Perimenopausal Funk?

A Preface

Here is a poem.

Sometimes, when reading a poem like this, a question can rise:

Is she sane? Should I be worried about her? Is this instability laid bare?

Does she really want everyone to know she feels like this?

The truth is simpler.

These are wild and raw moments - not a permanent state. They’re lived at the edges of many overlapping days.

Who knows whether hormones are to blame; perhaps they’re simply a convenient, even delightful, excuse to pin the swirl on something outside myself. I remain deeply sceptical of pills, and of the endless streams of information promising to solve it all with the pop of a tablet or a sticky plaster slapped on my backside.

Maybe the reality is this: my life is shifting.

My children don’t need me in the same way.

A body heading south - a body I no longer fully recognise as mine.

The growing insistence of deeper questions - what has been, what may yet be.

Evidence scattered everywhere of places I could have done better.

Ticking clocks.

Loss - or the imminence of it - the unkind truth that some of the precious people around me may not be here in a decade.

It’s all just a big, fat lot of things. A spaghetti tangle of things.

Words, though, are my outlet - my decompression, my breathing space.

And so I write.

Not in crisis.Not in desperation.

I write to unravel, reveal — not to slap a solution on it.

Feeling the sharpness of certain moments - moments that do not stay.

But float through, linger briefly, and usually pass after a day or two.

So read my poem.

Judge me or join me.

Laugh or lament.

Find your own way of moving through the moments - continuing through the valleys without pitching a tent.

Enjoy.........

Angst rises quickly.

So many triggers - bright red buttons, 

just waiting to be pressed.

Take your pick.

The pull of things I do have the capacity to give,

yet somehow cannot offer.

Old wounds.

A brain that feels dreadfully simple - unpolished, dated.

A body that doesn’t feel like mine - the jeans I don’t fit 

Be gentle with your heart, my girl. 

Be gentle with your heart. 

Let it find its way home - gently.

The veil is thin.

The door to fragility barely holding.

I begin to despise my offering to the world.

Oh - the weight of that.

Dig deep.

Crack on.

Stop the self‑absorbed whinge.

Reset.

What’s the issue -why can’t

I take myself

where I knowI’m meant to go,

where I want to go,

where I long to go?

Be gentle with your heart, my girl.

Be gentle with your heart.

Let it find its way home - gently.

I stare at walls.

Time slips.

Mind‑numbing nothingness.

I reach for distraction -something intense,

something absorbing -

my body locks into tension.

I linger there,

hoping it will pull something out of me,

drain the pressure

until it’s gone.

But it stays trapped inside.

My whole body

high alert.

Nowhere for it to go.

I may just internally implode

Be gentle with your heart, my girl. 

Be gentle with your heart. 

Let it find its way home - gently.

I want to cry until there are no tears left - 

Good, juicy soul‑releasing cries.

But crying doesn’t come.

The heart that once wept easily sits numb.

Unmoved.

Eyes dry.

Hard.

Unblinking.

It all sits just beneath the surface, 

bubbling, simmering - 

not enough for a crisis, 

but enough to rob,To reduce, 

Good Lord. 

Get a grip. 

Lean in.

Not failure of faith. 

Just overstimulation. 

Decision fatigue. 

Weariness. 

Loneliness.

Be gentle with your heart, my girl. 

Be gentle with your heart. 

Let it find its way home - gently.

My body is tired - 

vigilant, 

porous.

Reaching for relief

that isn’t real.

Systems overactivated.

And still - the truest thing I know remains:

the promise of peace unmeasured.

A supernatural Presence.

The Settling One who comes and floods my soul with Being.

And the invitation is quieter now.

Be gentle.

Let your heart come home.