Welcome, Campers! Are you nursing a hangover? Lamenting summer’s end? Contemplating buying a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils and ramming them into your little eyeballs? You’re not alone! The Misguidance Counselors are here 4 u. In this first issue, we’re covering coping with crises and getting curious about menstrual astrology. Because during this time of reluctant autumnal shift, it’s helpful to know your options when things start to feel like they’re going sideways. Blame the planets or your hormones (or both!) or simply go lie down.
Thanks for getting lost with us.
LYLAS,
Your Misguidance Counselors, Sam and Marilyn
My period is a Taurus.
She came into this world on May 9th, 2002, at approximately 1 PM. This makes her a Taurus sun, Aries moon, and Leo rising for you natal chart freaks out there. Back then, I knew nothing of the “big three” in astrology. I was an avid CosmoGIRL! reader, however, and Cosmopolitan’s little sister publication annually provided a mini-backpack-sized booklet on the astrological year ahead. Each year, I salivated at the sight of the companion mini-mag and flipped straight away to what they predicted was in store for me and my fellow Aqua girls.
In a 2004 Amazon review of CosmoGIRL!, a discerning consumer described the magazine as “a fluffy and light read that's fun for girls who don't feel like filling their head with useful info or absorbing themselves in literature.”
This is a comment I would like to report as abuse, frankly. As a 13-year-old girl, I was on the cusp of young adulthood and navigating its new hormonal and social complexities. The most useful thing to me at the time wasn’t going to be Lord of the Flies. It was going to be this glossy ‘zine I would cherish for the next 12 months ahead, underlining any pertinent info on when to expect a run-in with my crush or a rocky patch with my friend group.
No, I was not “absorbed in literature” but my beloved CosmoGIRL! taught me to shave my legs without suffering any nicks or razor burn, how to apply shimmer eyeshadow that would stay put all day even on the greasy hormonal landscape of my eyelids, and the ins and outs of decorating a school locker in a way that was true to myself – early teenage canon!
But it hadn’t prepared me for the punitive rite of passage of menstruation. I’m sure a professional astrologer would disagree, but it seems a bit fucked that something like this isn’t written in the stars despite it leaving its mark on you (or your Victoria’s Secret PINK underwear) for life.
Back to that day in May: it was one of the final days of 7th grade. The school was treating us to a skating party “in town” at a roller rink 30 minutes away from our little country school. Escapism was something I was only just learning to romanticize. The freedom I felt on four wheels, speeding in endless circles around the hardwood to Backstreet Boys and the megamix from Grease, was transcendent. I was no longer of some small town, and certainly not of this world.
After a couple of hours of dizzying laps, I felt a dull, churning contraction in my lower abdomen. Just like the astrology guide, this skating party was something I looked forward to annually and an upset stomach just would not do! I couldn’t handle even the prospect of being picked up early, resigned to spend the remainder of my afternoon on our sagging plaid couch, flipping between court TV shows and waiting for TRL to come on MTV. The thought was utterly macabre.
Having weathered many other stomach aches, I decided my best chance at curing what ailed me was a Sprite. A cold, syrupy panacea prescribed for everything from a sore throat to the stomach flu.
I rolled with controlled urgency over to the snack bar, grasping the cool beige counter to abruptly stop my forward propelling. The Mortal Kombat theme came on signaling it was time for the SPEED SKATE out on the rink. FOMO was setting in, even if I didn’t yet know what in the hell FOMO was. I needed to down the fountain soda in record time and get back to the task at hand: flexing on my peers. Even though I was their last choice when picking teams in P.E. class for absolutely any sport, I was able to effortlessly smoke them on the skating rink.
I paid the 75 cents and slurped up the soda as quickly as I could. It tasted mostly like the paper cup it was served in and, to add insult to injury, it did nothing for my stomach ache.
