Your body changes before you even realize what’s happening
Things shift quietly at first.
Your sleep isn’t deep, your temperature feels strange.
You blame work.
Or maybe the weather.
You don’t notice the pattern right away.
But the changes keep coming—small, strange, and oddly familiar.
You start feeling like someone slightly different than who you were yesterday.
You’re not imagining the mood swings—they come without reason
One moment you’re calm.
The next, something inside erupts.
You shout. Then cry.
Then laugh again.
People notice, but they don’t understand.
You explain, but even that feels exhausting.
You question yourself after every reaction, wondering if it was “too much.”
Your period becomes unpredictable, then slowly disappears
You keep track on paper, then apps, then memory.
You wait for it.
Sometimes it surprises you.
Sometimes it ghosts you.
You carry pads everywhere, just in case.
Then you stop.
Then you feel something almost like grief.
Sleep doesn’t feel like sleep anymore
You crawl into bed early, expecting rest.
But it doesn’t arrive like it used to.
You wake often, without cause.
Sometimes soaked.
Sometimes alert.
Your mind won’t quiet.
You long for a full night but start accepting fragments.
Your skin feels different but you can’t say how
It loses softness you never noticed before.
Wrinkles deepen overnight.
Dry patches appear without cause.
No cream seems to fix it fully.
You notice makeup sits differently.
You notice yourself more.
But also avoid mirrors more often.
You feel warm from the inside out without warning
It creeps up.
Through your neck, into your cheeks, across your chest.
Like heat under your skin.
Not outside.
From somewhere within.
You pause conversations.
You stop mid-task.
You feel like you’re glowing, but not in a way that flatters.
You forget why you walked into the room
You hold something in your hand and forget what it’s for.
You open a browser and stare.
Thoughts start, then scatter.
You pretend to be busy.
You fake certainty.
But your memory isn’t playful—it’s slippery.
You gain weight, but not from overeating
You eat like you always have.
No more snacks.
No extra sugar.
But your midsection changes.
Clothes pull at your waist.
You stop weighing yourself.
Not because you don’t care—because you’re tired of the scale not caring back.
Your body doesn’t feel broken—just unfamiliar
It stretches differently.
Sits differently.
It needs more care than it used to.
Not more love—just more attention.
You start noticing your knees, your elbows, your back.
Little aches become part of the day.
Not loud.
But always there.
Hormones rise, fall, then rise again—never the same twice
There’s no rhythm.
No reliable map.
One week you feel fine.
The next, you’re weeping in your car.
You feel like your body is guessing, too.
You try to track it.
But the pattern won’t stay still.
You miss the version of yourself you didn’t know you’d lose
She had more energy.
She didn’t think about rest so much.
She had other problems, sure.
But not this confusion.
You try to remember when it started.
But it came quietly.
And never fully left.
People say ‘it’s normal,’ but that doesn’t make it easier
They mean well.
But it doesn’t help.
“Welcome to the club,” they joke.
You smile politely.
Then go home and cry without knowing why.
“Normal” still hurts.
“Normal” still feels heavy.
You begin to listen more closely to what your body’s trying to say
You stop ignoring the aches.
You make space for rest.
You slow down—not by choice, but necessity.
Your body becomes a puzzle.
One you learn by feeling, not solving.
You learn what soothes.
And what doesn’t.
You don’t need fixing—you just need space to change
This isn’t something to defeat.
It’s something to hold gently.
To meet without force.
You’re becoming something new.
Something older, wiser, maybe quieter.
And that takes room.
And that takes time.