her at the helm again. But this new, unexpected, transformed Libbie feels eminently suited to the greater moment. She is obsessed with nothing but the felt presence of immediate experience. And I am grateful that I get to experience this side of life now, too.

Inside you there are two Libbies