Right, I need to put this somewhere because I've been going round in circles in my head for weeks and googling at midnight is not helping, it's just making me feel worse. I'm 41. My cycles have been all over the place since last autumn. Sometimes 24 days, sometimes 34, once 19 which genuinely scared me. I've had two periods in the last three months that were so light they barely counted and one that was absolutely not that. And I know, I know, that could be a hundred things. Stress. Thyroid. Just... life being too much. Which is why I keep talking myself out of it. But the brain fog. That's the bit I can't explain away. I am not a scatty person. I have always been the one who remembers everything, who tracks the details, who notices things. And lately I'll be mid-sentence at work and the word just goes. Not a dramatic blank, just... a small gap where the word should be. It happens maybe four or five times a day now and it makes me feel like I'm watching myself from slightly outside. The anxiety is new too. Not panic, just this low hum of dread that sits behind everything. I wake at 4am and lie there cataloguing things I might have forgotten to do. I started writing things down last month. Just a notes app on my phone. Cycle dates, how I slept, whether I had breakfast before the school run or not (I've noticed the days I don't eat until 10am are significantly worse, for what that's worth). I want to take something concrete to my GP because last time I mentioned feeling off she said it sounded like stress and I walked out feeling like I'd wasted her time. I feel too young to be in menopause spaces and too old for apps that ask me about ovulation windows. I don't quite fit anywhere yet. So. Hi. x