In fact, the pain grew worse. A different kind of worse than I had ever previously experienced. It wasn’t exactly nauseating, but it wasn’t churning either, which gave me some solace that I seemed to not be in danger of throwing up the Lunchable of rubbery turkey and malleable cheese sheets I had consumed two hours before. But something was definitely…off.
I decided I had no choice but to do the most frightening thing there is to do at a skating rink — besides asking your prepubescent crush with the puka shell necklace to hold your hand as you skate wordlessly around and around to KC and Jo Jo’s ALL MY LIFE, of course — and precariously wheeled myself into the bathroom. The oil-slick of the linoleum floor was threatening me to banana-peel-slip backward, heavy four-wheeled roller skates knocking me feet-over-ass to my social death should anyone see. This was dire.
Sliding safely into a stall with all of the grace of Bambi on ice, I unbuttoned my MUDD brand jeans. Then, I discovered what I had foolishly hoped to never discover: the brown dregs of Baby’s First Menstrual Cycle.
The sight of it brought me to tears. I, of course, would learn that anything, particularly television commercials about children losing and then being reunited with a beloved stuffed animal or pet, will be cause for crying during the week prior to and the week of my period.
I felt bloated with shame, humiliation, and the crushing reality that I was in the sunset of my childhood. Why couldn't I be consulted on if I was ready for this next chapter? True, I had very recently begged to buy a green glitter Gillette razor to begin shaving my legs, but I had also just had a LunchabIe, for god’s sake!
I was forced to make the excruciating choice I had hoped to avoid and go home. This was the first time, but certainly not the last time, I was held captive by my period. It felt so unfair that I couldn’t toil away the rest of the afternoon in the air conditioned time capsule of the skating rink.
So much for escapism.
I used my Virgin Mobile Tracfone and dialed my mom. I would have been worried about someone overhearing me if I had been able to get the words out at all, but I couldn’t. Instead, I just said what any kid says: “Mom, I don’t feel good.”
“What’s wrong?” my mom asked.
“I don’t knowwww, nothingggg!” I wailed. We would share this exchange many times over the course of the next five years.
Once at home, I sobbed some more. My grandma dropped by to bring me the kinds of menstrual pads only a sweet, caring grandmother could bring (read: these fuckers were as thick as a lightly-used polyfill pillow).
“You know, we used to have to wear belted pads in the ‘50s,” my grandma said.
I stared back at her, unable to comprehend why now was the time to mention how things could be worse. ‘I GET IT. BEING A WOMAN IS HORRIBLE!!!’ my histrionic inner monologue wailed.
I had bought the lie that becoming a woman would be fun, sexy, and exciting, and now I wanted to sell it. Or just chuck it to the curb without bothering to turn a profit. I cursed the universe and CosmoGIRL! Why didn’t they say anything about this in the May/June BEST SUMMER EVER-themed issue?
Maybe I skipped over those parts and went straight to the horoscopes, as usual, to figure out which boy I was compatible with that month. Clearly, I had all the yearnings and trappings of a person who was Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman, but getting my period was something I had dreaded.
Now, as a firmly adult woman, I’ve mostly reconciled these feelings. These days I'm curious not if I’m a match with a Taurus man, but with my Taurus period.
Let’s take a look…
TAURUS QUALITIES (via Astrostyle.com)
“Generous
The Taurus will readily lend a helping hand to the family, friends, and the needy even if it means that they would have to endure hardship or loss.”
My period has lent me a helping hand by assuring me I wasn’t pregnant a couple of times. So yeah, sure.
“Dependable
You can count on the Taurus, they will not leave you disappointed. Their dependability makes them excellent employees and friends.”
Oh, yeah. This bitch loves to show up, no matter what. She showed up on an elevated subway platform in 95-degree New York August heat and dribbled down my leg as I silently prayed to the universe that I could find a half-used tissue in my tote bag and she wouldn’t stain my orange H&M midi skirt.
