Menopause in the Matrix

 

My friend Lisa and I agree to disagree about The Matrix. I remember 20+ years ago when she complained about the fact that the rebels can figure out the complexities of jacking in and out of the Matrix but still have to eat tasteless gruel and wear tattered clothes. My husband and I are Matrix fans and have watched them all, many times together, happily suspending our skepticism for the particular sci-fi premise and dope kung fu. This past December, as I was rewatching all the Matrix movies in preparation for Resurrection to drop, I joked with Lisa about her plans to watch the new one. This time she complained most about the fact that Trinity has to play second fiddle to Neo in the first 4 movies. “Why doesn’t Trinity get to be the One?”. Hmmm. She made a good point. 

And then, like a glitch in the matrix, like reaching into a goopey liquid mirror, like puzzling over a rhyme from the Oracle,  it happened. It was revealed. Trinity, at age 52, the same age as me, is actually, the One. She’s the one who can fly, she’s the one who saves Neo and therefore the human colonies, she’s the one who tells the Analyst how it’s going to be. Maybe she was the One all along, or maybe she became it, realized it, only at this midlife moment. I choose to believe that Trinity becomes The One as part of her menopausal transformation. 

The menopause metaphors are all there: will she choose the red pill or the blue pill,  Trinity’s pent up anger and rage about the confines of life in the Matrix, the hot prickling sensation that something is very wrong, that we are not who we pretend to be, and radical change is necessary. Trinity’s liberators worry that she won’t take the red pill, that if given the choice to reject/abandon/destroy the conventional life that she is living in order to see the truth she will choose the blue pill and stay in the life society expects of her. Maybe embracing menopause is a red pill. It is the disruptive uncomfortable awareness that we are out of sync with the societal expectations for female youth, beauty  and responsibility. It is the acceptance that our true happiness might create rifts, disruptions in the course that we accepted for ourselves years ago. The blue pill is hiding it, ignoring menopause, denying the inauthenticity we perceive now. 

When Trinity accepts the “truth”, wakes up from her matrix coma, she transcends all past iterations of her brilliance. She is shining, calm, confident. In a 2021 New York Times interview with Carrie Ann Moss, she describes her 52-year-old embodiment of Trinity,  during the filming of Resurrection: “I laugh because at times I would just feel so cool, I got this. Someone would take a video and I’d look at it and be like, “Oh my god, I don’t look cool at all!” I would just have to constantly relax that part of my brain. I continually chose to know that I was going to be enough.” I am inspired by the wisdom of relaxing the part of my brain that says “You look stupid. You can’t do this. You are a loser.”  Maybe menopause is an invitation to strengthen this part of our brains. I don’t know kung-fu, but  I can  choose to know that I am enough, that I am the One. “Dodge this.”

Menopause: Another Perspective

 

Deep Sleep came back. The night after I wrote, Oh Deep Sleep, Where Have You Gone? it returned. I am sleeping through the night again. My FitBit tells me this is true. My scores have been between 80 and 90. I am waking up refreshed, full of rest that comes from the world of deep sleep, ready to welcome the day ahead. It’s a true gift. I feel like a magical fairy has blessed me with Deep Sleep again.

I’m at the age where I am waiting for things to fall apart. I am waiting for my hair to turn fully gray. I am waiting for my knees to give out. I am waiting for my belly to round like both of my grandmothers. I am waiting for my eyesight and hearing to go. I am waiting for longtime faithful companion Deep Sleep to leave me. Everyone says it’s going to happen. Friends, family members, doctors, random shop clerks, started warning me when I was 48, then again when I turned 50. And now I’m 53 so surely I am just biding my time until all of these things happen to me. 

These years of warnings are why I was so prepared to end my relationship with Deep Sleep. I set myself up to expect that losing Deep Sleep was inevitable. Some of the things I was warned would happen have happened. My hair is getting gray and my belly is much rounder than it used to be. My hearing seems fine but I’ve graduated to progressives. But my knees are great most days and my cherished friend Deep Sleep came back!

As women age, there is an elusive magic suitcase full of unpleasant expectations awaiting us. We are prepped for all of the bad things to come. We are told in myriad ways that this, older age, is the end of the line, the stop where all the bad stuff comes. But that’s a bunch of bullshit. That’s some weird patriarchal concept designed to make women think that their only value is in their ability to procreate; that once those years are over it’s all downhill (but that’s another essay).

C.S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was one of my favorite stories growing up. Lucy and her three siblings are sent to the country to escape the Blitz during World War II. They stay with the professor, a friend of their parents, in a foreign town in an unfamiliar house. There, Lucy and her three siblings find a wardrobe that leads to another land. 

The adventures the kids had — both wonderful and perilous — drew me in and carried me away. What if menopause is like the first stop in Narnia? It’s scary. It’s foreign. There are strange creatures and mysterious events that make us feel lost and scared and alone at times. But there are also mystical, magical adventures that make us feel welcome and happy.

There are evil characters — like the White Witch — hot flashes, sensitivity to alcohol and coffee, hormonal mood changes. And there are good ones like Asian the Lion, the brave King of Narnia who saves the children. In the land of menopause Asian would be that strong inner sense women have at this age. It is the roar of knowing that it’s time to change jobs or shake up a relationship. 

And then there are Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, the kind couple who welcome the children and make them feel at home. In many ways, menopause feels like that. Finally at home, free from the heavy socializing, trying to achieve more, do better, get noticed. It’s nice to feel like it’s enough to sit at home and have a cup of tea. 

And for me, there’s Mr. Tumnus, the faun, who, in my menopause land, represents Deep Sleep. Mr. Tumnus is at first the kind and welcoming, nurturing and caring companion to Lucy when she arrives in Narnia. But Tumnus is under the control of the White Witch and thinks of betraying Lucy, forsaking her to the evil side of Nania. In the end, though, Tumnus’ conscience is restored and he leads Lucy back home to her wardrobe where she can rest safely with her siblings. 

Lucy and her siblings escaped to the wardrobe. Their life, war-torn, sequestered away from their parents, friends, and all things known to them, was already scary. Narnia was an escape, a place to be somewhere different, to be someone different. 

Menopause is like going to another land in a lot of ways. But like Narnia, the new land isn’t all bad. When I think about what came before menopause, life on the other side of the wardrobe, I feel delighted to have an escape from all of that. There’s good and bad here, but it’s also sometimes magical.