what the hell, sure

let me change your brain chemistry

You want your old body back. You thought they finally loved you right. You need to ace the interview. But the washed denim doesn’t hug your hips as nicely as it used to when you were a little younger and more demanding of your size than of the world, and your lover is a distant angel dressed in a Carhartt jacket or a finance bro vest, always one text and an infinity away, and the job market is an ungrateful freak circus. You thought you were unique in your suffering. But you’re here again, like the rest of us, despite your freshly baked structures to get life right, and you stand there, humbled, counting your bargaining chips until they’re laid out in geometry theorems and Newton’s laws.

Sometime after the rule but before the exception, they forgot to tell you that the universe wants equilibrium more than it wants you to be happy. Her wish prevails over your tribunal requests. She’ll take you high and low and higher up again, won’t make a pit stop for you to catch your breath through the inhaler. She knows that eternal bliss is not quite what it means to be alive. And claiming “lucky girl syndrome” curled up on the bathroom floor when luck gets abstract is just revenge porn on yourself.

I’ve spent most of my days with a degree of grueling resistance. Agony, glamorized. The kind that prescribes a mouthguard for jaw clenching or puts one in a straitjacket, that’s how much it hurts. It’s an itch that can’t be scratched, stoic and ridiculous in helplessness. Why are things not the way they’re supposed to be? Such is the question of terminal despair.

Truth is, I’m setting myself up for a slow little death every time I cling onto something that either hasn’t happened, isn’t guaranteed to happen, or has every right to fall apart. Essentially, those are the three categories anything that ever happens can fall into.

this post on radical acceptance was inspired by a simple & completely out of context jemima kirke prophecy that changed my life…

No matter how much Sam Altman and empathy-devoid broligarchs foolishly want to believe everything in this world can be controlled, sketched out, premeditated, that the outcome is an orchestra’s doing that gets signed off before the market closes, you and I both know that’s one big fat lie. Bad things await those who assume they possess godly powers, and when they start sending smoke signals your way, roll your eyes at them or flip them off. If one can teach a machine to think like a human, I should be able to control what happens in my life, right? Look around you — nature itself is teaching you acceptance. Circumstances come rolled on a dice, randomized, I’m Feeling Lucky search buttons. The unexpectedness shakes you awake to tell you that your little wishes don’t matter, your little plans can’t be prayed into existence, and you can’t take any of it personally. It’s not personal. You don’t send circumstances back where they came from like you would send a bloody entrecôte back to the kitchen because you wanted it medium rare. I wish it worked like that. Punch walls or take it like a big girl. You take it all. Of course you do.

It’s in the absolutes that we struggle the most. Control is normal, but it cuts deep. Ambition is a friend, but a crazy one that gets a DUI charge and never the last word. And acceptance is not synonymous with powerlessness. Nothing’s promised, ever, but everything is kinda funny. Surrender is the only way, it seems. I’ve tried all of the other ways already, soft and radical.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” but serenity doesn’t hit the spot. There has to be some humor in not knowing, or, rather, in the fury that we’re rarely allowed to hope. Loving your life is an impossible practice until you own acceptance. It will be unfair, and often gross, in a fetal position, saliva mixing with snot where emotions are overdue, clawing for sanity, and then other times you’ll be flying, in the backseat or in the arms that matter, a hard-boiled egg on the stove from someone who loves you so very much, and you may even end up on stage awarded with greatness, but that doesn’t mean you won’t return to “What the fuck just happened??” in just a quarter of a month. Equilibrium bites back. It doesn’t care about your good hair day or how much you’ve lost gambling for an answer in a sunk cost fallacy. No brownie points for being god’s strongest soldier on standby. So what, you hate your body more than ever. So what, your failing lover dreams about Nasdaq and not you. So what, recruiters ghost you. The sun will rise regardless. The alarm goes off again. It’s so over and we’re so back.

You have acceptance now, and it’s not that she loves you dearly, but she takes you as you are, and that’s more than most can say. You’re safe in her virtue because she doesn’t expect anything from you. Not the devil, but you can negotiate a solid deal that goes both ways. That when something outrageous slaps you in the face or comes at you with an axe, what you’ll never foresee or have time to plan against, you’ll forgive again, and maybe find solace in knowing it’s just not about you. You’re not special enough for things to go right or wrong. They just go, flux and prancing. You can prance along.

Ascending from the defeat, you’ll have the wisdom to look life dead in the eye, heart to heart and hope to venom, and go “What the hell, sure.” Now we’re getting somewhere.