Fuck It

Sometimes you just need to throw your hands up to the heavens and yell, “Fuck it!”

I don’t know about you and your stance on swearing but as I’ve added more years to my metaphorical belt, I’ve become a bit of a potty mouth.

The phrase “fuck it” has a particularly delectable taste in my mouth. It feels juicy and sweet and satisfying as I roll it around on my tongue; its uses are wide and varied and I enjoy plucking it down from the tree of verbal expressions to insert in whatever situation I deem appropriate.

When anger rushes through my bloodstream, unleashed from the ignorant or hurtful or misinformed or judgemental words of people who know nothing about what it is to live life with a chronic and invisible disease, “fuck it!” (and maybe, sometimes, a silent “fuck you” too). It is wasted breath, so let me save that precious breath for me.

When my ambitious mind and Type A personality take the reigns and draw up all these goals, intentions, and plans for what I’m going to achieve in the day but three hours after waking, I’m still in bed thinking about how I need to get up and get going, with fatigue cruelly laughing over my weary body, “fuck it”. Spoken in a gentle whisper, whether exhaled on an exhausted breath or sighed quietly in my mind, an acknowledgment that I don’t have to get up, I don’t have to do, it is okay for me to “fuck it” and give in to the stillness that my body needs.

When fear grips me, making my hands ice cold and my breath shallow, feeling uncertain and nervous and scared of propelling myself into trying something new or putting myself out there where I know I’ll feel exposed, vulnerable, and open to judgement, “fuck it!!!”. An exclamation, a blurting out with confidence that I have yet to fully feel, but a “fuck it” nevertheless and I’m going to do it anyway!

When I’ve battled long and hard, tried everything I can think of, spoken every word conceivable, and yet there is no understanding or comprehension awaiting me, “fuck it”. Palms up, head down, a posture of defeat but with this “fuck it”, surrendering is what I’m doing. Surrendering, ceasing the futile efforts, opening myself to what will happen regardless of my attempts to control or change, a giving in to what the universe has in store for me.

Something that I have learned throughout this journey of illness, suffering, and rebuilding is that it is okay for me to find release where I can, so long as I am not inflicting hurt or my pain on others. And if that release, comfort, untethering, and freedom to just be, be and be me, comes from this little expletive, then fuck it, so be it, this is for me.