I’ve decided that, for me, the anxiety on waking is the worst perimenopause symptom.

I have made various attempts to make it better and some of them have helped – especially eating protein before bed and as soon as I get up, thanks to a TikTok I saw. However, whilst it has lowered the number of days it happens, there are still days my hormones choose a level of violence that causes it to blast through the protein wall consisting of 400g of Quark and my favourite Barebells protein bars like the Kool-Aid man.

It’s also the worst symptom because I only found out it was a perimenopause symptom from other women, and not my mental health team.

They didn’t know what on EARTH I was talking about. They came up with various theories, such as a bad dream I’d forgotten, but more often told me, for the last few years, that anxiety on waking – before you’ve had time to even think of something to be anxious about – is not a thing that happens.

The absolute WORST thing about this anxiety, is that coping mechanisms do not alwyas work. Even though you know intellectually that this is probably your hormones, it doesn’t stop your OCD from latching on to it and deciding the mere presence of anxiety is evidence that something catastrophic is about to happen.

And today I had to sort out my meds AGAIN, so how could I not agree with it?

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The Perceived CATASTROPHIC WORLD ENDING CONSEQUENCES of Not Getting My Meds

This morning, this hormone-based anxiety urged my OCD to latch on to the fact that I wouldn’t get my meds, and that this would cause CATASTROPHIC WORLD ENDING CONSEQUENCES.

It did have some evidence for the former. My meds were due on the 10th August, I didnt get a text until the 13th that Boots had received the prescription, and that it would take 3-5 days.

It is now five days later, and seven days since I was supposed to have them, and they still had not sent a text that they had been done. I had problems with getting them last month too, where I had to run around half my city for two days because the prescription got “lost” despite being digital now. I’m so sick of dealing with this admin every month.

These are medications for my mental health, and its incredibly ironic to me that they create a GIANT amount of stress every single month. I wish I didn’t have to take them, just to get rid of this constant anxiety. You should NOT give someone with Bipolar Disorder reasons to not want to take their meds.

If the quote wrongly attributed to Einstein was true, then it would be insanity to expect getting my meds would be any different at this point, given how often this happens. It’s a good job Einstein didn’t actually say it, because I’d quite like to just deal with one insanity at a time: my own, not whatever the heck kind of insanity is going on with the digital prescription service.

I guess it doesn’t help that my mood has dropped since the night of the meteors. I have been feeling rather ghost-like: just going through the motions while doing everything to encourage my mood to lift.

In fact, after getting dressed immediately and heading straight outside because I was vibrating with anxiety and needed to sort out my meds RIGHT NOW OR ELSE, I stared at my shadow on the ground. I thought about how I currently feel like the shadow, rather than the person the shadow represents.

In any case, whilst staring at my shadow the entire way, I headed to Boots as fast as my legs could carry me, hoping that would make this medication anxiety over sooner.

But it wasnt to be.

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“Oh, Are You Running Out?”

The first thing the pharmacist said to me when I finally approached the counter after waiting ages in the queue was, “Thanks for waiting”. That sentence was doing a lot of work for this entire situation.

They always say things and I wonder if it’s supposed to make sense to me but they don’t. Basically she said,
“Oh your meds are not ready no, there’s been a delay so your prescription was sent off-site for processing”.
I do not know what this means. She never explained what it means and I have no clue where they are. Narnia? In Mikoshi? Past the Blackwall? May as well be.
“Do you know why there was there a delay?” I replied kindly, trying to hide my utter frustration
“No, but a lot of them have been delayed, I can see you were supposed to have them on the 10th”
“Yes, it is now the 17th and I am running out”
“Oh you’re running out, are you? Can you wait until Wednesday? Or tomorrow? I could try to do it for tomorrow but it’ll be late tomorrow”.
“I need them tomorrow”
My inside voice was exasperated at this point – “OF COURSE IM RUNNING OUT ITS BEEN 7 DAYS SINCE I WAS MEANT TO HAVE THEM. I only get 28 days’ worth of meds and this is day 35. I’m LUCKY I found some that had fallen under my bed when I was looking for my glasses”.
“Okay Ill try to do them for tomorrow if not it will be Wednesday”
“Thank you”

UGH. What I don’t understand the most is that these arent vitamin tablets I could buy over the counter to replace. They are meds that you REALLY shouldn’t interrupt. The only other place I could theoretically have bought them, was on an illegal Shiny Flakes-style website (Netflix documentaries are all I know of the underworld). Why is there no, oh no, sorry about that, let me see what I can do now. No, it’s it’ll probably be Wednesday :D.

This did not help my mood at all. I texted my son my frustration and he was mad on my behalf, hoping that it would be sorted for me and that they had just forgotten to send the text. While still texting him pretty furiously, I just walked back out into the street feeling more ghost-like than I had before. My OCD loudly taking credit and expecting some kind of parade for it’s correct prediction that this med situation was going to turn out this way. That was then evidence that it had also been right about the impending apocalypse.

