Nobody plans to wake up one morning, sit up in the bed in her silk nightgown and have as their first thought that she wants to die. I didn’t plan to, either, but it happened anyway. I work in a bookstore in a small town, and I like my job. In my spare time I paint landscapes of places I have never been to. I have three black cats who ended up with me by accident. All in all, I have a happy life, which is why the thought of suicide didn’t fit the picture. It was menopause, the strange and unpredictable play of hormones, that put me on this path and to which every woman in the world is subject, even though most of them don’t realise it.

I’m 51 and I don’t want to die anymore. I would like to use the 20 to 30 years that I’m likely to have left well. In the past few years, I’ve had to deal with several emotionally difficult situations. The emotional difficulties and the hormonal changes undoubtedly took a toll on me, but the environmental influences didn’t help me take these years easy either.

Everything began around the age of 43, when in my small but all the more precious circle of friends everyone already had a family and was on the verge of having children, and babies were born one after the other. I was honestly happy for them because what was happening was exactly what they wanted. However, in a matter of a few months my life changed as well. Book clubs, card playing and theater visits kept being canceled quoting family engagements, and I realized that as a single woman I was alone. We cared about different things, and it was hard to fit into the everyday rush and engagements. My mother had been bedridden for years and taking care of her took a lot out of me, even though a professional nurse cared for her most of the time. We lost her before Christmas. I’d had a good relationship with my father since my childhood, but grief brought us even closer. Perhaps he doesn’t need it anymore, but I still visit him every other day.

Loneliness, pain and a sense of loss became part of everyday life. The turning point came on my 45th birthday; I was in over my head, and I couldn’t find a way out of my problems. Besides sadness I felt an alarming amount of energy loss that I hadn’t experienced before. I’d read a lot of books on psychology, and I thought depression had caught up to me, but because of previous years’ suffering and my elemental sensitivity I didn’t read much into it. I hoped that what I’d read and my life experience would be enough to solve my problems alone.

I woke up one morning and sitting in my bed in a silk nightgown my first thought was that I wanted to die. Everything seemed pointless and hopeless, and I seriously entertained the thought of suicide. It would have been too easy to let these negative thoughts take over, so I decided to seek help. I was treated first by a psychologist, then a psychiatrist. I started taking antidepressants, which helped me get out of the emotional slump.

My aunt, who lives in England and is a GP, was the first to propose the idea that I should have a thorough hormone test because my mental symptoms may not be due to the depression caused by the circumstances, but to the hormonal changes associated with menopause. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, especially because by the time I met my aunt, I had made peace with my unstable mind and mental weakness. At the same time, she aroused my curiosity, because if she was right and my state could be explained biologically, then I wasn’t so messed up after all. I finally decided to get a hormone test, and its results probably surprised only me. They clearly confirmed my aunt’s hypothesis; the low level of female hormones was indisputable. Depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts were all the result of the strange and unpredictable play of hormones.

The long-awaited menopause arrived when I was 50. This brought positive changes, which I decided to further supplement by hormone replacement therapy under medical supervision. One year has passed since. A carefree year when once again I can be the woman with the three black cats that I used to be.

I’m not one to look for a silver lining or a message from the universe, but besides all the suffering, menopause has also given me good things: two very good friends that I got to know in a Facebook community organised around the issue. We meet in person once a month, but we keep in touch online on a daily basis. We often feel as if we were alone with life’s difficulties and our experiences. Then we meet and talk to people whose stories sound like our own lives. Our shared experiences unite us even if we go through them separately. Our friendship is for life.