Menopause, Memory and Neptune

When I first realized that I would be having heavy Neptune aspects to my natal Mercury as I approached the traditional age of menopause, I said to myself "Oh no! I'm going to have the classic symptoms of memory problems, difficulty concentrating and feelings of fogginess." Female friends of mine had complained of such effects as they approached menopause, and Neptune in heavy aspect to Mercury is a symbol of exactly such problems. Alarmed, I put myself on a regimen of mental exercises, sort of trying to bulk up my brain in advance, in hopes of staving off the problems my friends had experienced. The result? So far, I haven't found myself troubled by the classic symptoms my friends had described (knock on wood).

I have experienced something else, though, something I wonder if others have gone through. Although my short-term memory seems to be okay, about the same as usual (I'm not sure it was ever all that great, honestly), my longer-term memory seems to be getting fuzzier and fuzzier.

I'll give an example. A nice young man was admiring my car recently and asked me how old it was. I couldn't remember! I was embarrassed to admit this, so I sort of guessed. He asked me about some other technical details--purchase price, resale value, gas mileage and so on, and I really didn't have a clue about those things either. Again, I was embarrassed, so I tried to estimate. When I went home later and looked at my records, I saw that I was way off in the information I gave him. My car was several years newer than what I had told him. I felt very guilty about misleading him, since he was interested in purchasing a similar car.

It is as though Neptune is dissolving (Neptune dissolves) my interest in technical details and dates and so on (I have a rather technical Mercury or I used to!). Mercury is a symbol of the functioning of the concrete mind, and my mind seems to be just losing all interest in the concrete facts of my personal history. It feels like Neptune is just washing away a host of details about myself that I used to store in my mind.

I used to know how much I weighed when I was in my 20s--now I'm really not sure any longer. Having that figure in memory used to function as a sort of benchmark for me; I gauged how "fat" I was becoming by comparing my current body to my young woman's body. I can't really do that anymore because I can't trust my recall of such personal statistics.

I belong to a women's group that's been meeting for awhile. How long, you ask? I'm not sure. Sometimes it feels like it's been since the mid 90's; at other times it feels like it's been a couple of years. That's a pretty big difference. My internal sense of how much time has passed between one event and another, my sense of the chronology of my life has become deceptive (Neptune is deceptive).

I attribute some of this to some natural consequences of getting older. Time itself seems to pass more quickly now, so that I when I catch up with a friend I haven't spoken to in awhile it's now been 3 years since we last got together, not 1 year! This seems to happen to everyone I know, the sense that time goes more quickly as one gets older, so I don't think it's necessarily pathological or dysfunctional.

Besides, when one is young, significant events seem to happen at a faster clip. One starts college and four years later one graduates. One falls in love and two years later, a devastating breakup occurs. One switches jobs or moves to a new location or gets married, has one's first child, and so on. Every few years, something happens that one can peg one's memories too.

But after awhile, for many people, things settle down. You've been working for the same company for years. You've been married to the same person for years. You've lived in the same house or town for years. You've had the same kids for years, and it is surprising that they're going off to college because it honestly seems like just yesterday (just yesterday), you were chasing monsters away from their toddler's bed.

Memory is funny that way. The most vivid emotional memories never seem to fade, and I can recall with exquisite clarity exactly how I felt at key moments in my life. I just can't remember what year those events happened. It doesn't seem that important any more.

It's got me wondering if there's any wisdom in Neptune's madness. Is there some value to letting go of all those trivial details, the ones I used to store so assiduously? Do I actually need to know how long I've lived in this house, or for how many years I've been performing a certain activity or taking my walk along a certain route? Maybe Neptune is helping my brain reorganize itself to store more meaningful information. Maybe it is dumping irrelevant personal data, just as it no longer cares about the latest pop culture phenomenon the way it did when I was younger. Maybe I'm not getting stupider about my personal memory; maybe I'm getting more selective.

Or maybe I'm just having my own version of a pre-menopausal memory meltdown. How about you?

Has anyone else experienced this fading and scrambling of personal details and facts, forgotten your own personal chronology a bit, had trouble remembering what year you bought the house or the car or started working for your current employer? Anyone forgotten in what years their children were born? Does this phenomenon pass or does it get worse? Is there any value in forgetting?

I'll be interested in any enlightenment anyone can share with me. In the meantime, just don't ask me how long I've had my car, lived in Los Angeles, or been with my current boyfriend if you want to get an accurate answer. I'll be happy to give you a guess--but recent experience has taught me that my guesses these days are far from reliable.