This will be an ongoing list, I fear.

Are the mood swings, suidical ideation, and depression I’m experiencing in perimenopause worsened by my biological penchant for mood dysregulation and my history of BPD? Why are there no peer-reviewed articles about perimenopause and/or menopause and BPD?

Did bleeding continually for a year — both metaphorically, in terms of the time, care, and money I conferred on another, and literally, due to endometriosis — sap me of physical energy like a hematic giving tree? Is that why my counselor says I’m suffering from exhaustion, or is there an underlying physical problem (that is, a physical problem apart from my lupus, endometriosis, and perimenopause)? Are women just destined to be tired?

Why can’t I stop my night sweats despite being on HRT?

Why didn’t any of my small army of past psychiatrists and therapists warn me that, with my history of suicide attempts, perimenopause might be perilous for me? As Mary Ruefle writes in a prose poem titled “Pause,” “If you take the time to peruse the annals of any nineteenth-century asylum, as I have, you will discover that the “cause of admittance” for all women over forty is listed as a cessation of menses.” That may not be hyperbole.

Is Canada planning to open up the medical assistance in dying program to mental health sufferers next year so that they don’t have to fix the dire problems with their mental health infrastructure, which include the fact that no psychiatrist on Vancouver Island (population around 865,000) is taking new patients?

Why are some women denied HRT by their gynecologists during perimenopause even though outcomes are better if you start it before menopause?

Why are some women of childbearing years who want to remain childfree and who are in agonizing pain from endometriosis denied hysterectomies by their gynecologists on the grounds that “they might change their minds about having children”?

Why does BPD receive one-tenth of the funding that bipolar disorder does despite having greater prevalence (lifetime prevalence of 6% vs. 4.4%, respectively)?

Why am I asking these questions, and researchers and clinicians aren’t?