I’m a modern woman with a family and a full-time career, and while I can’t always control what happens in either of those spheres of my life, I always thought I could rely on my own self-care routine as a predictable source of stress relief. After all, if there’s one thing a woman should know how to do correctly, it is to love herself. So imagine how I felt when I realized I’ve been doing self-care completely wrong all this time.
Well, I’ll tell you: I fucking lost my shit and started a new life.
I was sitting in my tub, which I’d filled with melon daiquiri-scented suds because I was prepared to do this shit right, when I opened my magazine onto an article titled 11,000 Things You Need to Do ‘You Time’ Well Enough. My whole life I’d thought taking a bubble bath proved I loved myself sufficiently, and only now I was discovering that there was so much more. A $46 face mist? Fuck, I was fucking this shit up so badly.
“My God…” I thought to myself, “If I can’t even self-care right, what else in my life have I been utterly ruining?”
Unable to fathom how I’d failed so badly at caring for myself, I snapped. I left my family that night, took the keys to my Buick and headed across the country with no destination other in mind other than epic self-care. I drove until it felt impossible to ever turn back, and until I felt free from the mistakes I’d made at treating myself, like not properly moisturizing my neck or drinking fruit-enhanced water. Using a pair of safety scissors I’d thrown in my purse, I cut all my hair off in a truck stop bathroom off of I-95. I could barely recognize the woman looking back at me in the mirror. I suspected the hairstyle wasn’t quite right for her face shape, but I also didn’t care.
Now that I was capable of doing self-care wrong, I was capable of doing anything wrong. It was so invigorating!
I ended up driving until I reached the Pacific Northwest, where I’d no longer be haunted by questions from my past life of failed self-care, such as, “What is a milk soak?” “What’s the point of a beverage that’s isn’t a treat?” and “Which oatmeal soap will bring me the most serenity for under $12?” I finally lost any sense of self or self-care. I was finally free. But that’s mostly because no one can ever find me here. I burned my driver’s license in the ashtray of my car.
It might be a strange life I lead, but at least a magazine can never tell me I’m “masturbating wrong” again, because I also don’t read anymore and that’s just part of how I self-care now. And now, no one can tell me any differently!
