Hi all. I've been meaning to write something like this for weeks but kept talking myself out of it because it felt too vague, too hard to explain. But here goes. I'm 46 and somewhere in the middle of what I think is perimenopause, though getting anyone to actually confirm that has been its own saga. The hot flushes are there, yes, the rubbish sleep, the occasional moment where I feel like I could genuinely flip a table over something minor. But the thing I keep coming back to, the thing that's harder to name, is this sense that I've drifted away from myself a bit. I used to know what I liked. What I wanted to do at weekends. What kind of friend I was. I had opinions about things. Now I feel like I'm moving through days in a sort of low-level fog, ticking things off, being reasonably functional, and then getting to the end of the day and thinking, was that me? Did I actually choose any of that? My mum went through the change in her early fifties and I remember her being quite matter of fact about it, just got on with it, never really talked about the emotional side. I don't know if she felt this too and just didn't say, or if I'm making more of it than it is. I've spent a lot of time wondering that actually. Whether I'm being dramatic. I went to my GP back in the spring and she was kind enough but it felt like we were talking about a checklist rather than, I don't know, the actual experience of it. I left with a leaflet and a suggestion to look at the NHS website. I've got a referral to a menopause clinic now which I'm waiting on, so that feels like progress, I suppose. I've started taking a magnesium supplement in the evenings, not sure if it's doing anything but it feels like doing something, which helps a bit. Anyway. I just wanted to write it down somewhere people might recognise it. Even the vague bits. Thanks for being here x