28 May
six months on the new protocol, the boring version
Six months ago my doctor adjusted my HRT after I told her the anxiety had not really moved. I want to write the ordinary version of what happened because the dramatic versions are easier to find. The first month I kept waiting for something to shift and mostly felt impatient. I had one week where I was weirdly tearful in a way that felt chemical rather than situational, and then it passed. By month three I noticed I was finishing books again. Not every book, not quickly, but I was getting to the end of chapters without rereading the same paragraph four times. That sounds small. It was not small to me. The anxiety is quieter. Not gone. I still have bad weeks, usually around a stressful errand pile-up or when I have not slept enough. But the baseline hum has dropped. My libido is still not what it was years ago and I have made a kind of peace with that, or I am in the process of making peace with it, which is probably more accurate. The thing nobody told me is how long it takes to trust the change. I kept expecting it to reverse.