Sandwich

by Catherine Newman

Also he will get out the innocuous-sounding foam roller that is actually a complex pain device designed by people who hate everybody.

Lol

Menopause feels like a slow leak: thoughts leaking out of your head; flesh leaking out of your skin; fluid leaking out of your joints.

You finally understand the word crepey as it applies to skin—although you could actually apply this word to your ass as well, less in the crepe-paper sense than the flat-pancake one. Activities that might injure you include ping-pong, napping, and opening a tub of Greek yogurt.

You have under-eye bags. Jowls. I Feel Bad About My Neck makes total sense as a book title. You reflect on old TV commercials with new understanding: a crocodile slithering around in need of Lubriderm! Same! All the horrors that crept past without you ever looking up from your youth to take note of what they even were: They’ve circled back for you.

There was absolute clarity. Now there’s just pretend equity, and it’s not very romantic. Or very equitable. Nick and I both scrambled through our children’s childhoods, half-assing work, half-assing home.

“We were in couples therapy,” he said. “You said I didn’t know you. You were furious about it. You still are. But how could I have known you, Rocky? I didn’t know anything.” I wanted to say, If you’d have wanted to know, you would have known.

“We’re just ruined by sex, women—our bodies, our psyches. We’re sexually assaulted every five minutes. We’re infected with everything. Traumatized by conceiving, by not conceiving. But let’s keep at it! Like, you’ve been in a maiming car accident and then you’re supposed to want to get back in the car? I mean, what?”

I’ve heard grief described as love with nowhere to go.

Maybe grief is love imploding. Or maybe it’s love expanding. I don’t know. I just know you can’t create loss to preempt loss because it doesn’t work that way. So you might as well love as much as you can.