Specifically, my breasts. They’ve never caused me anxiety, except during the profoundly embarrassing experience of being fitted for my first bra and being told they “wing out” as a middle-aged saleswoman draped a measuring tape around me. Aside from a bout of thrush, they’ve successfully nursed two babies. They fit my body well—not too big, not too small. Generally speaking, we’ve had a good run together. But right now they’re throbbing, as if each has been punched really hard,or crushed in a vise. Hurting to the point that sometimes I’m doubling over, wrapping my arms around myself, the pain is so intense. Out of nowhere, they feel bruised to tenderness. 

This is one of my new PMS symptoms. Or, as I’m starting to think, it’s yet another sign of perimenopause, of my body reminding me in increasingly harsh ways, that my periods are numbered and damn it, I better pay attention to the ones that are left. For the past year or two—I wish I’d paid more attention—I’ve gone from relatively uneventful periods and very few PMS symptoms, aside from vague sadness and anger, to being overwhelmed by extreme pain and erratic emotional swings. Every couple of months I get excruciating headaches, always in my left temple, that last for 2 days. Nothing helps and every movement brings yet another sharp stab. In the few days before my period takes over,  I find myself so profoundly melancholy, tears well up over nothing. Or so filled with rage I explode, again, over nothing. Wearing a bra isn’t as bad as a those hair shirts people used to throw on, but even the slightest constriction feels like sandpaper on super sensitive skin. And to top it all off, the first day of my period is now so intense, I  lie in bed, clutching a hot water bottle to my middle, waiting for the advil to kick in. 

There’s no test out there to definitively diagnose what’s going on and for a person who flirts with the edge of anxiety, the not knowing is almost harder than the physical symptoms. And the only way to know perimenopause is officially over is when my period hasn’t shown up for 12 months straight. Somehow, the changes of adolescence are looking far less dramatic than I thought they were when I was 13.