On giving less fcks?

What happens when you can't be who you used to be :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 12th 2022

I have tried to write this week’s newsletter a few times. I started with a piece on dating. A whole thing about what I learnt on a date with a girl I would name Juliana, and then I went into the bath and thought to myself, “I am forcing so hard to have learnt something there.”

And then, I wrote a piece about my experience with what I affectionally call vagina physio, and then I went to make a snack, and I thought, “Well, I don’t really wanna share any of that.”

Then I wrote a piece that was this bizarre and totally unnecessary declaration of choosing not to write non fiction about a certain issue/ topic, and I started feeling shaky, so then I shut my computer and read some Gabor Mate and thought, “I don’t even know the full truth to how I really feel about this yet anyway.”

Then I started compiling all my recommended favorite books to give you guys a list of things you could buy to read for the holidays or ask as a gift, and then I thought, I also don’t want really want to share that. Those are all my favorite things that I feel are special to me.

So then, I thought, what if I just wrote about what has been going on with me.

I have been comparing myself a lot. I am living the opposite of what most humans seem to report back around aging. People say they started giving less fucks when they got older, and the opposite is happening to me.

Something happened to me during the pandemic. I… loss this easeful confidence. 

I feel like a different person post 2020. I am sure all of us do, clearly. I am not sitting here thinking I am the only one. So you know, the feeling, I am guessing?

The one in which you have become a completely different person in one regard that you can almost look at your past self as though they are an entirely outside person and not an internal part?

I can totally see why people admired, even envied, my confidence pre pandemic, because now I envy it. I don’t have it and I want it.

Part of this for me is that I am largely pretty unwell due to severe autistic burn out. It took a while for me to set up my life so that I could ask for support and receive it, and now it is recently (literally since the summer) set up this way.

So I don’t have access to a lot of my skills I used to have access to. It was easy to not fall into jealously or envy too often and feel confidence and not compare myself much when I thought if I wanted something, I would just have to put in the effort and I would reach the goal.

The thing is I have already accepted not being able to have a neurotypical existence - that takes a lot of maturity and healing to integrate. You’re already living so differently than most peers. So it’s not that that I feel a sense of frustration with. What makes me the most sad is the things I used to be able to do, not despite my autism, but because of my autism, are currently not available to me.

What happens when you no longer have the energy or the health to put in the effort and reach the goal? What happens when what you love doing, you are now also allergic to.

I think there are many things that have eroded my self-confidence over the last 2 years and a half, but a primary feature of this is definitely a loss of capacity.

It is weird obviously having to reckon with the fact that a lot of your self-worth is tied into productivity, or being helpful to another human, or being seen and heard and related to positively publicly.

This loss of capacity has made me have to face that. The most uncomfortable part has been having to let people have an imperfect experience of me. When you are not at your most capable, you very clearly make mistakes. Realizing that if someone hates me, dislikes me, or talks shit about me, I am actually not worthless as a whole and that their opinions aren’t and don’t have to be the ultimate truth.

I would love to say I love this spiritual assignment. I would also love to say that I am above it and I already knew all these things. But that would not be so.

I gained micro fame when I was only 19 years old, I grew up into adulthood with this constant praise for being brave, and cool, and interesting. I think because it’s my life and it’s all I’ve ever known, I haven’t ever really paused until recently & went, “holy fuck, that actually affected me and that was a very unusual experience.” Because when it goes away, publicly anyway, because I don’t have the capacity to maintain that “public figure” role; I do not have the capacity to work with celebrities doing their tarot readings; I don’t have the capacity to run a 20-person team; and I also don’t have the capacity to have a full coaching practice anymore or sell “cutting-edge” nervous system health classes; when my childhood trauma catches up with me and I have no more ability to dissociate, perform or take care of anyone but me, what happens to my entire self-worth that was engineered on public accomplishments or positive public facing relating, what the fuck happens to one’s confidence then?

It makes me wonder about my friends who are also public facing in this industry. I feel I am breaking free from it - and because of that I am seeing that holy shit, it controlled and defined so much of me and my life, to have to maintain somehow, an unconditional positive regard from a large number of people across different relational contexts. That is a lot of people to keep happy with you.

And yet…

There was a certain comfort even though I didn’t always like it to have an inbox full of questions, people valuing your opinion, having messages you could barely keep up with, phone calls that you’d never get to returning. It makes you feel important. Special. And with my kind of history, I am glad my younger self got that experience for several years, she deserved to be recognized and valued for her sensitivity and her thoughts, I am happy for her.

But what happens to the adult me, the one who is tired? And who got her needs that her parents never met through this very peculiar career path that I clearly cannot maintain anymore?

I have no idea.

But I try to be nice to her as she figures it out. It’s like I have this old wise part of me somewhere that comes online and is like, aw you precious soul, you will figure this out. As my current present day self wonders whether or not it should be this easy to just decide to love yourself without any conditions. And then I realize, holy shit, this is my version of not giving as many fcks. It’s happening.

I would love to share a few photographs with you for your weekend reading.

One is this gorgeous photo of the forest I am in love with:

Two here is my face after appointments:

And finally, the most important sentiment of the week that is represented through visual art here, me as a child crying over my coloring book. I feel this is who I am re-becoming and I think that is fine. I also feel disturbed but also completely on brand that my cousin person pictured with me here is smiling and going about her business as I have a smol panic moment about being alive.