“Down to earth
These reliable and sensible souls are quite down-to-earth, polite, and pleasant personalities. Success rarely goes to their heads.”
Doesn’t get more down to Earth than Mother Nature’s Gift, I guess?
“Patient
Patience is a virtue and the Taurus possesses it aplenty. They believe in doing the job right”
She lies in wait every month just waiting to see if I take her up on putting a baby in the womb she’s so carefully, painstakingly, prepared.
“Independent
…Taurus prefers to be independent and strong so that they don’t have to look for support when life throws lemons at them.”
She acts alone!!!
“Persistent
Once they set their eyes on something, the Taurus will persistently put in all the efforts to get it.”
My period is full force, very committed, and unstoppable. She doesn’t give a single fuck if I’m trying to have a “good time” sightseeing in Paris or if I’m wearing white pants. She thinks it’s my own damn fault for being too stupid not to check my calendar.
“Stubborn
Although easygoing and respectful, the Taurus can be unbelievably stubborn and inflexible in their approach. So much so that when the logical arguments don’t suit them, they will just refuse to listen!”
Listen, I have tried to reason with her oodles of times. The thing is, she always has the upper hand given she’s got the reins on my hormones. I pick fights, she sits back and refuses to listen, and then hands me a matchbook as I set my life on fire for 7–10 days.
“Self-indulgent
Their self-indulgent streak makes them rude, and ignorant of others’ emotions.”
Oh, totally spot on. She plays with my emotions like homemade gak or silly putty or slime or whatever the kids are into now that I know nothing about because I was born in 1989.
“Lazy
The Taurus will not move a muscle till they are motivated to get up and work.”
She only works one week a month. I admire her commitment to stick it to capitalism but abhor being her sacrificial lamb in the process. I’m probably just jealous.
“Materialistic
In their bid to secure their future and maintain a certain image in the society, the Taurus tend to become materialistic.”
Let’s consider for a moment, some Menstruation Finances (aka the Bloody Budget Burden):
Diva Cup (one cup) — $34.99
Backup pads (one package) — $6.99
Backup tampons (one package) — $9.27
Plain Ugly Black Underwear (one package of five pairs)— $13.50
Justin’s Peanut Butter Cups (three packages so I can allow myself one medicinal cup per day throughout the heinous experience) — $6.57
Aleve (one 100-count tablet container) — $10.87
Total: $82.19 (without tax, guys)
I would say she’s got expensive fucking taste.
“Possessive
Possessiveness, which often translates into jealousy and resentment, is one major negative trait in the Taurus-born.”
She knows I’m all hers and she is all mine. Somehow, it has not yet cost us our “relationship.” She has tried to come in between me and some suitors, going so far as to show up unannounced in an old boyfriend’s bed, making her mark for life (or as long as it took him to order another scratchy fitted zero-thread-count sheet from Amazon).
SO…ARE WE COMPATIBLE?
I’m an Aquarius (sun sign AND rising, moon in Pisces). Astrostyle.com notes Taurus and Aquarius are “as different as oil and water…aggressive Taurus pushes cool-headed Aquarius to the edge of reason, causing a much-needed snap in the Water Bearer. Finally, some passion reveals itself in Aquarius, who will feel more alive after being provoked by Taurus’ button-pushing conversational style.”
She is the ultimate button presser who brings out a particular passion in me. This passion, I learned somewhat recently, is actually Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, and not a once-a-month susceptibility to a state of dysregulation marked by peaks of rage, valleys of sobbing despair, and a weaving road of body dysmorphia all along the way.
