The Things I Do And Don't Care About

I’ve been thinking lately about the things I do, and do not, care about. I’ll start with the latter first, because they have especially been on my mind. 

I don’t care what others think of me. For much of my life, I was a classic people-pleaser, riddled with anxiety about what others thought of me, trying to live up to social expectations and ‘earn’ approval. Eventually I realised this was a battle I was doomed to lose. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t mask well enough, pretend well enough, be good enough to be truly acceptable. So I gave up. Not all at once, but gradually and definitely, and the older I get the more I simply don’t give a rodent’s posterior what people think of me. It’s very liberating.

I don’t care what people want if they don’t say it. I used to fret obsessively over this too, trying to figure out what people wanted. Now, if people don’t say what they’re thinking, I can’t be bothered trying to read their minds. Why should I? If they can’t be bothered being upfront and honest, I can’t be bothered engaging. Say it or stay silent, I don’t care.

I don’t care what people think about my appearance. This is another thing I spent a good deal of my earlier years fretting over, trying to ‘fit in’, whether it was with ‘normal femininity’ or ‘right-on lesbian feminist’ rules or ‘hippy left’ style or whatever. Nowadays? I’m a t-shirt and jeans person, rarely wear makeup, have short hair, and sometimes get mistaken for a man, at least until I turn around or speak. But I do love bright colours and jewellery (though I don’t wear it much for sensory reasons), have even worn a skirt on occasion (okay, for funerals, but still). If anyone doesn’t like the ‘look’ of me, however, my answer is simple – don’t look! I don’t care what others wear either. There are far more important things.

I don’t care what people think about how I live my life. People have long been trying to tell me how I should live my life, from my parenting (often from those with no kids or experience with them), to how, when and how much I should ‘socialise’ (regardless of me trying to tell them I can’t do it like that). But possibly the biggest criticism has been around how I manage my disabilities, especially my CFS. I’ve been criticised for taking vitamins - ‘they’re just expensive pee!’ - even though they have literally saved my life, told I should ‘just go for a run round the block!’ at a time when I couldn’t have crawled around it on my hands and knees, and had an actual naturopath I’d formerly visited tell someone else that it was ‘a pity’ I’d gotten a diagnosis of CFS, as I would ‘just use it as an excuse’ to not try to get better. I kid you not.

So what DO I really care about?

 I care about one Big Thing…

The state of the world.

Last month, our former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, told the 2025 Yale graduating class that the world has turned into “an all-out dumpster fire”. She is so right. Now, the world never has been a wonderful place (newsflash : there never really were any ‘good old days’). That’s why my generation fought so hard to change things (yes, those boomers people love to criticise, even as they enjoy the benefits we gained them). But more recently, it’s become just… awful.

There is no other way to describe it. Fascism on the rise, so many of the advances we fought for now being either eroded or outright destroyed, and not just in America either, though that is definitely the worst conflagration (and it is literally turning into an actual conflagration in parts, eg ICE agents tear-gassing protesters, Marines brought in, actual goddam MARINES), entire groups living literally in fear of their lives, the rich hoarding more and more wealth while the rest of the world struggles ever harder, too many fools trusting other fools rather than proven and verifiable science, disbelief of the media even when they’re reporting live on actual horrific events (I don’t have any special love for the media, but come ON folks, use your brains), Certain Nations sitting back smirking behind their hands at the havoc they had a hand in creating, genocidal wars where children and other vulnerable are dying by the dozen every day for the benefit of the greedy and the power-hungry, incipient environmental collapse while our politicians quibble about who has to give up the least, yet other nations attempting to position themselves to be Dominant Powers when the dust settles… on and on it goes, and there doesn’t seem to be any end to the horribleness of it all.

Or my sense of helplessness and horror in the face of it all.

And people think I should worry about what I or others wear, or what others think of me, or what some dipstick who doesn’t even know anything about CFS - or any other condition I have – thinks about how I should be handling my health or my life? When there’s so much awful crap going down? Are you kidding me?

Get outa here.