It has been a while since I’ve written anything. Perhaps that’s why the universe decided to deliver an experience so perfectly aligned with my current emotional capacity: a toll gate, a Porsche Cayenne, and forty-degree heat.

I pulled up behind him and immediately felt that quiet internal warning. The other queues were long, but moving; this one had the stagnant energy of a stalled life decision. I ignored my instincts—because optimism is a dangerous thing—and assumed this would be a quick tap-and-go.

It was not.

Minutes passed. Cars began stacking up behind me. Five. Eight. Ten. I leaned forward, peering ahead like a meerkat in a hatchback. And then I saw it. The man in front of me—driver of a shiny Porsche Cayenne, a casual two-million-rand flex—was handing card after card to the toll collector.

Declined. Declined. Declined again.

The collector’s smile had shifted from professional to brittle. R14.50. Let that sit for a moment. Fourteen rand and fifty cents.

I’m sitting there with my window open because this was meant to be a brief stop. My aircon, once my trusted ally, is now useless—fighting a losing battle against an open window and heat that feels deeply personal. My internal thermostat—already unreliable thanks to menopause—waves a tiny white flag and shuts down.

Meanwhile, Mr. Porsche, cocooned in leather and poor planning, cannot produce fourteen rand and fifty cents. I am trapped. I can’t reverse; I can’t change lanes. I am wedged between a growing queue of irritated motorists and a man whose vehicle costs more than some houses, yet somehow less than his preparedness.

And then… I lose the plot. I climb out of my car.

A 5-foot-tall, greying woman—flushed, damp, and radiating menopausal fury—strides toward the booth. It’s slightly dramatic. It's a bit theatrical (why not stomp?). It is entirely decisive.

I tap my card. Beep.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the collector says. There’s a flicker of solidarity in her voice. Relief.

That is the exact moment the power shifts. Up until then, he was the man in the Porsche Cayenne. The badge. The leather. The implied success. But now? He is the man who couldn’t clear a toll gate.

He doesn’t look at me. Not once. His jaw tightens. His chin dips just enough to suggest that eye contact would be... ambitious. The sunglasses stay on—armor—but even from the side, you can see the quiet internal collapse of whatever story he’d been telling himself about dominance.

In the space of ten seconds, the most expensive thing in that lane was no longer the car. It was competence.

I tell him to move his arse. He does.

There was a time in my life when I would have stayed in that car, fuming quietly and apologizing for being irritated. I would have shrunk myself to accommodate someone else’s incompetence. Menopause, for all its sweaty chaos, does something unexpected: it removes the instinct to shrink. The tolerance for nonsense evaporates along with the estrogen. You stop smoothing things over. You stop sitting politely in 40-degree heat because someone else failed to prepare.

You step out. You tap your card. You say what needs to be said. And then you drive on.

The Exit Fee

The R14.50 wasn’t a charity donation; it was an exit fee. I wasn’t just paying for the car in front of me to move; I was paying for my own right to stop waiting on a world that doesn't always value my time or my peace.

We spend so much of our younger lives being the shock absorbers for everyone else’s bumps in the road. We smooth over the awkward silences, we wait patiently for the unprepared, and we carry the mental load of a thousand tiny details. But there comes a day—maybe brought on by the heat, maybe by the hormones, or maybe just by a slow-moving queue—where you realize that your space is sacred.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned at the "Procrastination Station" and on the stairs with my Yorkies, it’s that life is too short for lukewarm tea and unnecessary delays.

So, here’s to the women who have stopped shrinking. To the ones who tap the card, speak the truth, and keep their heads held high in the forty-degree heat. We might be flushed, we might be forgetful, and we might be "radiating fury," but we are finally, unapologetically, moving forward.

And the view from the driver’s seat has never looked better.