Dear Writer,
Let’s define our terms, shall we?
I define a fuck as a thing which I allow to consume my emotional energy.
There is a distinction between fucks and caring about things. I can care about things without giving unto them my fucks. For example, I care about being kind and I care about a lot of political issues and I care that I’m basically a decent person, but I don’t have to give my fucks to those things.
Being kind doesn’t need to consume emotional energy; often, it generates emotional energy. Political issues consume the fuck out of my emotional energy, but writing a check and voting my conscience doesn’t need to. Determining what action I can take that might have effect without allowing outrage to drain my energy is a way to care without giving a fuck, if that makes sense.
My problem is that, historically, I have allowed my energy to be consumed by almost everything, by giving my fucks to everything, and it’s goddamned exhausting. My energy is pouring out all the time over things I might have done or said wrong to people that don’t matter about things that don’t matter, like the person who was turning into a parking lot where I was about to enter the crosswalk and I smiled and waved them through but I was wearing a mask and sunglasses so they couldn't see that I smiled at them and maybe they thought I was annoyed with them and I’m not kidding. That’s an actual example from my actual lived experience and I have been wrenching my fucks away from that incident all morning.
Everything,
L
I struggle with managing my fucks too. Boundaries are so important. And what’s more important than knowing that they exist, is knowing how and when to use them. You got this Lani.