TRUNCHBULL

What if Trunchbull was a misunderstood middle-aged woman on the verge of menopause? What if we need to just cut her some slack?

It’s hard to imagine anything more laborious than Miss Trunchbull treading water. Can you even imagine it?  That great hulk of a wo-man pounding at the water with her feet in an effort to keep her head above water. Her tightly woven bun and her face with the moles with the stiff black hairs coming out of them, incredibly still, stern and fierce as she controls the world on top of the water with a sneer.  You don’t imagine that from the neck down, she’s scrambling and fighting and scratching at her skin when her wobbly thighs itch with the frantic exercise that beats beneath the surface.  But they probably are.

As I get older I often think about the Miss Trunchbulls of the world. Everyone wanted to be Miss Honey. Wanted to teach special kids, wants to exist with only empathy, compassion, love and forgiveness but the longer I spend teaching in a system that reveres conformity, data trends and results, I think that maybe Miss Trunchbull is just a long term prediction of what education will do to Miss Honey when she gets sick and tired of living in a leaky shack.  And maybe, just maybe, Trunchbull is more than just a tired teacher, maybe she’s just a woman leaning into middle age and trying her best to manage perimenopause symptoms, ungrateful kids and coming home to a cat that has once again shat on the carpet.

Like Trunchbull, my thighs itch when I exercise.  The blood flow to the area is so rare that my skin protests as the blood moves and the lactic acid freaks out into over production because what I am doing my just kill me. I sit with the same frantic pace in my head as I constantly wonder if I am in fact surrounded by arseholes or am I the arsehole that can’t see past her exhausted brain fog, her aching joints and the cat vomit on the stairs I tread in some mornings.

There is zero doubt that middle age is an invisibility cloak without all the cool Harry Potter mischief.  Approaching middle age as a woman is like wearing an invisibility cloak back to front without the eye holes cut out.  You can see straight past us, but sometimes it’s even hard to see out.  We’re so busy second guessing who left the butter out of the fridge that we sometimes forget that it was us.  We’re so busy cleaning up the cat vomit everyone else in the house has walked past and screamed, “MUUUMMM! THE CAT THREW UP AGAIN!” that there is absolute zero surprise when it just disappears and the clean clothes end up back in the cupboard.

I am just coming out of the brain fog of toddler life.  She can actually help at the moment.  I dropped something the other day and she volunteered to go and get it.  She can pick up her shoes and toys and put her dishes in the sink.  She is visibly contributing to the house and sometimes, she follows instructions.  I saw light at the end of the tunnel for approximately three and a half minutes. Yes, the skies are clearing, we are capable humans in a functioning family, we have got it.

Then I realised. My bones still ache.  My brain still clouds over frequently. I’m still tired. I’m still crying in the most ridiculous of tv moments. I’m still brooding in past events.  I’m still living in the fuckedness of early parenthood but my baby is almost ready for school.

So I google. In a Trunchbull of a mood, I google what could be wrong with me. I know that’s a stupid response, and what I should have done was called my psychologist and booked an appointment, but I googled.  And in a pinterest feed filled with cartoon women with sagging, swinging breasts were a bunch of quizzes and checklists filed in the most vile of pinks and greens, ‘are you perimenopausal?’

I ticked over half the list of symptoms.  The half the list of symptoms that also apply to being tired, stressed, exhausted and depressed.  In the other half of the pinterest grid were a series of article links to parenting and the phenomena of middle age invisibility.  I couldn’t work out what was worse.  Am I better off to be starting menopause with a four year old at 42, or just a plain, old, angry, invisible woman who is reaching middle age and being ignored by the world she lives in. 

Novels, podcasts and TV aren’t about us anymore.  There’s the occasional show like working moms that dives headfirst into the comedy of middle age but it’s a rarity. It’s not sexy or very watchable to be the one in the house that cleans up the cat spew that everybody notices when it’s there but nobody notices when it’s not. It’s not sexy to watch a show about two middle aged people trying to organise a date around swimming and weekend sport schedules.  It’s not overly interesting to watch women grocery shop on their own and call it self care and time out. No wonder Trunchbull was angry.

She’s got a right to be.  She might need a referral to a therapist to work out some more productive strategies to channel her anger, but I feel her. I feel her itching thighs as her body tingles when she tries to exercise, I feel her tiredness at people’s lack of responsibility, I feel her aggression at greedy and entitled little turds who want, want, want. But unlike Trunchbull, I think I’d like to just put myself in the chokey for a little alone time instead. But I won’t.  I’ll resentfully keep cleaning up the cat vomit and make an appointment with some health professionals that maybe can help me smile while I do it.