Food Cravings and Mental Breakdowns
After typing up my last journal entry, I went searching through my blog for mention of peri-menopause. I had enough entries on it over the last four years that I’d actually created a category for it. Totally forgot I did that.
August, 2012: noticed my period went from 25 day cycle to 28+ day cycle.
May, 2013: I had a period, then 11 days after it ended, another full period.
October, 2013: skipped period entirely.
January, 2014: my period went back to 25 day cycle.
May, 2014: period ended and then the next day started up again.
April, 2015: I started my period again after it had just ended.
May, 2015: diagnosed with fibroids. I started my period again after it had just ended.
September, 2015: bled for 12 straight days.
So…I have had up to five years to “enter peri-menopause gracefully”.
But in August, 2012, my world ended when I discovered my spouse cheating on me with the woman I babysat for. That threw my cycle and everything into hormonal whack. My world never fully recovered.
I spent over a year and a half in MAJOR depression and on psych meds.
Then I met someone new and began a relationship, which went through such HORRIBLY INTENSE bullshit that I am surprised I stayed with the person at all. It got pretty bad.
At the same time, my job went from bad to unbearable, and I finally left it in August, 2017, only to be picked up by a monumentally worse job. I’ve only been there for just under 3 months, and it feels like I’ve been there for as long as I was at the other dysfunctional job.
So there was no going gracefully into this, because I have been in a constant state of stress hormone release for the past five years.
On Friday, November 3, after another bad day at work, I came home and had a full scale emotional breakdown, complete with sobbing, screaming, hyperventilating, and rambling incoherently.
I haven’t been the same since Friday. I feel like I did when I just got out of the psych ward in 2012. Everything has me jumpy and ready to scream & jump out of my skin. I’ve been taking more of my anti-anxiety medication.
And the food cravings. Holy shit, the food cravings. It’s probably a combination of being stressed the fuck out and hormonal whack going on, but I have never eaten so much peanut butter in my life. Same with ice cream. I have to have ice cream EVERY DAY for like, the past two months.
I texted my Ma yesterday about it, since I read that daughters may likely follow their mothers in menopausal onset and symptoms. My Ma started peri-menopause when she was about 43 or 44 years old. She had really bad mood swings. I don’t recall her food cravings, so I asked. She said she ate A LOT of ice cream, and that it helped with her hot flashes.
I told her I’d had some night sweats back in March. but nothing since then.
Then of course, because I HAD to have mentioned it, I had hot flashes all last night, which made it difficult to sleep. It mostly affected my lower body from the waist down my legs to my feet. Burning hot. Dry hot. I wished for a cooling pad. If this keeps up, I will order cool gel pillows and pads.