This week I cited a passage from a book I was reading (not this book) to a friend, and they commented how dark it was, with the implication that, these days, stressful as they are for me, perhaps I should try leaning into more positivity. But how do you know how optimistic or not a book is until you've read it? And just because I read dark things, it doesn't mean I wallow in them, invite them to drown me, I can still interpret them with wisdom and lightness, I won't let a book tell me what to do or how to understand the world (the book in question, which I have not yet finished reading, being precisely about ceasing to do so). Besides which, I like dark. (Why?) Despairing interests me, it feels real, I don't know if it's harder or easier to express than joy, maybe I still think of it as other people's pain, by comparison it makes me feel better about myself, but I'm drawn to it (as if I have something to learn from it, I dunno), I'm drawn into it, the cyclone of emotion, the eye of the storm, with the belief that I will reemerge, transformed on the other side.
The thesis is that literature cures the common cold, brain fog, and schizophrenia. It's an amiable undertaking about the possible benefit of reading literature. Novels are a warm poultice, a mustard plaster on your chest, a cup of herbal tea, my grandmother Rufi's chicken soup. Myself, I prefer books that give you styes. That carve stigmata on your palms. That catch in your throat and take your breath away.
I suspect Marta Sanz and I may have overlapping reading lists.
Sanz's My Clavicle and Other Massive Misalignments is a short, crisp, funny novel with, in my view, a brilliant title. Arguably it's more essay than novel, but it's very readable and relatable. It's so... of the body. Funny and direct, the protagonist's voice carries the reader along her journey to establish what is wrong with her, the source of interruption in her life as a menopausal freelance writer.
What I didn't realize is that menopause is not exclusively about a mutation that leaves you feeling less attractive. It's something much more intimate, something that's intimate and at the same time physical, that I would call "interior." The Change is something interior and explicit. It's not just a question of how you look: dry skin, gradual capillary poverty, spidery veins on the cheeks, bags under the eyes, grids of wrinkles like the netting on a fascinator. [...] The worst part is that menopause provokes a sense of vulnerability, which in turn makes you actually vulnerable. As if all the fibers in your rib cage tensed up and that constant tightening was keeping you from breathing. You don't sleep well, you don't defecate well, things don't smell the same, and food doesn't taste the same. [...] At night I get cramps in my toes that are nothing like those former involuntary movements, during orgasm, when that other, younger foot used to tense, then stretch, and bend and grow with pleasure until it broke the glass slipper.
Menopause is a problem. Currently it feels (to me) more problematic than periods, than managing contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, postnatal care (with or without depression), breast cancer screening, general sexual health — all with their related physical and mental pains, and their physical, mental, and social costs. And then let's not wash over the social, political, and economic frameworks in which we experience these problems (and yes, we experience them as problems). Unequal pay, childcare, division of household labour, the emotional labour of relationships, navigating the feminine hygiene aisle at the drugstore.
The female experience is a problem. And then we somatize it. But we go on.
I carry on reading my book, and as always when you read, you start to think of other things, and maybe that's the beauty of reading. Parallel thinking. Three-dimensional musing. Geometric shapes hidden inside snowflakes.
Currently, my tear ducts are misaligned and the associated usual emotional regulators are malfunctioning. That is, I want to cry all the time. Sometimes I actually cry, but it's the always wanting to — I sense it right now, this tensing around my eyes, a pillow of pressure on my sinuses, the sensation of welling up, brimming over — that feels uncomfortable. I object to saying that I'm feeling "emotional." I feel "hormonal." There is no sadness, grief, disappointment, anger, frustration. But yes, I occasionally feel panic and overwhelm. (When did "overwhelm" start being used as a noun?) Because life, my life. But I don't feel emotional, per se. (Not that I'm unemotional, that would be problematic in a different way.) It feels physical, a little like onions, but more deeply biologically seated. It feels, "emotionally," a lot like pregnancy, a kind of surge, gasping for life but from opposite directions.
The triggers are unexpected. I'm fine with formulaic movies, the tear-jerkers with their manipulative soundtracks, I don't flinch. It's when my friends casually launch the hard-hitting questions, like "how are you?," they really don't beat around the bush, that's when I crumble.
I feel tired, mostly mentally tired. But it is a reasonable response to my circumstances to feel this way. What puzzles me is that I should break now, the stresses have persisted for years, at least as many as since my last period. All of a sudden I can no longer store emotion in my body, there is no more room inside me, I have to release it.
My family doctor is on maternity leave. Her replacement is young, male. I'd anticipated not being taken seriously, but he's kind. I sense I have the power to make him scared of me.
We talk about ruling out physical causes, possible thyroid dysfunction. He proceeds to ask me the standard questions for diagnosing depression or anxiety. He asks if I feel guilt, and I respond reflexively, without thinking, without blinking, no, and I am surprised to realize that it’s true, that since my mother died — or maybe simply because I've achieved some milestone of maturity, satisfaction with my life, fulfillment of certain responsibilities — I am free of guilt (except for the general guilt of white western privilege).
When I write — when we write — we can't forget our material condition. That's why I think every text is autobiographical and that sometimes our disguises — the sinuous, translucent fabrics that cover our bodies — are less modest than naked declarations. I'm not interested in photoshopped selfies. I care more about the unedited facial expression, before language cleans it up, whitening each tooth and smoothing each wrinkle. I'm more interested in the pipe than une pipe that's not a pipe. An autobiography is the consecration of reality and of spring, not the number of stiches required to suture it into a story. My style reflects my fractured, menopausal insides. And this discomfort in certain regions of my body — flatulence, hemorrhoids, fibroids — may be clouding my intelligence. Or maybe not. What I can say is that I still care a lot about how much I'm going to be paid for my work.
I love that Sanz tries to tease apart the physical and the psychological and the results are inconclusive. I relate to the narrator, who has lost confidence in her own strength, although I am faltering not because of pain but of general craziness. I read My Clavicle at the beginning of the summer, before my difficulties began, but I'm struck now by several passages anew. It crosses my mind that reading it in fact may have subconsciously tapped into my concerns regarding my worth (financial, sexual, creative) and precipitated the late manifestation of menopausal symptoms I truly thought I'd managed to escape, or perhaps more cruelly my psyche decided not to call them up but create them out of nothing, to demonstrate my susceptibility to suggestion and distract me from all my other worries, giving me a tangible (if ill-defined) focus for my frustration, yet deliberately less urgently worrisome and more ephemeral than, for example, last year's biopsy-necessitating post-menopausal vaginal bleeding.
And somehow amid all of this, I proclaim I love my life. I feel more like a maker than ever, whether I use words as my material or clay. I look upon all I've made — my home, my family, my work, my art, my self — with satisfaction.
My writing is an uninterrupted assault. In a conspiracy of pleasingly blasphemous words and anatomical language, my writing strips us bare, both me and others, young and old. I tear off our clothes, exposing our blemishes in a search for our immense beauty. And I find it.
Review: Chicago Review of Books
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