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The Graffiti Paint Hiding the Cracks

I tried looking at the shops to cheer me up, but it didn’t work. I had noise-cancelling headphones on, and the entire way into town I was listening to upbeat music and that also didn’t work. It in fact, made it 10,000 times worse because I really didn’t want to get on the Vengabus. Instead, I was just listening to the hum of the noise cancellation which made me feel more observant than usual.

The people in the crowd seemed happy today. I had a lot of smiles, which I returned, but then as they left my vision, I felt my mood drop back into ghost mode. It was jarring.

I just kept walking towards home, past the construction boards hiding whatever they were supposed to be building there, but has stood abandoned for years. I noticed all the graffiti, which had been painted over and then more graffiti had appeared on top.

The ridiculousness of painting over ugly construction board to hide graffiti, while those same boards were hiding ugly abandoned construction, was not lost on me.

How dare you ruin our perfectly ugly eye sore with your graffiti. We are going to spend money not completing the construction, but instead painting over the graffiti on the boards hiding the construction.

I started to draw a parallel with my meds, and well, mental health treatment itself these days.

Continually painting over quotes, with more quotes, on construction boards instead of doing anything to finish the building hidden behind them.

No just hide those, and paint, “RESILIENCE” or “PROGRESSIVE” on top.
We like that one currently, we have painted over, “HAVE YOU TRIED BREATHING”, and “WHAT ABOUT A CUP OF TEA? Have you tried that?” due to complaints.

Just as well, breathing got me into this mess, and I’d rather, instead of being constantly resilient, be allowed to be a bit sad sometimes without someone pathologising it as a lack of resilience. To get back up, there has to be a falling down part. I would quite like to fall down.

Right at the end of the boards, someone had tagged “GHOST” and I thought thats probably what I would tag now too. Say what you will about tagging, but putting your name on an empty construction board is very human to me. “I was here once”.

What did raise a smile though, is someone just wrote “Wrong un” on the board. That is so Welsh. It reminded me of my nan, she could decide whether someone was a “Wrong un” in about five minutes of meeting them. She’d often be right, and then loved to, “I told you, I told everyone, no one listened to me, Fred is a wrong un”. Alright, nan.

I decided to give up with the cheery music, and realised I was thinking too much about graffiti so decided to listen to Bo Burnham on the way home so I wasn’t completely in my head. I was listening to Inside. So many of the tracks just speak to me, but especially, “All Eyes on Me”.

I walked until I reached Greggs, and then my ED got loud.

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The Katsu Chicken Bake Dilemma

I thought I could pop to Greggs because it would make my son happy, and that HAD to cheer me up, because everything else failed. Making him smile usually does make me smile, no matter what mood I am in. He REALLY loves the cloudy lemonade drink and their chicken.

I texted him, he was really happy, saying how hungry he was. He’s been really busy working on a proposal for his thesis for uni in between drawing Project Hail Mary art. Hungry work!

But then I realised that meant I HAD to go to Greggs, and my ED, who I call Corrupted Clippy, got loud.

I have been eating better recently, and Clippy has decided that, the whole problem I am having with being sad, and my meds, is ALL because I decided to eat more food. Some of it actually IS because I decided to eat more food. That’s how Clippy is so insidious.

Eating more means I’ve been less hungry, so instead of having constant thoughts of food, I’m having constant thoughts about WeeGee, graffiti, my meds, how I feel about being in perimenopause, the doctor suggesting there could potentially be HRT in my future, the blood test results Im waiting for, the wildfires that have filled my flat with the smell of burning for the last week, and how sad that is that Wales is ON FIRE.

Along with how scary climate change is, and whether we’ve actually reached the point of no return and no one is telling us. The fact my body has changed again and I’m struggling to keep up with it mentally. I keep forgetting I’ve gained so much weight and then I see my very muscley thighs and hamstrings and think, WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? And it gives me a panic attack for how different I am now.

Clippy offered a solution, just don’t eat.
Just quit.
Go back.
When I reach this level of overwhelmed, Clippy opens the nearest escape hatch and I have often jumped straight through it.
However, I told it it’s objections were duly noted, but I wanted a Katsu chicken bake. Just to rub salt in it’s corrupted paperclip wounds, I also got a pack of four white chocolate cookies. Take that, pesky brain pop-up.

I just wish this felt more of a recovery win. The Katsu chicken bake was amazing, but I still feel the allure of the escape hatch. I wish I didn’t get so overwhelmed so easily that the escape hatch feels like a relief compared to whatever the heck today was.

At least my OCD, although right about the medication disaster, was wrong about it causing the end of the world as I know it. The world seems to be continuing regardless. The Katsu chicken bake was delicious, as was the cookie, and making my son happy did make me smile for five minutes.

This song sounds like my head when my ED is loud. Clippy is asking for “All eyes on me”.

UPDATE :- I now have my meds. I got them the next day, they did the whole “they are not here and are off-site” dance again. But the pharmacist I saw on Tuesday was really helpful and gave them to me anyway.
I was about to change pharmacy but, unfortunately, it seems to be a GP surgery problem and I cannot change surgeries. I’m still really stressed about the whole thing, but today has been spent in the relief that will last approximately three weeks until I have to deal with this again.