I cried at a Budweiser commercial last Tuesday. It had horses and “America Proud” energy, which was enough.

The rage is its own chapter. I don’t want to write that chapter right now because I am in it. But I will say that I have developed opinions — strong, immediate, fully-formed opinions — about things that did not used to require opinions. The way someone chews. The sound of a notification. The specific energy of a person who doesn’t use their turn signal. I am not angry. I am precise. There is a difference and I’m choosing to believe it.

The brain fog, however, is genuinely concerning. I am a woman who has built a career out of being sharp and articulate and always knowing the word I’m looking for. Last week I described my schedule to a colleague as having “too many conversations” — as though the problem was human interaction itself, and not the fact that my brain has quietly gone on sabbatical without telling me.

I want to be careful how I say this because I don’t want to bury the lead: I have lost seventy pounds in the last year. Seventy. I took the miracle drug. I did the thing. I showed up for myself in a way I am genuinely proud of, and the results are real and documented and my doctor is pleased and I should feel like a completely different person.

I do not feel like a completely different person.

I look in the mirror and I see exactly what I have always seen. Not because nothing changed — it did. But my brain apparently did not get the update. My eyes are still running the old software. And no one warned me that you could do everything right and still stand in front of your reflection waiting for it to show you something different, something that matches the number on the scale, and just… not see it yet. Maybe not see it ever. Maybe not see it at all in the way you imagined.

That part is its own grief and I’m not ready to fully write about it. So instead I’m going to focus on the thing I am ready to be furious about.

The same five to ten pounds. Going. Coming back. Going. Coming back. I eat nothing — and I want to be precise here, I mean nothing, I mean I have the appetite of a particularly unambitious sparrow — and I gain five pounds. Overnight. While sleeping. While lying completely still in a bed, not eating, not moving, committing no offenses. Five pounds. Gone the next week. Back the week after. My body is haunted. There is no other explanation.

I am on a GLP-1. I am doing the work. I have lost seventy pounds. And perimenopause looked at all of that and said: cute.

I am not asking for a miracle. I already took the miracle. I am asking for my hormones to respect it.

I want to be clear that I am not asking for much. I am asking to sleep. I am asking to feel a temperature and have it remain that temperature for longer than seven minutes. I am asking to watch television without having an existential crisis about it. I am asking to find words when I need them, experience emotions at a proportional volume, and step on the scale and see the same number today that I saw yesterday.

These are not unreasonable requests. These are the basic terms of the arrangement I thought we had. I was just beginning to understand the body I had lived in for over thirty-five years — and then you changed the terms without notice, without negotiation, and apparently without my consent. I would like to speak to a manager.

I am formally requesting that you reconsider your current approach. I am formally requesting that we return to something resembling cooperation. I am formally requesting that you stop.

Just. Stop.