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commitment

Guest Posts, Relationships

THE CHILL GIRL’S GUIDE TO NOT GIVING A F*CK

October 2, 2020
feel

By Charlotte McDougald

Welcome! I’m so glad that you’re embarking on this journey. With this foolproof plan, you are guaranteed to be rid of all of the pesky emotions that get in the way of that exhilarating life you’ve been yearning for. A life with no cares, no worries, and definitely no attachments. What more could we all ask for? By following my personal journey and steps, you’ll be able to come out of this giving less of a fuck than you ever have before. Let’s get started.

Step One:

Make sure you start out with no real attachments. Begin with two parents who work full time in New York City. You’ll spend the afternoons bored reading your mother’s self help books about love and sex and alcohol before you fully understand what any of that means. The pit in your stomach of missing will start to feel familiar, a passing cloud that you can swat away. You’ll learn how to do things yourself, and how to shut up when something is bothering you, because chances are, you can sort it out alone.

Step Two:

Get a boyfriend during the summer after eighth grade, during the summer before his senior year of highschool. You’ll feel uncomfortably cool most of the time, and a lot smaller than most of his friends. He’ll teach you about things like sex and weed and drinking and driving around at 2am on heavy heat-wave summer nights in a black Saab. He’ll whisper things that you weren’t ready to hear, he’ll try things that you weren’t ready to feel.

He’ll teach you what it’s like to be disposable, and you’ll understand that everything is a little bit disposable. Used once, and then one day, thrown away.

You should read Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot after the break up, and take it a bit too literally. This line especially:

 “our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.”

There’s nothing like remembering that we live on a lonely speck in the darkness to remind us that nothing really matters. After this, you shouldn’t cry over something as meaningless as a boy again.

Step Three:

Develop a distorted dependence on all things that make life feel softer.

Like humor, because you should learn how to make everything a joke. It’s all pretty funny when you look at it from far away. You can learn that from your father.

And alcohol, to make the hard feelings go away for a night. Nothing can be that bad, or feel that deep, when you’re drunk. You can learn that from your mother.

Step Four:

Turn everything into a game, especially with boys and men. You’ll get the hang of this in highschool. Be the only girl who drinks herself into a blackout on a Wednesday night, so that way you don’t have to remember the horribly boring, sometimes painful sex with the random, gangly boys you hang around. Always leave their beds in the middle of the night, even if the feeling of their embrace makes you feel human, makes you feel whole for a second, makes you feel safe.

Untangle, unattach, get out.

Step Five:

Let go of fear. You’ll be afraid of a lot, you’ll be unsure of even more. Never show it. Soon, you’ll forget you even felt fear in the first place. Another cloud you can swat away.

Get to college, and do coke off of a washing machine your freshman year with the boy with the accent. He’ll fall in love with the way you don’t care, he’ll fall in love with the way you don’t text him back, he’ll fall in love with the way you move so effortlessly through life. And you’ll lie to him, and take Molly in a bathroom stall with a different boy that has his sister’s name tattooed on his wrist.

A few months later this one will slap you across the face in your kitchen at 3a.m. because he wants you to “FEEL SOMETHING!” (direct quote)

And you’ll laugh after when you’re alone in your bed, because everything is funny if you look at it from far away. Remember?

Step Six:

Move away for six months to a country on the other side of the world. Find yourself in the mountains and in the reflections of your face in the lakes. Lose yourself in the feeling of being a lonely speck, a tiny speck, a 21 year old speck in the million, trillion year old oblivion.

Take surf lessons, jump off cliffs, jump out of planes, meet new friends and fall in love.

I mean really, really fall in love this time. He’ll love you because you write postcard essays and poetry. He’ll love you because he likes the way you make him laugh in serious situations. He’ll love you because you smoke cigarettes and do drugs and that’s not like most girls he knows. You’ll fall in love with his sweet eyes, and his quiet calmness to your tangled up mind, and his gentle way of making you feel understood. You’ll love his innocent way of looking at you, his innocent way of looking at the world.

You’ll love the way he makes life feel softer without any distorted dependence on anything other than him.

You’ll be the bright shock of light that wakes him up in the middle of the night. But after a while, he’ll go back to sleep. And he’ll be exhausted.

And you’ll be alone at the first light of dawn. You won’t laugh this time, but you’ll swat it all away. Keep swatting it away.

You’ll want to stay in bed for days, you’ll want to bury yourself in a bath of tears. But that’s not what chill girl does. Get up, put on some concealer and mascara, a little dress, and take a shot of vodka. Sink back into the comfortable feeling of missing.

You’ve been here before, and you’ll be here again.

When your roommate sees you out at the pregame in between your second line and your fourth drink, she’ll say:

“I’ve never met someone who gives less of a fuck.” And she’ll laugh, and you’ll laugh back.

And voilà! Chill girl who doesn’t give a fuck.

Warnings and Cautions:

Readers should remember that there will be many bleak mornings with headaches that feel like they cut into the core. Readers should also consider that swatting away doesn’t always work. You’ll often find yourself waking up on a pillowcase stained in tears and stale mascara and you’ll bury yourself in the darkness of your bedroom, and in the aloneness of it all. You’ll feel drained and raspy from the secret tears you let go behind bedroom doors.  You’ll lose your appetite, you’ll lose some friends, you’ll lose love. You’ll miss your mother and you’ll only crave to crawl into bed with her at the end of it all.

