The other morning, I woke up with my stomach in knots and my head all over the place. Despite the fact that yes, I was slightly hungover, it felt as though anxiety had been manipulated into a commodity that I had eaten over and over and was now suffering from dire food poisoning. This was all because I had done something that in that very short morning seemed to be the worst thing I could have done at that point in my life. With the benefit of hindsight, it really was just something I did because I wanted to and it was fun and all those other boring details. But in those few hours after waking up I thought my life was ending and all I could do was lay in bed, writhing in pain, watching the walls of my life crumble around me. If you think that is dramatic I then got tonsillitis and thought it was karma! Anyway, I messaged a very good friend of mine to tell him about this situation I had ever so consciously put myself in and asked for some advice. And he simply said, “Oh well, fuck it. Live your life.” And after those 7 words were digested, my stomach ache subsided.
It was crazy to think just how much I had overreacted and obsessed over something that really didn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things. Once I found the time to breathe and step back from the situation I realised that my good friend was pretty much right. Fuck it, I did something that isn’t necessarily conventional in the life of Gee, but I was living my life. It wasn’t something I regretted or didn’t not make the conscious decision to do – neither was it something I denied ever occurring when I woke up with my pit of anxiety. It is so easy to overreact and over analyse a situation when we’re not taking the time to actually understand what it is and the effects.
Probably one of the main reasons I was putting burn marks in my carpet by pacing around in stress over this situation was because it did have effects on other people when they came into knowledge of the event. And because you can never really predict how a person is going to react, you inevitably start to imagine the worst. I was all ready for a pitch fork to the face and a flurry of insults you’d need urban dictionary to define. But still, my good friend’s words ran clearly through my mind. “Oh well, fuck it. Live your life” I feel like I spend a lot of my time tip toeing around other people and trying to live my life the best I can without hurting other them. But it’s inevitable that people are going to get caught in the whiplash of your actions and more often than not this isn’t always our fault. I had to learn in this situation, that though it was bad and people could potentially get hurt, it was better to “make an oops than a what if”.
Sure enough, with the benefit of hindsight, it turned out it wasn’t too much of a big deal and I didn’t get aggressively stabbed in the face or bullied into back into my pit of anxiety. This experience has taught me that we are always too quick to judge and too quick to assume the worst in ourselves and our decisions. Sometimes it is better to just do things that make you happy and live your life and worry about the debris you leave behind at a later date. This isn’t to suggest you go around purposely hurting people because it makes you happy, but perhaps if there is something you want to do but have been holding it off because someone isn’t a fan – you should just go for it. If there is something you can’t feel because someone believe it to be bad, who cares, it’s not their emotional bubble. If you can’t be in a situation because of the fear someone else will judge you then learn not to give a fuck. People will judge you no matter if you do or do not do something, so you might as well do it and be happy.
I’ve started to apply this to other aspects of my life also – if something is making me happy and then suddenly it isn’t in my life anymore. It doesn’t matter “oh well, fuck it” it is time to move on and continue to pursuit the better things in life. I feel like we spend way too much time worrying and reacting and less time actually just living. The way I see it, it’ll either make you happy or it’ll make for a good ‘never have I ever’ or a roast joke in the future.
So, I encourage you all to live by those simple 7 words also. Do what you need to do to be happy and be happy doing it, for gosh sake. If the people effected cannot also step back and understand that this is what you’re doing – living your life – then they are not worth the amount of stress in the first place. Here’s to all the people who didn’t kiss the people they wanted to in fear of rejection or hurting others, here’s to all the people who never got a message back from that hot guy, here’s to all the people who never picked up a new hobby in the fear of judgement or didn’t wear those new shoes because society said it wasn’t the right time.
Start thinking “OH WELL, FUCK IT” and live your god damn lives.
Go Nuts Guys.