Oh, I Wasn’t Sad. I Just Needed a . . .

I was med­i­tat­ing but my brain was stuck in a loop. Oh, I Wasn’t Sad. I Just Needed a Holiday!

Are you famil­iar with the Oh, I wasn’t sad reels on social media? The viral audio states, “Oh, I wasn’t sad. I just need­ed a . . .” and then Madonna’s “Holiday” ends the reel. The video then shows the per­son, place, or thing that “fixed” the narrator.

As in, Oh, I Wasn’t Sad. I Just Needed a …

… day at the beach.

… Caesar sal­ad and some fries.

… a fresh hair­cut and some highlights.

Friends shared vari­a­tions of this reel with me. (Oh, I Wasn’t Sad. I Just Needed… a long shavasana … to pet a dog … to lie on the couch and read for a month). They were on brand and made me smile. But my appre­ci­a­tion was sur­face lev­el at best.

It’s no secret I’ve been feel­ing wob­bly late­ly. As some­one who has spent her entire life tak­ing care of her body and mind, I was pre­pared to smug­ly sail through menopause, ready to share my wis­dom with oth­er women so they could also sail through it with enough sleep, med­i­ta­tion, yoga, weight train­ing, a pro­tein-for­ward diet, and maybe HRT. 

Well, it turns out that no amount of well­ness nec­es­sar­i­ly spares you from hor­mon­al hell. I do all of the above and still my hair is falling out, my short-term mem­o­ry is non-exis­tent, and my moods errat­i­cal­ly jump from fiery rage to bone-deep sad­ness to ugly-cry­ing because I am over­whelmed by the won­drous beau­ty of it all. I have always felt things more deeply than the aver­age bear but adding this lev­el of hor­mon­al fluc­tu­a­tion has made me a new shade of crazy. 

The tran­si­tion­al book­end is the adult­ing evo­lu­tion of my daugh­ter. Recently grad­u­at­ed from her music school in Nashville, she’s start­ing an intern­ship at a record­ing stu­dio, look­ing for a place to live, and try­ing to find a “real” job. She keeps com­ing up against the insane finan­cial real­i­ty of liv­ing in a big city, where rent now out­paces most mort­gages of the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. Job oppor­tu­ni­ties are scarce, with many com­pa­nies only offer­ing gig work so they don’t have to pro­vide even the crap­pi­est of health care ben­e­fits. She is learn­ing to nav­i­gate the rag­ing misog­y­ny that exists in the music world (espe­cial­ly in coun­try music). 

Gen Z is the most finan­cial­ly strapped and social­ly iso­lat­ed gen­er­a­tion in his­to­ry. Talking with Izzie’s friends, I learned that most of them do not believe they will ever be home­own­ers or par­ents because of the pro­hib­i­tive cost. One of her friends added, “Plus, our chil­dren would need to be, like, born with gills to sur­vive cli­mate change, am I right?” They all laughed, but I was chilled.

So, I’m try­ing to med­i­tate, and my aware­ness is ping pong­ing through all these wor­ries. Oh, I Wasn’t Sad. I Just Needed..

Money!

A job!

Gills!

Retirement!

Affordable health care!

Balanced hor­mones!

The mantra expands and con­tracts until it feels less like med­i­ta­tion and more like a pan­ic attack.

I opened my eyes and noticed that, while I was stew­ing in the what ifs, the sun had come up, promis­ing anoth­er day and a chance to start again. The back win­dow was a bright gold coin framed by puffs of pink and streaks of dark gray set­ting it off. The blaz­ing star smiled upon me, my face aglow in some­thing that felt a lit­tle like warmth and a lot like a blessing. 

It will appar­ent­ly take sev­er­al more decades in Earth School for me to learn the les­son. We are only promised this moment. The future is com­plete­ly out of my hands, and there’s no proof that it won’t be as filled with promise and beau­ty as the past. Life is hard and scary and also amaz­ing and won­der­ful. It could be that every­thing is a dump­ster fire and it could be that my hor­mones are just out of bal­ance. When I despair, I need only look up and look around. My life has nev­er been made worse by watch­ing the sun come up. 

Oh, I Wasn’t Sad. I Just Needed a Sunrise.