Lost in translation

Midlife is not for sissies - especially if you’re a woman.

I can very well attest to this because so many changes have happened to me during the years after 40 that I have trouble keeping up.

Take for example today, I look into the mirror and saw an older woman looking back at me. And suddenly I felt my heartbeat racing. Is it fear? Is it panic? Is it sheer sadness? Whatever it was, it changes my mood.

Yes, my mood swings from sweet to sour as rapidly as the heartbeat itself. My emotions are up at one moment and at an all time low the next. There are days that seemed to be picture perfect, while other days can leave my normally happy kids feeling like a ball of nerves.

But what can I do? Sometimes I just find my children more annoying than usual, or co-workers especially frustrating, or a television show particularly heart wrenching. I even shed tears last night watching a television commercial.

Oh yes, often times the slightest thing would just make me fly off the handle, into a fit of depression. In fact, yesterday I cried because someone told me I cannot peek into his homepage anymore - even when it was said in jest. I don’t understand, but this mood swing has a certain knack of making me feel completely lost. My emotion sometime is so out of whack that I don’t even know if I should be sad or angry in certain situations.

The fact that trivial things trigger the mood-swing, isn’t comforting either. But often times I do not realize it happening. I thought all along that I am in control of my emotion, although many times I am aware that I am acting in a certain strange way.

And I am not even talking about the extreme behaviour that would manifest when I am PMSing. I just hope that this won’t last forever…