The Heavyweights

So punch my face in buddy
I don’t mind it, I’m so bloody
And I can’t see out of my eyes

—The Heavyweights, Marah

Being deep in perimenopause during one of the harder seasons of my life feels a lot like getting wasted at a crowded bar and climbing onto a mechanical bull.

Some days I’m laughing, holding on with one hand and waving my middle finger at the crowd like a drunk rodeo queen. The next minute the thing whips sideways and I’m hanging on for dear life, or I’ve fallen off and landed on my ass.

Emotionally, that’s been my last six months.

Big swings. Excitement. Confusion. Misery. Fear. Sudden tears. Depression. The occasional volcanic outburst that leaves me sobbing in my minivan in the driveway wondering what the hell just happened.

But I might finally be learning how to stay on the bull.

I got a new job in marketing at a local music & film venue called The State Theatre and it turns out the bull slowed down the minute I walked through the door.

Which is funny, because most of my adult life I’ve been drawn to environments where everything is happening at once. A newsroom during breaking news is a mechanical bull ride all its own, and I loved it.

Producers shouting. Anchors vamping. Reporters sprinting down hallways. Scripts being rewritten in real time while the anchor is reading the teleprompter live. Freak out all you want but you’re going live whether you’re ready or not.

I used to write breaking news scripts while the anchor was halfway through the previous sentence. Furiously typing into my computer like Beethoven at the piano, I’d triumphantly click it into the system just before the prompter revealed the new line to the anchor.

If I got it right, the show kept moving and no one would ever know about the near disaster we just avoided. If I got it wrong, well…that’s how you end up with Ron Burgundy introducing himself on air as “Ron Burgundy?” because someone left a question mark in the script.