What changed me?

My joints creak and ache, my muscles feel sore

I don’t even feel like myself anymore

I carry my personal summer with me

Through air conditioned rooms, sweating profusely

My internal alarm clock loves to wake me

At the ungodly morning hour of three

I toss and turn, unable to sleep again

I wake up exhausted and in pain

Any part of my body can act up any day

Inflammation seems to have found a way

To infiltrate every fiber of my being

And mysterious symptoms I am now seeing

Sometimes my vision gets blurry out of the blue

I forget mid-sentence what I was trying to do

My brain seems to have turned into mush

I get more impaired when I try to rush

I start catastrophizing , wondering if this would be

My new normal or a progressive descent into insanity

*

Then I read about how estrogen loss at my

age

Causes all these symptoms, plus uncontrollable rage

The fact that this is natural does not provide

Enough comfort to me, this perimenopausal ride

Has made life miserable in both professional and personal domains

If nothing else, I just want to get rid of the muscle and joint pains..