I Was So Tired of Apologizing: My Menopause Rage Story

I was so tired of apologizing. “I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry for what I said.” “Sorry for how I reacted.”

I like to think of myself as a pretty conscientious person. And it felt like overnight, I was overcome by rage.

Like, actual hostility. If the wrong person looked at me the wrong way, I could feel myself turning into my fourteen-year-old delinquent self, ready to take out my hoops and fight.

I was aghast at the thought. Can you imagine? I’d become a meme online: Meditation teacher clocks some random person in line at the grocery store.

I came a little too close in the Whole Foods parking lot.

I was pulling out when someone started backing up. Fine, maybe they didn’t see me. I waited. When the man saw me, he rolled down his window and said, “Can’t you see me backing up, you idiot?” He threw his hands up, veins popping out of his neck, spitting through his veneers in his Mercedes A-Class.

Oh no, I thought. This is how it’s going to happen. The CCTV footage would surely capture me accelerating straight into the side of his vehicle, and that would be it.

I didn’t, thank goodness. But my response was loud, and it came with a hand gesture. I may have told him to shove it up his ass and maybe called him a bitch.

So yes, I have some experience with perimenopause and menopause rage. And as much as I want to get into all of its idiosyncrasies, I think it’s important to say that this part of midlife started early for me. I want to speak to the women who find themselves here earlier than they expected, too.

It Started Between 38 and 40

Over the course of two years, between the ages of 38 and 40, I watched myself turn into someone I didn’t recognize. I was irritable. It felt like PMS times a million. I thought perhaps I was going through it because things weren’t going the way I wanted: my life, my career, my health. I had been trying to get pregnant, and I wondered whether the resentment had built up until I’d become a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any moment.

And it did.

I thought maybe it was the fact that we were locked down and hadn’t seen people. Or that there had just been a global pandemic and the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I would still teach my yoga classes online, “Yoga for Sleep” and “Yoga for Anxiety,” and soon after, I’d be raging at Torry for putting my vegan chicken in the fridge.

I would go from zero to one hundred over something that, under any other circumstances, would barely have registered.

Unfortunately, the people closest to me took the brunt of it. There were the impulsive text responses that would always start in capital letters: WHY THE F*CK…

Very intense, and not very mindful (lol).

I can laugh about it now, but there was so much underneath it.

Who Is This Person?

I thought maybe I was getting close to forty and was no longer willing to be a people pleaser. I was done working myself into the ground, keeping my resentments to myself, and going through the motions of my life. The rage gave me permission to say the thing out loud, without any fear. I didn’t care about being polite or accommodating.

After a rage episode, I would sit on my meditation cushion full of regret. I’d have these moments of clarity and think, Who is this person? Where is the Rosie I know? The person who was chill, easygoing, accommodating, the one who would go with the flow.

Then I remembered I was never that person.

I’ve always been wound a bit tightly. I was just much more conscientious about how I behaved in the world before perimenopause.

And I was ashamed of it. Especially because I was supposed to be this person who teaches meditation and mindfulness, loves Eastern philosophy, and does her best to be an optimist. Even though I cosplay as an existential nihilist. That’s always been the case. I suppose I’ve always been comfortable with a certain amount of contradiction.

This was the one part of my journey I hadn’t shared. It feels a bit raw to let people know that I have actual contempt.

I’d been in little scuffles as a teenager. Where I grew up, everyone did. Getting into fights was part of surviving East Los Angeles in the ’90s. It was hard to avoid them. In junior high, fighting was our entertainment. The day would begin, and somehow a game of telephone would get going: someone would tell someone else, “So-and-so wants to fight you,” and that’s what would happen.

I always say growing up in a tough environment made me tough. It gave me thick skin. It made me fear less. I mean, I still had fear. I just wasn’t going to shy away.

What My Anger Was Trying to Tell Me

When I started asking myself what my anger was trying to tell me, the answer was pretty clear: something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel like myself.

And it’s such a mindf*ck because, yes, you are changing. We change with age. How was I supposed to know which changes to accept and which ones meant I needed help?

There was this small voice inside me screaming to be heard. All my old traumas came to the surface. I went back to therapy, and it helped a bit. Understanding what was happening to me brought some relief, too. I finally had an explanation for why I felt so unlike myself.

I think about all the women who went through this before us. About “hysteria,” a historical diagnosis applied to a broad range of physical and psychological symptoms, especially in women, with early medical explanations blaming the uterus. What a surprise, right?

I wonder how many women were trying to explain that something was wrong and getting nowhere.

This experience shattered the identity I had before, and honestly, looking back, I’m glad. I had to look at how I was behaving and what I’d been carrying around. I think my rage was trying to get my attention: Hey, pay attention to me. I have something to say.

I’d spent a long time ignoring it.

But over time, I got better at listening to that small voice. I kept a little tiny bit of the rage and turned it into assertiveness, directness, the willingness to set boundaries. I’ve been reevaluating my relationships and letting go of expectations ever since.

My teacher always says, “Expectation is premeditated resentment.”

I think about that a lot.

I speak to this now because I think it’s important for women to not feel alone, to feel like their anger, their rage and resentment have a place to go. It’s a lot to hold, but you don’t have to do it alone.

— Rosie Acosta