Sometimes when I wake up, my anxiety wakes up first. It wakes before I even have time to make a conscious thought. In fact, it actually wakes me up. My brain is already off on its anxious spiral before I’ve even opened my eyes. It’s become more common the deeper into perimenopause I get. Today was one such morning.

My brain was spiralling about my weight. It woke me up screaming:
HEY I THINK WE’VE GAINED WEIGHT. SOMETHING FEELS DIFFERENT. DANGER.

It’s the world’s WORST alarm clock. I thought my iPhone alarm was annoying, but my iPhone alarm sounds like Hans Zimmer by candlelight compared to the noise my own brain generates.

I got up and decided to reality check myself by weighing myself, although I already had a feeling this was probably a terrible idea because my knees hurt and I did genuinely feel heavier. Stepped on it anyway. TERRIBLE idea. My weight had done that thing again where it decides to gain 1.5kg in a week despite me definitely NOT eating enough for that to mathematically make sense.

My OCD has been utterly terrible lately and I knew this wasn’t entirely about my weight. Today is also local election day in Wales and I needed to go and get my medication. Frankly, I don’t think my medication is going to make much of a dent today, but getting my meds means there is a high chance of Starbucks.

---

The 4 Day Leggings

First thing I had to do was get dressed. A few days ago, I bought two new pairs of jeggings that actually look like jeans. I love them so much because it feels more like I’m wearing actual clothes. Workout leggings personally start to feel a bit too much like loungewear after a while.

These new jeggings have genuinely helped my recovery because jeans and trousers no longer fit me properly in ANY size due to my sizeable quad muscles. No one warns you this is a side effect when they encourage women to do heavy squats. Although, I had often wondered why women who lift heavy seem to exclusively live in Gymshark. I understand now.

Anyway, I bought two pairs: one in my current size, and because I was trying to be all wise and emotionally prepared this time, I also bought the next size up as a buffer “just in case.”

Monday is when they arrived and the smaller size fit perfectly. Well. It is now Thursday and I cannot get them on.

I put the larger size on instead. Fit like a glove. OH GOD NO.

I bought the next size up as a FUTURE buffer for if I gained weight. It’s been FOUR DAYS. The leggings lasted FOUR DAYS?

PANIC ensued. Spiralling ensued. General annoyance at numbers ensued. Catastrophising about what this means ensued.

I will never get used to how quickly I grow out of sizes. I was SO glad I had the foresight to buy the next size up because this situation would have been much worse otherwise, but having leggings with a four day lifespan still feels utterly ridiculous.

I sat there in my bigger leggings drinking coffee and crying while trying to logic myself out of it.

“This is obviously some water and inflammation nonsense.”

Which, to be fair, could genuinely be true. One of the really fun things I’ve discovered about perimenopause is that you can suddenly gain water weight exactly like you’re due for shark week… except now your body can do it at ANY point in the month because apparently consistency is overrated.

I’ve also noticed it seems connected to my night sweats. If I’ve spent the night sweating to human raisin level, I can almost guarantee I’ll wake up 1kg heavier the next morning. This made absolutely no sense to me at first either, but honestly it does kind of make sense.

My night sweats are so bad it’s like I’ve spent the night in some sort of watery space hypersleep pod. Sheets drenched. Clothes drenched. Hair SOAKED. Pillow wet. Absolutely disgusting.

Thanks also to Quetiapine making reasoning on waking in the middle of the night IMPOSSIBLE, I wake up utterly confused about why I’m so wet. Sort of like when Ryland Grace wakes up completely panicked with amnesia in Project Hail Mary. Only instead of remembering I’m on a spaceship trying to save humanity, I just have to remember that I’m old now. Ageing is so beautiful. NOT.

My body then apparently reacts to this shedding of water by clinging onto every remaining water molecule like we’ve entered a post-apocalyptic drought.

I get so thirsty that I’ve been drinking up to four litres a day. There IS technically an easier solution to this, which would be for my body to STOP RELEASING WATER ALL THE TIME.

It’s especially annoying after showers because drying my hair almost always triggers a hot flush, which then makes me feel like I need another shower because I’m now sweating buckets from drying my hair. I would let it dry on its own if it didn’t air dry into troll doll from the 90’s style.

I am SO uncomfortable.