Evidently, our relationship can be “an endless war” which is biologically impossible. I know our days together are numbered. In another 20 years’ time, I will no doubt think back, maybe even a bit fondly, on our time together, clad in an all-white, bloodstain-less Club Monaco linen set, probably reading my horoscope
“My Period is a Taurus” by Marilyn Haines, (@marilynhayward)
It’s been a hard week existentially. I’m exhausted, cranky, and unable to focus or care. So fraught by life that I must resist googling grad school applications with all my might. Back when we were still recognizing the ongoing pandemic, a tweet or infographic or tweet turned into an infographic pointed out our exhaustion was from functioning while having a constant, low-grade awareness of every worst thing ever happening all at once. I think about this now as the CNN analysts in my head begin the chaotic drone of their panel discussion. They, all experts on my life, talk over each other to detail exactly how every separate thing went wrong for me. Breaking news: I’m spiraling.
Standing in front of my knock-off West Elm floor-length mirror I bought off Amazon, I think, did this shirt always fit this way? I hate that this isn’t a skinny mirror. I should do more cardio. Is yoga really a workout? Did I tweak my neck in yoga? Am I old enough to have mystery pain? I’m opening a bottle of wine. It probably just shrunk in the dryer. All I want is an in-unit laundry. I hate everything in my closet. I shouldn’t go out tonight. I drink too much. And I spend too much on alcohol. Why am I so expensive? I should cook my emotional support broccoli going bad in the fridge. I don’t want to turn on the oven in my already muggy apartment. This is why New Yorkers spend so much on take-out. I’ll never lose weight. Why is my neck sore? Why don’t I go out more? Why live in NYC if I don’t go out? Why do I live in NYC? I would have a washer and dryer in Kansas. This shirt is hurting my feelings. I’m taking it off. Ow! What the hell happened to my neck? I deserve a nice dinner out and a glass of chardonnay. But all my clothes are tacky - it’s so embarrassing!
Sometimes, in lieu of spiraling, I attempt sustained dissociation by becoming overly productive and leaving no time to think. A tactic that’s always logical and productive until emotions catch up with me, springing forward, unnamable, and knotted together. I’ll come to snot-weeping over my empty iced coffee. Because I miss it already? That can’t be right.
My dissociation activity this week has been half rearranging my furniture and then abandoning the effort. I’m forced to live in uninhabitable configurations, creating the perfect storm for a breakdown.
Then today, under the guise of “doing something for myself”, I spent $100 on an enormous painting from a thrift shop. I carried it in 90-degree heat and took up an entire section of seats on the train getting it home. A high schooler across from me looked at the painting and said, “It’s cool to have hobbies.”
Still sweaty and puffy from the trek, I tried to hang it above my bed. It was so big that I couldn’t hang it for 15 minutes. It started to feel like an analogy for my finances, taste, and every misguided choice that led me to buy a 4-foot by 5-foot, pink and tan, ‘80s glam painting of flowers. I entered the breakdown apex as I stepped back to look at the painting on the wall. It was hideous.
I am now avoiding looking at an entire wall of my bedroom. Which I can do quite effectively despite my inexplicably sore neck. For something all about life’s inconsequentiality, existential crises sure require a lot of work.
When I have a breakdown like this, I try to remember this slew of advice to placate my urge to force immediate non-solutions, like buying a giant painting. None of which are to start a gratitude journal.
You have to eat the elephant one bite at a time. It’s been said many times, many ways. Just start doing. Start writing, and the words will come. Jump, and the net will appear. I will not subscribe to another mythical outside voice guilting me into being productive. My application is designed so I will emerge like Venus from a murky funk to enjoy those slovenly hours motionless and nude on a seashell.
When I was a moody teen, I would speed down country roads 15 miles outside the city limits, windows down, sunroof open, blaring the Black Eyed Peas. As I cried to the original lyrics of “Let’s Get It Started,” the movement of the car would start to make me feel unstuck. Sometimes the physical practice translates into a mental one.
After I moved to the city and no longer had a car, I started going for runs. The catharsis of the physical effort was better than a drive. Now I love running and always feel skinny after. I wrote that after eating one handful of almonds which was filling for me.
