Hot on the heels of my previous escapade, (read the summary below) I was disturbed to read about Nicola Bulley.
Nicola Bulley was the UK woman who went for a walk and disappeared.
The local PD: the Lancashire cops revealed she had been dealing with menopausal issues such as brain fog and alcohol consumption.
This was an unbelievably sexist public reveal about Bulley’s disappearance: Men drink to deal with stress and seem to have culturally acceptable mid-life crises.
Women walk and daydream to deal with mid life stressors, but this is deemed Craazy.
How do I relate?
On Christmas Day 2022, I went for a walk alone.
I didn’t go further than half a mile from my house. All the paths I took were well lit.
I merely went for a post-Christmas dinner stroll to look at the lights on the houses surrounding and reflect on the walks I used to take with my Nana who I spent a lot of time with when
I was growing up. A lot of the time we would walk around the local gardens.
I didn’t ask my family to come with me on this post-prandial walk:
For Halloween 2022 I had bought five tickets to Pirates of Emerson (A local annual Halloween festival) for the younger children and I; but nobody wanted to come.
The Sprogs were all engrossed in gaming.
My husband had no appetite for my company, as opposed to golf as apropos of men’s mid-life pursuits, so by now, I was used to my own company.
So off I went on an early Christmas evening walk. I sat in the park for a while and daydreamed as I walked.
I planned Christmas lights on our house for next year though my husband disagreed on the cost as we did so much other everyday matters these days.
And as I approached my house, on returning from my walk, there were flashing lights and all the local constabulary outside.
I worried something had happened to my oldest son who had been grappling with a fentanyl addiction.
But no. My husband had called the cops because, I, a sane and quite well woman otherwise, at least for the past three years had taken a walk and he had lost track of me.
Apparently, I was acting out of character. No one in the house wanted to keep my company but as soon as I couldn’t be found: The local law enforcement was called out.
I reassured the cops. (The cops and I were starting to have quite the ongoing causal relationship btw 🙂 They were the same ones as had been called to my previous escapade. See previous blog post.
Me:
“No. I had just walked out on my own”. “One hour forty mins prior. A Christmas evening walk, everyone else in the house seemed to be occupied and I was quite fit and well, so I left”.
“I am a grown adult, after all.”
The cops left.
The escapade I refer to is linked here:
I previously I took my top off and dodged into a Neighbour’s back yard for some sun. I was acting in both a devil-may-care capacity and a journalistic capacity.
Having just reached the age where DILLIGAF? was becoming a modus vivendi.
An attitude becoming more well-homed in this state of grift and self-advancement: CA
I still had the same nose for a story even if it was for my own digestion and those if my friends.
Like generations of women before, I was starting to realize that Menopausal or post Breeding Aged Women were treated as a danger or a Liability to society.
We are sidelined and typecast as Librarians. Metaphorically Burned through Divorce proceedings or incarcerated/institutionalized as Witches)
I was interested in how I might be treated as an intelligent personable female, (White), with a couple of mental health diagnoses that I did not agree with and could be held against me if I acted ‘quirky’.
The outcome to my previous sojourn: The legal response was WAY overdone.
My own psychiatrist pathologized me and my Counsellor, the one person knowing the stress I was under had a laugh with me.
And then, when I took an innocent stroll on Christmas Day 2022. I was reported as missing.
Not even two hours had passed!
Nicola Bulley’s body has now been found and as she was on a work call and fully functioning, it seems she may have experienced a medical, not a peri-menopausal event.
Was there really a need to cast shade or victim blame Bulley from the outset?
The Lancashire PD have much to answer for, as do the close family of Bulley who provided the PD with the personal details that were disclosed to the public.
Who cast Bulley as a hormonal alcoholic when all the evidence suggests she was fully functioning in the prime of her life?
PS: WTF is brain fog?
I’m always foggy until I have coffee and thereafter, I’m all good until sundown. Sounds like a way for psychiatrists to grift off our ovaries to me.
