Things I can't f*ck with
Have you ever had a moment when you just know, in your bones, that something isn’t for you anymore? Like, “Wow, I really can’t eat gummy bears ever again,” or “Damn, I can’t stay up past 2am and hope to survive the next day.” Maybe your body is screaming at you, or maybe it’s a gut feeling, but either way, you realize you just can’t fuck with this shit.
In my experience, I think we get glimmers of this feeling as early as our twenties, and the voice gets a little louder in our thirties, but we can still mostly get away with doing stuff that isn’t very good for us. We have some bounce back in our bodies and we still feel like we have enough time ahead of us that we can recover from mistakes. By the time I hit my forties, though, the voice was pretty loud. I continued to push it aside for quite a while. But recently, I’ve had to concede that there is a pretty solid list of things I can’t fuck with anymore.
In one of Tara Schuster’s books about the process of “fixing her life” and basically learning how to take good care of herself (either Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies or Glow in the F*cking Dark), she writes about realizing there were certain things she just couldn’t have in her life anymore. Meaning, things her body wouldn’t tolerate, things that left her feeling messed up emotionally or physically, or things that set back the progress she’d made on creating a life she loved.
Inspired by this, I felt I needed to make my own list of Things I Can’t Fuck With (where else but on my Notes app, long live my Notes app). It includes:
more than one night of bad sleep
getting hangry
skipping breakfast
running fast
being hungover
intense or frequent negativity from other people
dehydration
drugs (other than a CBD gummy on occasion)
craving external validation
These are all things that, I’ve come acknowledge (grudgingly in some cases), I can’t tolerate or bounce back from, or that disturb my equilibrium so much that I can’t function normally. Most of them I can control—I always have breakfast!—and some of them are things that I’m more aware of and can make an effort to avoid or limit (intensely negative people, for example).
All of them are essentially arrows pointing to consequences that I don’t have much capacity for anymore: running fast = injuries; getting hangry = snapping at people/making stupid choices; craving external validation = sprialling into feeling bad about myself and comparing myself to other people.
I suspect the list will grow as I age, but for now there are still a few less-than-healthy things that I CAN fuck with—Diet Coke, anyone?—without serious consequences. And sometimes you do just need to fuck around and find out, as they say; because occasionally it’s worth it to push things a little.
Do I really need a list to remind me not to get dehydrated? Perhaps not, although I’m giving my water bottle the side eye (or is it giving me the side eye?) The list is actually just a nice reminder that I’ve acknowledged some truths about myself and have accepted the “new normal” of living in a middle-aged person’s body and mind. If my 25-year old self was reading this, she’d probably be depressed. But from my 48-year old vantage point, I appreciate my aging body’s wisdom and the ability to let go of what was fun and normal and ok in my twenties without (many) regrets.
What I’m reading: The Catch, by Mick Herron. One of the novellas in the Slough House universe.
What I’m watching: Tokyo Vice. It was languishing on my “to watch” list but I finally started it and despite the truly mind-boggling amount of smoking (true to the time and place, I’m sure) I’m enjoying the first few episodes. And of course it’s making me want to visit Japan.