What Ifs

on sending them packing, at least most of the time

I’m fairly certain that a good night’s sleep abandoned me at about the same time as estrogen, after a surgical-onset of early menopause when I was in my 40s. I fall asleep easily enough, in the summer before darkness has even begun to fall, but I have been waking several times during the night for well over a decade. It started with one of those harbingers of sudden menopause, the hot flash. Luckily, I don’t experience them anymore, but oh the nights when I did. I’d be sleeping blissfully and then BAM, ripping covers off, cats go flying across the room, run to kitchen and stand in front of the open freezer, or grab the book on the nightstand and fan myself until it passes. For a while I was able to fall right back to sleep until the next onslaught, but then the southernly-migrating bladder, another symptom of the hysterectomy, began to rouse me. This has been the routine ever since. It’s not the end of the world; the body and mind adapt, but now and then I get this extra dose of fun: the middle-of-the-night mind that has been infested with anxiety-ridden thoughts. An army of “What Ifs” all lined up, marching across my grey matter, making me panic enough to Google “What does a panic attack feel like” on my iPhone at three a.m.

“What if I can’t pay my new ASTRONOMICALLY expensive health insurance premium one month?”

“What if my son never lives close enough for me to make an impromptu weekend visit?”

“What if I only get to see my son and his family once a year for the rest of my life? How many times would that actually be? And how many more times will I get to see my parents? My brother?”

“What if my country never has a healthy political system ever again?”

“What if I fail at my goal of making enough income to stay in my house and take care of it the way I want to? What if I never earn enough to be able to save enough to retire?”

“What if I never get to travel to the places in the world that I want to experience before I die?”

“What if the wars continue to grow and innocent people suffer more and more?”

“What if cancer comes back to my body and this time it’s not curable?”

“Even worse, what if someone I love becomes very ill and there is nothing to be done to cure them?”

“What if I never have what it takes to finish the novel I have inside of me?”

“Didn’t you dream of living in Ireland for a year or two? What if that never happens? Time is running out, toots. You’re kidding yourself. Give that one up.”

“What if time just keeps going faster and faster? What if I never get to do all that I want to do? What if I have huge regrets?

“What if my one biggest dream just never comes true?”

What if. What if. What if.

I know I can’t possibly be the only person who is awake in the middle of the night surrounded by “What Ifs” pointing their shiny and menacing guns at his or her face. Hot flashes or not, incompetent bladders or not, we all have these moments.

It’s like I am feeling the hour glass of time speed up enough to break the sound barrier. And then I begin to talk myself down. I tuck my feet between the always receptive and warm legs of my sweetheart, reach over to touch him and be reassured he is still there, and then I take the slowest, deepest breaths I can. I start to count my blessings, the way some people count sheep. Soon enough I’m realising that there will always be regrets, and there will be plenty of places I will never go, experiences I will never have, goals I will not attain, and dreams that might shift or come true in other ways that I haven’t even imagined yet. There will be times when I might not have enough, but I’ve always found a way to get by. Yes, I remember that while I can do the best I can each and every day, there are some things that I have no control over, and hey, what could be better than being right here, right now. With that last thought, I eventually fall back to sleep, and I’m perfectly fine come morning, when the cats perform their reveille, usually at about four a.m.

(Honestly. This woman could REALLY use more sleep. But that is another story.)

These middle-of-the-night anxiety episodes were a fairly new experience for me when menopause hit. I had always been a hard and hard-to-awaken sleeper. It’s no fun, I tell you. No fun at all. And, for the past couple of years, miracle upon miracle, it has not happened nearly as much—except for during the first few months of Putin’s war in Ukraine, and a few other things sprinkled in here and there. Why? I’ve been spending far more time making litany of everything good in my life, instead, and I’m pretty sure I’m now ahead of the “What Ifs.” It doesn’t really matter what the “What Ifs” bring, when the “What Is” is pretty damn wonderful. What Ifs have so much less power than the beauty of a single breath in a single moment of gratitude. Maybe you have learned this, too. I also think it has something to do with taking action instead of always reacting, and especially of reacting and complaining. When my financial situation dramatically changed this year due to something I had no control over, I fretted for a couple days, and then I took action. Action over reaction. It dissipates the What Ifs like a swift and refreshing wind.

Another way I have learned to dispel the anxiety of fretting over the unknown is remembering some of the experiences in my life that have, at first, been sources of anxiety and then turn out to be dreams come true. One of those was time spent in Turkey on an archaeological dig at the Temple of Ephesus in 1983, when I thought I had discovered exactly what I wanted to do with my life—to be an archeologist. Well, I didn’t end up doing any such thing, and while that was a source of heartache for a while—hey, look!, I’m absolutely fine and have made my way in life in other vocations that I love with all my heart. Not every dream comes true the way we think it will, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come true at all. And then there is seeing my two kids become the most amazing adults, making their own way in the world, and giving me the gift of becoming a grandmother. My grandchildren are pretty much the greatest joys of my life and I am fortunate to get to see two of them each and every Thursday, and two other step-grandkids live nearby enough to see on the regular. My far-away in-Ireland grandkids I only get to see about once a year, but oh man do I look forward to it. There is also the incredible dream of finding real love much later in life, after a profoundly shitty experience with my first marriage. My sweetheart and I finally wove our lives together in spite of ourselves and against all odds. There is immense, deep comfort in that, in having our very independent lives intertwine, each made better by the other, and always knowing the other is there, our softest place to fall, especially in the middle of the night. Pinch me, still, on that one, even ten years later.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned through the direct experience of my life is that entertaining a sense of “what if” repetitively is my enemy. Worrying about things I cannot possibly predict or control has no useful purpose. With hindsight I can see how the things I thought would be my undoing have actually been the things that spurred the wheel of fortune to spin me someplace even better, and usually in very unexpected ways. If expectations are the devil, What Ifs are the devil’s co-horts. I don’t believe in devils, but if I did, they would look like Dr. Seuss’s Thing One and Thing Two with sharp, rotting teeth and evil eyes. Can we agree the What Ifs need to be banished? Let’s leave those words for the creative practice, where they really shine. “What if I used red instead of blue in that sky?” And so on.

This is where Ai really shines. I expressed my nightmarish image of the What Ifs, and lo and behold…

Right now I’m thankful that the “What Ifs” seem to have packed up and went on vacation. I hope they didn’t go to your house. If they did, kick them in their bony, violet asses and and bid them farewell and good riddance. Send them to the Himalayas. The air is so thin and pure there that the “What Ifs” would never survive.

And now, I would love to know: what is your experience with the What Ifs? Have you found ways to send them packing? Let’s talk about it.