Crone's Disease

credit: www.hecatescauldron.org

Lately I’ve been feeling tired and irritable. Yeah, I know, how is that different from all the time, right? But seriously, it’s something new right now, something I haven’t felt before in quite the way that I do now.

It’s not just getting up at 4:30 5 days a week to get some writing done before work. Not that kind of tired.

It’s more just this simmering feeling of frustration a lot of the time, a kind of fed-up-ness with idiocy and selfishness and childishness.

In short, it’s Crone’s Disease.

No disrespect to sufferers of actual illnesses, like the homophonous Crohn’s Disease, for example, which just sounds awful.

Honestly I suppose Crone's Disease is no more a disease than old age itself, really. But it can feel like a dis-ease, a distinct lack of ease, all this internal muttering and bitching, all these instances of exclaiming Are You F*ing Kidding Me to myself as I move through my day.

It’s likely that my own Crone’s Disease began just as menopause started kicking my ass. I have had a few weeks respite from the hot flashes and night sweats that were eating away at my sleep and sanity, so I’m feeling better on that score. But still, the Crone’s Disease, that remains.

Seriously, something distinct has happened to me as I’ve begun passage to this new non-fertile state of being.

I think it probably started with recurring dreams about babies.

In these dreams, I’d be holding a newborn, my heart about to burst from the beauty and sweetness in my arms, gazing down rapt at that tiny face and those precious little fingers. I’d feel so full of love, teary, that finally here I was, holding my baby. And then a little voice would whisper, Hang on a second, I did this already. I’d wake myself from the dream, reminding myself that I’d already done this, already had my own child and raised him and watched him grow into a fine, beautiful adult. Oh, I’d think, awakening, my time of babies is over.

I had this dream a few times before I understood it, before I got the message:

that baby I was holding was not my own, but a grandbaby.

The craving for a grandbaby, so strong it came to me in dream: that was totally new. I’d never ever thought of that before, and even now I try to keep my mouth shut about it, especially around the parties who will presumably, some day, be producing said-child.

But really, it's almost not even about the baby. It’s about me leaving one chunk of my life behind, the Mother aspect, the part that’s generative of new lives. 

The baby-dreams came first. And then came the hot flashes and the night sweats.  

For me, menopause has felt like I’m out here on a space-walk by myself, floating, without a clue what will happen to me next.

And then the hot flashes stopped. And I'm left with a clarity of vision I like to think of as wisdom. I am filled with a sense of how much I know having lived as long as I have, as well as how much more I have to learn, but for the first time in my life, SOLID in my sense of my own wisdom.

And that’s Crone’s Disease. Not really a disease at all, although it can feel like a sickness when you feel your mouth involuntarily pursing at some inane piece of bullshit some younger person near you at the cafe is spouting, or the way every young woman’s voice rises into a squeaky question mark at the end of every declamatory (you’d think) statement.

It’s like I can’t control it.

These are the symptoms of Crone's Disease as I am living them right now: 

1. Clarity about your own wisdom, what you have learned and earned in your years of life, love, work, parenthood, childlessness, travel, adventure, tilling the soil of your own garden.

2. Realism about human nature, that is: how good most of us really and truly are, and yet how broken and immutable others can be, unless they themselves desire more.

3. Knowledge about what works, based on your practical experience. You maintain an openness, a desire for new information to add to your stores, but still, you’ve seen a lot and, having tried and tried again, you also know what doesn’t work.

4. An awe at the energy and self-confidence of young people who think every idea they utter is genius. We, too, once thought we were inventing the wheel, and we did, as they will do, make our additions and improvements.

5. An impatience with nonsense, especially of the self-serving variety.

6. A desire to be treated with respect.

As much as our culture enshrines the young, we live a long time past those days of being 20, of the years of figuring ourselves out that takes up most of our 30s and even 40s. Getting to be old is a privilege, truly, one many of our ancestors were not afforded.

Being old is to be celebrated.

I’m celebrating and yet also stricken with this Crone’s Disease, which is like having new glasses on that show me so much that seems as though it was hidden from me before. By the busy-ness of my ovaries or the levels of my hormones, I don’t know what. Now I'm like one of those people who just got into a twelve-step program and can't stop talking about it. 

Now I see, with my Crone’s eyes, what I didn’t see before.

Mostly I LOVE what I see. I look around and I know how things work. I am confident. I am a battle-scarred survivor with hard skills to contribute.

In the zombie apocalypse, you want me on your team.

And yet, there’s this impatience, too. This irritation that is hard for me to manage, and harder still to keep unspoken. It’s the thing that made me lob this hot answer back at a young person in my office the other day, who called out this question to me as I was walking briskly to the kitchen:

Her: How many unpaid internships did you have when you were in college?

Me: Zero. I have ALWAYS had to work for a living.

I'm like a cobra that rears up sometimes, hooded, ready to strike. It’s hard to keep that snake calm and in its basket.

But I tell myself, maybe that’s part of this. Maybe this transition away from Mother, little Maiden left behind so many years ago, to Crone, is just like that.

It’s finally knowing what I’m worth, what I am, who I am, and not brooking any bullshit. It’s finally knowing the words and being able to speak them, in my own voice, clear and strong.

I’m not saying it’s particularly pleasant either to receive that cobra strike or even to be the cobra, but I’m feeling it, observing it, and marveling at this latest transformation, this new Crone’s Disease that I have.

And enjoying all the sights delivered by my old eyes made new, seeing everything that matters.

XX