Why I hate roller coasters

The real ones and the metaphor

Hello, friends,

The roller coaster is a useful metaphor for many things in life—sports is one example that comes to mind. I’ve generally been pretty indifferent toward sports, but for a couple years in the mid-’90s, I was a rabid Green Bay Packers fan.

1995 and 1996 were good years to be a Green Bay fan. In ’95, they made it to the NFC Championship, and in ’96, they won the Super Bowl. The highs were high, but man, the lows were low. As ecstatic as I was after the Super Bowl, I was so devastated after the loss the year before that I cried. Like, hard. I cared. The emotional extremes were intense, and I didn’t love that.

High school was four years of ups and downs. I was a super high achiever (*cough* perfectionist), so there were some exciting highs with stellar SAT/ACT scores, scholarships, and writing contest wins. But I was also so unhappy my freshman year that I switched schools, which led to me losing all my friends in a dramatic blowup involving some pretty hateful emails that are still hard to read more than 20 years later. I experienced rejection after rejection on the romantic front, had plenty of writing rejections to counter the wins, and lived in a pretty near constant state of stress and pressure.

After one of the highs (I can’t remember the details except that it was toward the end of high school, so it probably had something to do with test scores or scholarships), I remember telling my mom that I was looking forward to a time in the future when things were more stable, when maybe I wouldn’t have some of the excitement of the past four years, but I would simply be content. Content sounded nice.

Content still sounds nice. Really, really nice. I think this is part of why I’m not overly adventurous. I don’t like adrenaline, and trying new things often involves a bit (or a lot) of adrenaline. I like stable, secure, even.

Overall, I feel like my life is stable and secure. But day-to-day living still has plenty of ups and downs, and I still struggle to maintain my balance. This week, Ellie and I had a “date.” We visited a bookstore we love in Uptown Westerville. It was the first time we’d been in since they renovated, and it was an absolute delight. Then we had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants—the food was extra tasty and we had a thoroughly engaging conversation about Ellie’s potential career. Finally, we went to a local shop we love and participated in a workshop that was wonderful and fun and full of community. It was the best night.

The next day, while definitely not the worst day, was a far, far cry from the night before. Ellie’s mood was the complete opposite, due in no small part to the fact that one of their teachers emailed me to talk about school work they haven’t been doing, which led to consequences and self-criticism and despair.

I’ve had quite a few years now of weathering the storms of Ellie’s mood, and given my focus of late on my own inner peace, I’m generally pretty decent at riding the waves. But going from such a high to such a low in such a short span of time was jarring, and it made me feel off-kilter. It made me yearn again for stability. I try really hard to not have expectations, but sometimes it’s hard to quiet the voice that says, Yeah, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to generally expect that things will be good—not even great, just good? Yes, that would be nice.

I’m honestly not sure if no one has that or if I just happen to have a child who’s more emotionally volatile than average. (I would offer a third option, that I simply have a teenager, but this has been the norm with Ellie since…I was going to say toddlerhood, but I’m inclined to say birth.) And I don’t know if other people feel like they personally swing more frequently from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. I feel like I’m pretty even-keeled. I think my nature is calm and equanimous. Maybe that’s why I have a harder time with the extremes of the people around me.

A friend and I were talking not long ago about amusement park rides. Neither of us likes roller coasters, and as we reminisced about the rides we did like at Cedar Point (a theme park we both visited somewhat regularly when we were younger), I said my favorite was the swings—you sat in a swing, the ride raised you up, and you went around in a wide circle, gazing out at the park. It was relaxing, and I could have ridden it all day.

I don’t have a solution for what to do when I’m on a roller coaster but want to be on the swings. After my rough day with Ellie (and in the middle of it, since they wanted nothing to do with me and spent the evening in their room after racing through our silent dinner together), I listened to music. I read. I wrote. I got snuggly under a blanket, and I pet the dog.

Maybe this is the best any of us can do when we’re somewhere we don’t want to be, dealing with something we don’t want to deal with. We take care of ourselves as best we can and we focus on the small comforts, then we enjoy the swings whenever we get to ride.

Photo by Zitesh Kaushal on Unsplash

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After I finished writing this post, the roller coaster went up again. When I was putting Ellie to bed, we had a beautiful moment: once they were settled, with the dog curled up by their feet, I gave them a long hug—I sat on the floor next to their bed, with their arms around my neck, my cheek on their shoulder, rubbing their back. I stayed like that until they fell asleep. And while I was sitting there, I had an insight: another reason it makes sense to try to be present in each moment is that the roller coaster metaphor only works when I compare the present moment to a moment in the past. I was stressed by the “down” of the rough evening because it was “lower” than the night before. Not to say a “down” moment isn’t less pleasant than an “up” moment, but I do think it’s more unpleasant when I focus on the drop from high to low. Staying present in every moment makes the roller coaster metaphor irrelevant, and this metaphor is probably one I’d be well served to let go of.

Warmly,

Brie

P.S. Do you like the ups and downs of life? If you find them exhilarating, what excites you about them? And if they stress you out, how do you cope?