Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Things are a changin'

Erring on the side of way too much disclosure, I thought we should talk about hormones. Mine, to be specific. Because things are not what they once were. I have gone off The Pill.

Now, calm down. I'm not trying to get pregnant yet. This is one of The Steps that shall be taken in advance of The Baby Making. It is suggested (I don't know by who, but I have it on good authority that The Authority says so) that women go off The Pill a few months before trying to conceive. Interesting side note, I asked my GYN about it last year, and he was all ehh, whatever. But, I've decided that I needed to get back in sync with my own body sans artificial hormones. So, pills are no more.

And I have learned something. You see, I thought I knew my body. I thought we had a good line of communication open. But, it turns out that I really had a relationship with Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, who was just pretending to be me. The mask was ripped away when my birth control ran out and low and behold, AN IMPOSTOR! An identical twin sashaying around in my own body. It's just like a soap opera plot. Except [fingers crossed] no one is going to be falling into or out of a coma.

We had a good thing going and now that's gone. I'm left having awkward conversations with my own body, just trying to keep those uncomfortable silences to a minimum. I have been on The Pill for ten straight years, and its like I'm embarking on a whole new relationship with someone I can't break up with.

Some of the differences are so subtle that I am can't be sure that I haven't invented them. Things like food cravings (I'm not that into chocolate...what???) and appetite. Then there are the more obvious changes, like acne. WTF?! Not the teenage acne that I finally beat in my late 20s. Now I have little sprinkles of acne that arrive and disappear in a matter of hours. That's right, hours. If I wake up with clear skin, I have white heads by noon and vice versa.

Changes aside, I really hope this new relationship works out. I've got my fingers crossed that we can become BFFs, just in time for me to get pregnant and mess it all up. Doh! Damn you hormones!! It's starting to look like I'll never win this one.

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