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Rose George

Rose George is a British-based journalist and writer who has contributed to The Guardian, the Financial Times, Details, and Condé Nast Traveler, among other publications. Her three books to date are A Life Removed (2004), about refugees from Liberia, The Big Necessity: the Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters (2008), and Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate (2013). (August 2018)

Follow Rose George on Twitter: @rosegeorge3.

NYR DAILY

‘It Feels Like a Derangement’: Menopause, Depression, & Me

Vilhelm Hammershøi: Rest, 1905

I took my new boxes of patches, a pump gel of estrogen to top up with on the bad days, my precious testosterone, and went home with hope. It took months, but things stabilized. Now, there is never more than one bad day at a time of these “low moods.” The phrase is belittling. My depression is not simply feeling miserable or glum. I know what that feels like. I know that that can be fixed by fresh air or effort. This depression is dysfunction, derangement. I hate myself so hard. And I miss myself, the woman who didn’t feel like this. On the good days, I am at peace with my age, with what I have done, with who I am, menopausal or not. I delight in what I can do, and when I run, I hurtle headlong down a steep descent with the joy of a child, aged nearly fifty. But on other days, that woman seems like someone else.