Picture this: You walk into work on a random Thursday morning to then have your coworker pull you into the breakroom and utter the potentially traumatising words, “You’ll never guess what I heard.” You groan because you know you’re under-caffeinated, but listen to her confession. You zone out after hearing her say the words, “She saw him with her. I’m sorry.”
Unfortunately, you have about forty-five seconds left to clock in, and don’t have the time to silence the seventy questions running around your mind. She asks the dreaded, “Are you okay?” And you utter the unconvincing, “I’m fine.” Or one of my personal favourites, “I don’t care.”
Is it a delusion? The words said aloud to somehow convince your mind that you don’t care. All the while you realise that time doesn’t slow down at the expense of your hurting. The world is always moving but I suppose in a way it’s comforting because you are never left behind.
What isn’t comforting? Living a hypothetical scenario where you get cheated on, and find out minutes before work. But of course I “don’t care.” Here is what I do when “I don’t care.”
Lay in bed and cry like no tomorrow
I personally like to play the Evermore album in the background for dramatic affect.
Whether it is disappointment or frustration, it’s important to nurture your feelings. While I envy those who can comfortably cry in public, I personally like to curl up in a ball and sob into a pillow. These moments of vulnerability are sometimes when I feel the lowest, but I have found them the most effective for letting out emotions. And yes, we’re all different and feel things differently, but we all still feel them. Anger is there for a reason, and whether it arises at first or comes along later, you cannot dismiss it. Even if it meets muffling cries into a pillow so people don’t hear, or thinking about the cold spoons you will have to use to depuff your face in the morning, crying? It hasn’t let me down.
Rant for approximately a week straight
If you have had the disadvantage of being there when I spend hours angrily repeating the same story a hundred different times, I sincerely apologise but cannot promise I will not do the same in the unforeseeable future.
There just seems to be something healing about that moment you cannot stop babbling on about the betrayal you feel, or the disappointment that came after. If you ask me,“ranting” is just an energetic way of saying, “processing out loud.” Sometimes by the end of my heated monologue, I find myself validated and with some sort of solution. Sometimes there is no solution. But by the end of it, I always feel lighter.
Make a playlist that illustrates exactly how I feel
From the playlist name to the songs I add, it will be the most accurate depiction of my feelings.
This one is my personal favourite because it takes a moment but the aftermath is always wonderful. Here is an example with a couple of songs: The playlist name would of course be: I don’t care.
The cover is a tragically sad Pinterest photo, and the playlist caption is probably a song lyric.
A couple of songs appropriate for the occasion include: Marjorie by Taylor Swift, Happiness by Taylor Swift, My Tears Ricochet (by yes, Taylor Swift) and Work Song by Hozier.
(Now would be the best time to go back to step one and cry in bed but that is completely optional.)
Honestly? Hope tomorrow will be better.
Maybe today “I don’t care.” But I hope that tomorrow I really won’t.
You see, not caring is overrated if you ask me. The “I’m fine’s” and “I don’t care’s” are pointless. Caring is the whole point. Feeling everything entirely is the whole point. I think that’s one of the reasons we are here on Earth – to spend time experiencing emotions we have never felt before, and give ourselves a chance to make mistakes trying to process them.
Louise Erdrich wrote: “You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.”
With that said, I can assure you that I am not an emotion expert. I am an avid user of the “I don’t care.” Maybe I’ll grin, or maybe I’ll laugh it off. But I can tell you this much, I care, and my journal will absolutely have angry scribbles written inside of it by 2:00 am. It just takes more energy “not caring” than it does to just exist, don’t you think?