The logic did not work, it never does. I was already in a complete state by this point, and then I remembered it was voting day and, well, this election is about as nerve wracking to me and my son as the Brexit vote was.

This Vote Will Be/Won’t Be Historical and Other Superpositions

My son and I live in a constituency in Wales that has been Labour since before I was even born. Long history. Some of it was Margaret Thatcher’s fault.

Because of this, I have always voted tactically. It is not the party that aligns with my values the most, but it is the party most likely to stop the ones I absolutely do not want getting in from getting in and messing up my entire country with their Westminster-based ways.

This election though? Polls are showing potential change. It will be absolutely historic if it does change. The problem is, it could change for the WORST possible reason, because one of the parties currently slated to do well is Reform. Reform do not think my son should exist or have access to appropriate healthcare. They also called Welsh people foreign speakers in our own country. Yet somehow, people in Wales want to vote for them?

However, it could also change for the BETTER. Plaid Cymru are also slated to do well and they are the party I would naturally vote for if I voted purely according to my values.

The problem is, I have absolutely no idea if this potential shift applies to this seat.

This constituency has already changed twice now, once during the general election boundary changes and now again for the local election. There is no useful historical data. No clear tactical path. No way to confidently know if my vote would help the change I actually want or accidentally contribute towards the absolute nightmare scenario instead.

My brain could not cope with this. Suddenly my tactical vote could either: help screw up the BETTER change I want, or help Reform win.

My OCD has currently reached utterly unhinged levels and this whole thing became the perfect metaphor for it. I didn’t want to be even remotely responsible for this decision. I genuinely did not want to vote.

I told my son I was struggling. I was making excuses not to vote. He made me see sense.

He said: “Well, there’s no scenario where I’m not voting.”

And honestly, him saying that snapped me back into my own values a bit. When I’m in a sounder state of mind, I don’t think there is any version of me that would truly choose not to vote. Voting is deeply connected to my values. I walk through John Frost Square often. I grew up around intricate Chartist murals.

So after I’d finished crying into my coffee, we left to vote first and then get my medication

Cat States and the Law of Seagulls

It was hard not to think about the long walk in Mass Effect 2 during the long walk to the polling station. Making a human Reaper honestly may not be entirely out of the realm of possibilities for the Reform party.

With all of the anxiety I was feeling, I was pretty out of it. My brain always defaults to escaping to the games I love most whenever I’m struggling.

At the polling station, we were crossed off a list, handed our pieces of paper and sent into the super secret democracy cubicles to cast our votes. It took me a minute. I still hadn’t fully decided what to do.

But eventually, I did make a decision.

After checking I’d ticked the correct box about fifteen times because I’d suddenly become terrified I’d accidentally voted for Reform, I folded the paper up and held it over the slot in the box.

“OH MY GOD,” my brain suddenly yelled.

“This is ACTUALLY putting my vote into a cat state. Now the results need to be observed, at which point the wave function collapses and the winner becomes known, and then reality branches from this exact point. Which means that even if Reform don’t win HERE, there will still be a universe where they DO win. PLEASE NOT THIS UNIVERSE.”

I stopped myself and dropped it into the box.

“That’s silly,” I thought. “The hope of the observer has no bearing on the result.”

We left and carried on walking towards town. I thought about how at least I’d done something. The wave function was going to collapse whether I participated in it or not. At least I had participated.

We walked in silence for a while. Both of us completely in our own heads.

Then, as we walked past the university, a man in a university uniform came outside carrying lots of food scraps. He carefully placed them on the ground beside us and suddenly an entire squawking mess of seagulls descended all around us. The seagulls came from nowhere almost instantly, which makes me think this man does this often and they all recognise him.

We stopped to stare at them. They were so loud and so happy about the food, but also seemed to be angrily squawking in the direction of the university building demanding MORE food immediately.

They flew in circles above us.

It was really nice. I love when people feed birds. Seagulls and pigeons are so often treated like pests that it always feels strangely emotional seeing someone be kind to them.

It helped far more than I expected it to.

And after that, we finally arrived in town to get my medication.

“Do You Want to Stop Time?”

We headed straight for Boots to get my meds first and get that particular stress out of the way. I get really anxious waiting for my medication because there is usually some sort of problem.

On the way in though, there was this massive sign saying:

“DO YOU WANT TO STOP TIME?”

