It arrives with no warning and completely out of proportion. Somebody loads the dishwasher wrong and something in you goes white and silent, or loud and unrecognisable, and afterwards you sit in the car and think: what is wrong with me.
Then comes the second wave, which is worse than the first. The shame. The apologising. The private conviction that you are becoming a person you do not like.
Let me take that one thing off you now.
This is a symptom. It is one of the most common and least discussed symptoms of perimenopause, and it is not a referendum on your character.
Why it happens
Oestrogen supports serotonin, the system that gives you a buffer between a feeling and an action. As oestrogen lurches, the buffer thins. The feeling arrives at full volume, and the gap in which you would normally choose your response simply is not there.
Progesterone, the calming hormone, has usually already begun to fall. So the brake is weaker at exactly the moment the accelerator is stuck.
Add fourteen months of broken sleep, which cuts your tolerance for everything, and you have a nervous system with no shock absorbers, in a life that is still demanding you be reasonable at all times.
You are not becoming a worse person. You are running the same life with the padding removed.
The part that is worth listening to
Here is where I want to complicate the story, because “it is just hormones” is only half true, and the other half matters.
The buffer is gone. It was never the thing that made you agreeable; it was the thing that made you tolerant. And a lot of what you were tolerating, you were tolerating because you had the capacity to, not because it was acceptable.
The unequal share of the household. The colleague who takes credit. The friend who only ever calls when she needs something. The decades of being the one who absorbs.
Perimenopausal rage is not always pointing at the dishwasher. Sometimes it is pointing at something true, and arriving late.
Both things are real at once. The chemistry is real, and so is the message. The trick is not to shove the anger back down. It is to work out which parts need treating, and which parts need listening to.
What to actually do
Treat the chemistry. Talk to your doctor. Hormone therapy improves mood symptoms for many women. Say the word rage; it is a symptom, and they should hear it.
Sleep, sleep, sleep. It is the multiplier on everything.
Name it out loud, at home. “My hormones are shifting and my fuse is short. It is not about you. I am working on it.” This costs you very little and it saves your family months of quietly concluding that you have turned against them.
Then, when you are calm, ask what it was pointing at. Not the dishwasher. The other thing. Write it down.
And stop apologising to everyone for having a feeling. Apologise for what you actually did wrong, once, properly. Do not apologise for existing loudly.
The reframe
Many women describe the years after this as the years they stopped over-explaining, stopped absorbing, and finally said the true thing.
The anger is often the first honest signal in a long time. Treat what needs treating. But do not throw the message out with the symptom.