dear media,

i am so bored with the million ways you tell me i can get rid of my stretchmarks or lose more weight or make my boobs perkier or my face prettier or my wrinkles go away, how i should eat yogurt and gum instead of desserts and filling food and then your "reality stars" that teach me to be wary of women as they will sleep with my boyfriend or take him away and the glossy photographs that remind me that my real body can never hold up to the airbrushed/surgically made ones that america seems to demand now.

let's not get distracted from the real things. like the lack of affordable childcare that robs us of careers and the exploitation of women in the sex trade and in every theater and our daughters giving things up because they want to be loved, and all these fathers who leave and the 1 in 3 women who will be sexually abused or raped in their lifetime (maybe it was you).

or how about we talk about the fact that women still make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. even though more women are now earning graduate level degrees.

we have real problems, and the curves of our bodies (the curves that allow our bodies to carry life inside of them) are not it.

ladies, we gotta stick together. we can't get anywhere acting all mean to eachother all the time...

menopause SUCKS

well friends, i am not gonna cushion this. menopause sucks. my therapist says to transition easily you need to allow yourself to let go and "ride the wave" but it's a wave of shit and my phases are all messed up because i am supposed to be enjoying the rich sex life that age and experience and estrogen give you in your thirties not applying cream to my cooch and laying sleepless in bed feeling so electric i want to crawl out of my skin.

getting through this bull shit with my leg has taken every single coping mechanism i have in the bag. this medication takes them away from me. and it's hard to get through an illness when you have not even a string to hold on to.

so what they say is true my lady friends. things that used to make me feel annoyed make me feel infuriated. i can't sleep. my skin, my body, my privates are dry. i can't eat a warm meal with out breaking out into a sweat and turning bright red (hot flashes are so fun). and it's always pleasant to wake up at 3 am in clothes that are so wet you feel like you just took a shower in your clothes. and you are hot but also cold.

the doctors say this is worse than the real deal since mine was chemically brought on over night and the real deal comes over over 10 years.

i hope that's true. because i seriously don't know if i can do even another week of this let alone six weeks.

lll

day: 67 of mono.

there has to be a better way.

i think i need to leave my job.