This weekend I started getting those almost certain signs that my period was imminent, a mere nineteen days after the last one began. That cycle had been nineteen days too, so it was a bit disconcerting to think I’d be spending half of every month in the middle of a period. I had thought that my cycles were alternating between a short one and a nearly average length one, but upon reviewing notes I’d made I found that they have, in fact, been getting shorter as the year has progressed. So it seems pretty likely that I’m going through quite a few anovulatory cycles these days.

I’ve glanced through library books about the perimenopause in the past but nothing really shouted out that this was me. That’s not to say I wasn’t experiencing some of the signs but there was nothing that really felt like it was a change. I guess some of it has been happening so gradually over the years that it’s just a part of passing through the years for me, which makes sense when one considers the constants transitions throughout our lives no matter what age. But I do think I am on the brink of reaching the “thick of it”, so to speak.

I did some online research on perimenopause and it finally dawned on me that what I was reading and what I am starting to experience is exactly what is commonly referred to as menopause. It’s just been renamed a bit more appropriately than in the past. Here I’d been thinking this was yet another catch phrase stage for women to experience. I can only use as my excuse the fact that my brain function isn’t so great these days, one of those actual symptoms of perimenopause.