Menopause in the Metaphorical Punch

Menopause in the Metaphorical Punch

I got an email saying I had a parcel to collect.

Fine. Simple. Adult-ing 101.

I went to my local “post office” — which isn’t a post office, it’s a convenience store with a man who knows me well enough to know my face, my name, and my menopausal aura. He checked. No parcel. Checked again. Still no parcel.

So I thought, fine. I don’t know what the parcel is, I don’t know who sent it, I don’t know how to find out — I’ll just let it go.

Two days later, another email:

18 days held. Two days left. Will be returned.

Returned to who.

Returned from where.

Returned why.

Returned how.

Returned what.

I call Royal Mail.

The man on the phone is very nice in that way men can be when they’re trying to be helpful but are actually poking the menopausal bear.

“How do you not know what parcel you ordered?”

“How do you not know where it came from?”

“How have you forgotten you ordered something?”

And I didn’t even bother explaining that I’m a 50‑year‑old menopausal woman who can’t remember yesterday, tomorrow, or what I booked for this afternoon. If I knew where the parcel was, I wouldn’t be ringing him. I’d be collecting the bloody thing.

He sends me to the sorting office.

One day left.

The sorting office has changed its hours.

Of course it has.

It’s a three‑mile drive.

Fine. I go.

I give the man my number.

He looks at me like I’ve handed him a riddle.

“This is lost in the system, lady.”

“Lost in the system? What does that even mean?”

I tell him the whole saga — the post office that isn’t a post office, the twice‑checked nothingness, the customer service man who needed special permission to even look at my details because of some G‑something privacy rule, the email that insists the parcel exists.

He shrugs.

“It did exist. But it didn’t come through here. And it didn’t go to the post office. So it’s lost in the system.”

They are lucky I didn’t drive my car straight through the window.

They are lucky I didn’t kick the system.

They are lucky I didn’t menopausally combust on the spot.

I ask the man his name.

He says James.

Then he says Friday.

My surname.

I cough. I splutter. I nearly ascend.

RAGE.

I have never met a Friday in my life.

His example:

“It’s like booking a flight and forgetting where you’re going.”

A flight?

I don’t even know what the parcel is.

I only know your system emailed me to collect it.

He has 1.7 billion parcels in his system, he says.

He cannot be responsible for them all.

But isn’t that literally the job.

Aren’t you the system that posts the letters.

Aren’t you the system that delivers the parcels.

Aren’t you responsible for the mail.

Apparently not.

Apparently the system is responsible for nothing.

And I’m responsible for remembering a parcel I never ordered, never saw, and never received.

Menopause is the metaphorical punch —

but Royal Mail delivered it.

And then, as if to sprinkle salt on the wound, he adds:

“You can apply for compensation, ma’am — but it’s lost in the system, ma’am.”

The audacity. The poetry. The bureaucratic ballet of it.

Front‑of‑house explanation

The front‑of‑house guy — the one who told me it was “lost in the system” — explained it like this:

“It existed, but not here. It didn’t come through us. It didn’t go to them. It’s somewhere, but nowhere. It’s in the system, but not in the system.”

A Schrödinger’s parcel.

A metaphysical delivery.

A menopausal mirage.