My Dad’s version of this is “you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time.” Not an original but it is perfect dad advice for when you’re 30, but still want your dad to make the monsters go away. Like the daunting, insurmountable task of a post-vacation inbox. There is no clear place to start and the new emails keep rolling in. Keep it small. Just one bite. You know how to take one bite. You eat all the time. Then take one more.
Do what you do while you’re doing it. If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth paying attention while you do it. Advice from a very quotable voice teacher. Some of her big hits include: “You’re hired!” when someone sang well, “Better luck next week. Sit down.” when she thought you sucked, and “You could but you wouldn’t want to get spunk up your nose” when asked if you can use singing technique in the bedroom.
Her fail-proof cure for staying present is simple. Forget about everything else and just do what's right in front of you. She would explain her catchphrase: “if you’re going to be thinking about your test this afternoon or worrying about what people will say about your high note, then spare us and get off the stage.”
Fear is the muscle of the ego trying to take control. Coincidentally, when my little sister said this to me, my sphincter released like she had broken the spell that had cursed my colon since birth.
The “ego”, associated with arrogance, deals with identity. Identities such as “I am gay”, “I am fashionable” or “I am a bad driver.” Whether we qualify the identity, or ego attachment, as a positive or negative attribute, the knowing provides a sense of control. If I can label myself, then I can hedge expectations. I’m a homo, so when I dress like a slutty teenage girl, it’s fashion. Uncontestable. And when I crash your car, you should have known better. Gays can’t drive!
We feel fear when our identity might be compromised and, for better or worse, will instinctually maintain our status quo. Reality TV well documents self-sabotage like this: “Your inner saboteur” (RuPaul), “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you” (Tyra), “Two shots of vodka” (Sandra Lee).
Brene Brown, researcher of vulnerability and shame who did not need that introduction, frames this differently. “The opposite of belonging is fitting in.” Which feels like an upgrade to the adage, “Would you rather be happy or right?”
She explains, and I will oversimplify, that there are far enemies (easily identifiable enemies, like insults) and near enemies (things that don’t seem harmful but are). “While the far enemy of connection is disconnection, the near enemy of connection is control.” Fitting in or being right are my favorite things to do but ok.
In her TedTalk, Brown shares that her research confirms the happiest people view vulnerability as a neutral necessity. Embracing the activities of psychopaths like “the willingness to say, ‘I love you’ first” and to “invest in things that may not work out.”
I’ve never considered that psychopaths are probably happier than me.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”
This quote, often attributed to Nelson Mandela - an example of the Mandela Effect and not the effect’s namesake - is actually from Marianne Williamson. That’s the one “fun fact” I allow myself.
Williamson, famous for her work with the Course of Miracles (a book my aunt told me not to read if I like my life the way it is), was added as a character to the opening of the musical Godspell’s 2001 Broadway revival. The character speaks this quote alongside portrayals of Socrates, Galileo, and Sartre. Later, Williamson became Twitter famous for her tweets that will make you want to burn your life to the ground and move to Oregon to grow leeks in just 142 characters.
She cemented her place in history with her love-forward 2020 Presidential run. This, her most famous quote, was written in her 1992 book, A Return to Love. The full quote will debase your sense of self and jump-scare you with inspiration. Are you afraid of being happy? More likely than you think.
Drive with your passengers in mind. I hated driving when I first got my learner’s permit. Driving was torture because of my inability to know if I could successfully operate the two-ton moving object I was currently operating. Plus my fear that all the other drivers were talking about it. (There has been a lot of questionable driving content so far so I’m clarifying that I am a serviceable driver.)
My dad, white-knuckling the “oh shit” handle just right of his head, told me to always drive so the passenger is comfortable. I agreed that he should at least have the illusion of safety while his life was in danger. Like magic, thinking about the flow of my turns and easing into my brakes so passengers wouldn’t notice my driving, and not whether or not I was a bad driver, made my anxieties vanish.