You’ll want to scream out, into the middle of a crowded night,

OF COURSE I GIVE A FUCK.

OF COURSE I FEEL SOMETHING.

OF COURSE I FEEL EVERYTHING.

Charlotte McDougald is a recent Chapman University graduate with a BFA in Creative Writing. She enjoys writing poetry, the personal essay, and fiction. The power of language has always inspired her, and she plans to continue her writing career in Los Angeles!

Other upcoming events with Jen

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Anti-racist resources because silence is not an option.

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THE ALEKSANDER SCHOLARSHIP FUND

 

Contests & Giveaways, Daily Manifestation Challenge

Challenge & Giveaway.

May 4, 2012

My latest post is up on Positively Positive.

It is my favorite site, indeed, and I am humbled to be a part of it.

You may recognize the post from my own blog but it was so popular they shared it on Positively Positive.

Here is the link https://www.positivelypositive.com/2012/05/04/challenge-what-can-you-re-commit-to-in-your-own-life/

Here is the challenge: Click on link and leave a comment on actual article. I will pick 3 comments that touch me and send each of you a Manifestation t-shirt and bracelet or give you a spot at my next Manifestation Workshop in your city.

I think it is important that we remember that every day, in fact every single breath, we have the choice to re-commit and re-fall in love.

Please leave comment on actual Positively Positive post and not here.

I am re-commiting to being my best self and my most authentic and honest self.

https://www.positivelypositive.com/2012/05/04/challenge-what-can-you-re-commit-to-in-your-own-life/

 

click on pic to read post and leave your comment.

Inspiration, Yoga

What Can You Re-Commit To?

April 30, 2012

Sometimes love is a choice.

I have some friends who have been married for over 15 years. They have been going through a hard time lately. Talk of divorce in the air. I am friends with both of them and have been offering an ear to each. One question which came up for me in light of their issues is this:

Can love be a choice?

I get it. After years of being married, after the kids, after having sex with the same person over and over (and over), you may get a little bored. Or, you shift in ways that are incomprehensible to your partner. Whatever it may be, the air becomes stale and at times, resentful and heavy. Like a slow suffocation.

Like a savasana that goes on and on and on and on.

And on.

What do I know? I have only been married two years. (Above photo was from my wedding celebration held at a yoga studio.)

But I do know that I have had this come up for me with other things in my own life.

I am committed these days to being my most honest self so here it goes.

I had fallen out of love with my own yoga practice.

There. I said it.

And yes, I make my living as a yoga teacher.

I have been working so much that the last thing I want to do is hear someone else tell me to lift my right leg or to shift into plank position. (Add the fact that, because of my hearing loss I cannot hear what the teacher says anyway, so when they say lift your right leg I am always the one lifting my left leg.)

I had grown resentful of it as if it had been my lover and had cheated on me. I rolled my eyes at it and gave it dirty looks and gossiped about it. I hated that I couldn’t hear what the teacher was saying and that I would end up feeling lost in a sea of Pincha Mayurasanas. (That is forearm balance for the laymen.) As in any relationship, miscommunication is where many problems arise.

Ah, my sweet beloved yoga practice that I once loved. I once was so obsessed with you that I dreamt of you often and changed my whole life to be closer to you.

What happened?

I will tell you what happened.

Life happened. 

Human being-ness happened.

I am using my yoga practice as an example, but you can insert your loved one or your job or your wife or whatever relationship it may be, and you will find the equation to be very similar.

Lack of Gratitude + Overworking + Not Showing Up To The Party+ Miscommunication =  the opposite of feeling in love.

1) I started taking my yoga practice for granted. I stopped being grateful for it.

2) I overworked myself so I had nothing left for me. When it came time for me-time, the last thing I wanted to do was my own yoga practice because I had taught so many times during the day that even the look of a yoga mat made me want to scream. (Sometimes I did scream.)

3) I got too comfortable not doing yoga. The hardest part is getting onto the mat. This. Is. True.

Just show up.

I am committed to falling BACK in love with… my own yoga practice.

Like all relationships, sometimes a little re-invention is needed.

A little coaxing, willingness, a gentle nudge, a sh*tload of commitment. Sometimes we get burnt out and we need to fall in love all over again. I believe this is possible.

The first step = We need to make a choice to commit. 

We need to dress up a little and have a hot date night. Or, in my case, a “yoga night” to re-ignite that fire.

We need to talk about it. Today, I am admitting my burnt-outedness and my  falling-out-of-lovedness. Once I got it out in the open and stopped being ashamed about it, I felt better. It was like a badge of Dis-Honor I was wearing on my heart. Once I talked about it to my teacher (thank you Annie Carpenter) and wrote about it here, I felt more human. I felt more connected to other people who have in fact fallen out of love with things they once were married to. (Or, at least were sleeping with.)

I am ready to get back into bed with my yoga practice.

I can choose to re-wire my thoughts so I once again feel passionate about my yoga practice. (You can do these same things with any relationship.)

I can make my schedule less jam packed so that I no longer feel nauseous at the idea of Downward dog. 

I can find new things that I love about my yoga practice. They may not be the things I fell in love with years ago. That’s ok. We have both grown older or wiser. ( I have grown older and Yoga has grown wiser.)
Where can you recommit in your own life? Answer below in the comment section.