A couple of weeks ago I did an event and found myself unable to answer the first two questions I was asked. The questions were good, curious ones that showed an attentive reading of my book. They were ones I have literally written 1000s of words about and talked about for hours. Yet I opened my mouth to speak, expecting to be carried by a thought – this is what usually happens – and after a few words I came to an abrupt halt, in an utter panic about what next, in an utter panic about what I actually thought! I kept trying to get a foothold in my answer but everything I said felt wrong or contradictory or inauthentic or garbled. I’ve never experienced this before when on stage. I’ve fluffed things, lost a train of thought, but this was something much more vulnerable, my struggle was transparent. I felt bad for the event Chair, I felt bad for the audience. I felt bad for myself! I blurted out I don’t know what’s happening I don’t know how to answer the question! I don’t know what I’m saying! I’m sorry! The deeply compassionate event Chair invited me to read a bit of my book, something we’d decided I wouldn’t do, to save me a bit. Gave me a moment to focus and regain something approaching fluency. After, I found my way through the questions, felt animated, and if not clear, I was clarifying as I went. But all the while I was aware something weird had happened, I’d linguistically tripped up over nothing and had to get back onto my feet with everyone’s attention on me.
Portbello Beach, Edinburgh, after my event
I’m still trying to work out what happened. I was in Edinburgh at a wonderful bookshop – Portobello Books – where the staff are incredibly warm and kind. I’d spent the afternoon with a close friend who lives nearby. There had been some frictions that day – I almost missed my train on the way there, I got caught in the rain. When I stepped onto the stage I heard a big crack and was momentarily worried I’d broken something. It was also my late friend Roddy’s birthday, and he was on my mind. But I don’t think it was some kind of psychic load that ruffled me. I think it’s an emergent symptom of perimenopause. It was like being temporarily alienated from my own brain; I knew I had the answers within me, but the files were corrupted. After the event I chatted to people about it as I signed their books, and they were so nice to me. On some level I think being so undone felt very human to them: I wasn’t a robot who could trot out the same anecdotes and pre-prepared responses. It created a kind of intimacy.
It happened again last night at a friend’s birthday party. I was in a conversation with an acquaintance who is also a writer, and we were chatting about our experiences of publishing, and I felt the thread of my concentration snap. It’s not just that I didn’t know what to say, it’s that I said some things and could sense that they didn’t correspond to an authentic feeling. I felt confusion and panic and the writer I was chatting to saw it too. I stood there feeling like a toddler who is crying because they’re hungry or tired or have wet themselves, but they don’t have the language went to explain what’s wrong. Someone else entered the conversation, rescuing us both, and so I turned to a friend and tried to process it with them a little. I don’t want to subject people to the awkwardness of hearing a disclaimer at the start of every conversation or event that absolve me of any sudden weirdness, but I also don’t want to feel so defenceless as I enter this part of my life where I’ll be ticking off more and more symptoms of perimenopause. I have a habit of over-explaining myself, making sure people know I recognise every little quirk and deficit of my character. But right now I have the pathetic feeling of just wanting people to know it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. And I resent it so much.
I was at your event in portobello books, and you were fabulous. I completely hear you when you say you felt there was a disconnect between your thoughts and your words, and the powerful effect of hormones on our brains. I’m 44 and definitely experiencing perimenopausal symptoms and at times felt lost at sea. I want to acknowledge how that feels for you and also say how brilliant and eloquent and thoughtful you were on the night. Thank you for sharing!
Amy dearest, I am the Steph who jumped up in your birthday post on Insta and urged readers to sub to this! Good morning to you. I was just now gazing into my poached eggs when your email came through. I had to put fork and knife down immediately and felt compelled to crack on, chuck the debris in the dishwasher [well, minus the eggs] and go find my laptop to respond properly, as it were. I am a smidgen older than you, I think, at 47 [borderline 48 FFS], and realised at some point in late 2022 that I had been battling perimenopause for two years already. What you describe above is the inception of brain fog, as so many of us like to describe it, and it is brought about by the drastic drop in testosterone. I am not here to give some form of science lesson on this [I take mine from Dr Newson!] but rather to sing the praises of your SHARING. In short, I feel so seen this morning. I've always been an exceptionally prolific reader and writer, keeping diaries and later blogs since before blogs were a thing. Two literary degrees, five languages spoken, a veritable MOUNTAIN of documents penned in my lifetime, from business requirements to scripts for animated videos. And nothing, nothing at all pertaining this period of my life, distresses and discombobulates me more than searching for that one word that is suddenly and inexplicably eluding me. Nothing confounds me more than re-reading a cliché, or a turn of phrase, or an idiom whilst wondering... hang on... that does not sound right... I find myself in your aforementioned situation [particularly in video meetings], in medias res, when the train of thought suddenly slips off my fingers like the end of dental floss and the more hastily and frightfully I bend down to grab that end and the faster the line disappears. I could be sitting right here with my boyfriend talking to me and the silence hangs; he has asked me a question but I have not heard it. In all of this, and then some, such as the aching joints, even as I exercise as much as I always did, or with my new spare tyre in the middle, the one that made me go HANG ON where is my WAIST, it is the elusiveness of the tables of the database that is my brain that throws me off, and angers me, the most. We don't need to go into the medical side of it here [that is worthy of another tragic comment, hahaha], suffice to say, I had no idea this was coming, I had no idea it even existed, and I had no idea that supposed youth would feel so derisively, so surprisingly, and so unfairly short.