HOT. EXHAUSTED. SLIGHTLY THREATENING.

By Marj

There’s a very specific stage of womanhood where you begin buying supplements with the energy of someone trying to solve a low-level crime.

Magnesium.
Ashwagandha.
Vitamin D.
Electrolytes.
Collagen powder that costs the same as a small appliance.

You start researching cortisol at 11pm like you’re preparing for oral exams.

And honestly, some of it helps.

But increasingly I’m starting to suspect the real issue isn’t magnesium deficiency.

It’s people.

Or more specifically:
the sheer exhaustion of modern womanhood.

The constant availability.
The emotional administration.
The replying.
The remembering.
The softening.
The explaining.
The endless tiny demands arriving through every possible device at all times.

At some point in midlife, your nervous system just quietly changes from:
“I can manage this”
to:
“if one more person asks something of me, I may disappear into the woods.”

And the strange thing is, from the outside, you often still look completely functional.

You’re dressed.
You’re working.
You’re replying “No problem!” to emails while internally reacting like a woman being asked to help move a body.

There’s also a particular kind of exhaustion that arrives when you realise how much of your personality was built around being manageable.

Pleasant.
Helpful.
Emotionally available.
Easy to approach.
Easy to ask.
Easy to rely on.

Women are rewarded for this for years.

Then one day your body seems to stage a quiet internal protest.

Suddenly you don’t want to be the bigger person.

You want witnesses.

You don’t want to “communicate more calmly.”

You want everyone to stop sending messages that begin with:
“Just a quick one…”

Because nothing in adult life has ever been quick.

Especially for women.

Every “quick one” arrives attached to seventeen invisible follow-up tasks that somehow become yours forever.

And maybe this is why so many women in midlife start feeling “too sensitive.”

But honestly, I don’t think most women are becoming more sensitive.

I think they’re becoming less sedated by people pleasing.

That’s different.

The tolerance drops.
The performance slips.
The emotional buffering disappears.

And suddenly you’re reacting honestly to things that probably always annoyed you.

Like group WhatsApps.
Open-plan offices.
Customer service chatbots.
People who call instead of texting.
Men who say “Have you tried meditating?”
Anyone asking you to download another app.

The other thing nobody really mentions is the confidence wobble that can arrive in this era too.

Not necessarily because you become less capable.

Sometimes you become more capable than ever.

But your nervous system becomes less willing to tolerate pressure, noise, performance and overstimulation the way it once did.

You second-guess yourself more.
Feel more emotionally porous.
Everything suddenly feels slightly louder and more personal.

A delayed reply can ruin an afternoon.

Someone saying “Can we have a quick chat?” feels like the beginning of a hostage negotiation.

And yet somehow there’s also something oddly liberating about all of this.

Because underneath the exhaustion is clarity.

Midlife starts removing things.

The need to perform endless politeness.
The need to appear endlessly accommodating.
The need to keep overriding yourself to maintain comfort for everyone else.

You begin noticing how much energy you spent trying to seem low maintenance while carrying entire emotional ecosystems on your back.

And eventually something in you just says:
No.

Not dramatically.
Not loudly.

Just firmly.

No, I actually don’t have capacity for this.
No, I don’t want to do that.
No, I’m not endlessly available anymore.
No, I cannot discuss this via six voice notes and a follow-up Zoom.

Some days self-care genuinely is just not replying.

Revolutionary stuff.

And maybe that’s the real shift happening here.

Not collapse.

Not becoming difficult.

Just becoming less willing to abandon yourself in order to remain palatable to everybody else.

Which, admittedly, can make you feel slightly threatening.

Honestly?

Good.

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