7d ago
So I downloaded a period app a few months back because my cycles started going a bit weird and I thought, fine, I'll track it. Except the whole thing is pastel pink and keeps asking me about my "fertile window" and whether I'm "trying to conceive". I am 42. I am not trying to conceive. I am trying to figure out why my period is now anywhere between 22 and 34 days depending on what mood my body is apparently in. And then I googled the symptoms I've been having, the anxiety that arrives out of nowhere, the bone-tired thing that isn't fixed by sleep, the way I lost a word mid-sentence last Tuesday and just stood there, and everything that came back said perimenopause. So I clicked on a few forums and felt immediately like I'd wandered into the wrong room because everyone seemed to be talking about hot flushes and HRT and being post-menopausal for five years and I just quietly closed the tab. I don't know where I fit. Too old for the app. Too young-feeling for the forums. Not sure enough to say it out loud to my GP yet without sounding like I've been catastrophising on the internet at midnight (which, fair, I have). What I have started doing is just writing things down in my notes app. Cycle dates, how I slept, whether I managed breakfast or just inhaled coffee and called it a morning. That bit has actually helped, not because anything is clearer yet, but because I feel less like I'm imagining it when I can see it written down across six weeks. Anyone else in this weird in-between bit? Would just be nice to know I'm not the only one x