If you’re already feeling hopeless, consider doing something for someone else. The best way to get out of your own way is to make it not about yourself. Exercise: Try what my friend Nicole dubbed the ketchup rule. For us, asking for our own side of ketchup can be a horrifying experience. But if a friend needs ketchup, we will jump into action, going full mama bear. Stomping up to the server station despite knowing better from our tenures in the service industry. With severely pleasant aggression, we’ll annoyingly request the ketchup at your first free moment thank you so much.
Have a nap and a sandwich. My panic activates the Catholic emergency systems instilled in me. My birthright. It includes a theological tack propagated by the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, and my mom. In the bible, Elijah, after killing a bunch of people (1 Kings 19), plays the victim just like a straight man. Concerning his mass-murdering spree he complains, “I cannot believe that just happened to me. I’m so upset, I want to die!” and God is like “This is the old testament. Only I get to be dramatic. Take a nap and a nosh before you try talking to me again.”
Self-help trailblazer, Aquinas, is attributed with saying, “Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine.” A quote worthy of a novelty wall hanging.
My mom (who, I am proud to say, does not deal in novelty wall hangings) once told me “you need a nap, a sandwich, and a BM.” She hates “potty talk” but she’d want you to know this, so I’ll be using a code word as I continue. Is “mercury is in retrograde” a good double entendre for being “backed up”? If your mercury is retrograde, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Travel, communication, productivity, something is going down the shitter, so better make sure it’s… mercury.
Delete the co-star app and get that fiber supplement. Nothing will get your life moving like flax seed, nitro brews, and, like the Patron Saint of the Regulation, Jamie Lee Curtis anoints, some Activia. It’s never too early or too late to start your fiber journey.
Ask the Universe Empowering Questions. Michael Bernard Beckwith’s episode is the only Super Soul Sunday to which you need to listen. It’s 30 minutes and 41 seconds, including the ads from 2017, of Oprah, rightfully gassing this man up. She says, “You can preach that!” and “I’m gonna start shouting soon!” which gasses you up, too.
He comfortably lives in his coo-coo-ca-choo. I am thankful that people are willing to live such an extreme existence, figuring out the deep truths of the universe, and relaying them to me via Spotify, so I, too, can live in the coo-coo-ca-choo of my choosing: Paying premium rent for an apartment that would be considered the slums in anywhere other than NYC.
Recorded feet from Oprah’s tea house, three poignant lessons from this pod ep that help me through existential panic are “Grow where you’re planted,” “Potential is always bigger than the problem,” and “Pain pushes until the plan pulls.”
Beckwith also says the universe is always listening. If you ask a question, you will always get an answer. So if you ask “Why does every man find me repulsive?” You’re about to find out. The answer will be reflected in your mirror, while you swipe, and, read like tea leaves in the way your toothpaste dribbled down your shirt this morning. Beckwith implores us to ask “empowering” questions. Alternatively, try “which of these gorgeous men will be spitting in my mouth later tonight?”
Just wait three days. This is great if, after working through the above list, nothing is working. It comes from a very nice priest known for repeating many of the same homilies every year. (I had no idea how Catholic I become when in free fall.) I remember many of his homilies, so I guess it was an effective approach. The one I apply to my life is his Easter homily. In a nutshell, he says “just give it three days.”
When things suck, just get through the next three days. If you don’t think you can do it, don’t! Put it off for three days. Autopilot for three days. Hakuna Matata for three days. Take a break! Hide under a rock! Jesus did! In three days something about this situation, or even you, will be different. Your test results can come back, or your brain will start producing serotonin again. It’s the equivalent of the lights in the club switching on at 4 AM revealing that we all look tragic. But also revealing the closest exit. Just get through the next three days. If Jesus can do it, so can you!
“When the Existential Crisis is Crisising” by Sam Beasley (@sbeas)
Misguidance Counselors: The First Issue
Essays worth bringing up over drinks with friends you’re trying to reconnect with.