It genuinely made me stop in my tracks because actually yes, I REALLY do. Please let me remain in the superposition where the votes haven’t been observed yet for just a little bit longer.

Unfortunately, it turned out to just be an advert for anti-ageing cream and not, as I had briefly hoped, Boots suddenly selling a device capable of manipulating Einstein’s Relativity. Honestly, I would have preferred the relativity device.

We continued over to the queue so I could ask the nice Boots lady for more meds please, and then the weirdest thing happened. We walked straight to the front.

That NEVER happens. Usually I’m trapped in there for at least half an hour slowly becoming more anxious while waiting for something to inevitably go wrong. But not today. There weren’t even any problems. I was genuinely in disbelief.

We ended up back outside far quicker than expected and wandered into Waterstones. I was starting to feel a bit out of it again, but I thought looking at books might help. I’ve been listening to audiobooks a lot lately and wanted to browse properly because audiobooks are weirdly difficult to find unless you already know exactly what you’re looking for.

I made a note of a few books from the sci-fi section that looked really good, we did a bit more window shopping, and then eventually headed to Starbucks.

Starbucks Baby!

At Starbucks I ordered myself an iced Americano and my son a caramel latte and his favourite sausage sandwich. The iced part of my Americano was VERY important because hot drinks now turn me into a human nuclear reactor thanks to hot flushes.

We sat at the table talking about our day when I noticed a tiny little baby over to the right of me. I couldn’t help staring at them because they instantly reminded me of how tiny my son was when he was born.

The baby was doing that very cute newborn scrunch on their mum’s shoulder. Absolutely adorable. I couldn’t help getting lost in thinking about how cute they were.

“I remember when you were that small,” I said to my son. “You fit in the crook of one arm. The most adorable little baby I’ve ever seen.”

My son’s thoughts were significantly funnier than mine though.

“That is a LITTLE baby,” he said. “You know in EastEnders? Why are newborn babies always MASSIVE? The EastEnders baby is way too huge for the story. Why is it so BIG? Wasn’t it meant to be premature”

My son cares deeply about canon and lore accuracy.

After we’d stopped laughing, I sat there thinking about how strange it is that my son was once this tiny little baby and is now sat next to me at 21 years old making me laugh about the inaccurate sizing of soap opera babies.

We took photos of our plushies, obviously, and then headed off to get some nice food before finally going home.

The Return of the Biscoff Advent Calendar Chocolate

After getting my favourite kale, favourite chicken for my burrito, and some decaf coffee from Marks and Spencer, we headed into Sainsbury’s where I discovered a new Cadbury Biscoff bar. Unlike the other one with biscuit pieces in it, this one had actual Biscoff spread inside. Just like the chocolates from the Biscoff advent calendar I bought last Christmas.

I was VERY excited because I genuinely loved that advent calendar. The only issue was that only 12 chocolates were the superior Biscoff spread ones while the other 12 were just regular Dairy Milk.

I spent twelve days of Christmas dealing with profound disappointment. So naturally, I had hoped Cadbury would eventually release a full-sized version of the Biscoff spread chocolate to make up for this injustice.

I bought both the new bar AND the regular Cadbury Biscoff one with biscuit pieces because I was worried the spread version might be significantly more energy dense considering an entire jar of Biscoff spread contains enough calories to function as approximately two military MREs.

Walking home, I was feeling strangely energised and started walking much faster than usual.

“This,” I said to my son dramatically, “is how fast I walk when you’re not with me by the way.”

To which he immediately replied:

“This is how fast I walk when you’re not with me. I slow down for you.”

And then he overtook me. I burst out laughing.

“Hang on,” I said. “You mean I’ve been slowing down for you, YOU’VE been slowing down for me, and somehow we’ve both reached the EXACT same speed of slowing down?”

We continued walking home considerably faster continuing to giggle about the whole thing.

When we got home, we spent quite a long time talking about the election, my son’s university presentation tomorrow that he’s really anxious about, and generally the state of absolutely everything in the world.

After dinner, my son spent some time drawing on his iPad to self regulate.

I sat in the nothingness and started writing. I thought about what a day it had been.

But in my brain, always noticing everything, feeling everything, feeling anxious about everything, finding meaning in everything, being very loud about everything… it always is.

The song I sing to my OCD.