Heather Christena Schmidt

Nope. I just don’t.

I just don’t care anymore.

I don’t give a fig.

For far too long, I’ve cared far too much. I’ve worried about what people thought of how I was dressed. I agonized over how people considered my hair, my make up, my outfits, the way my ass looked in those pants. I concerned myself with what people thought about things I said, how people responded to ideas that I had, and whether or not I’d offended anyone with my honesty and unrelenting logic.

For hours, I would ponder why we weren’t invited to something. When people came to my house, even for the quickest of moments and most mundane of reasons, I would clean for hours. And hours. And hours. Because I’d worry about what they thought of how I kept my home.

All the while, no one cared one single bit in the same way when it came to me.

No one ever cared how they appeared to me. How they dressed, how their hair or makeup was, how their asses looked in those pants. They didn’t care about how their houses looked when we came over, they never asked why they weren’t invited to something we hosted, and they certainly didn’t care about how we took things that were said to us.

At least they didn’t act like it.

Today my husband and I were talking about some recent, family-related Internet drama. People saying things that are so out of line and direct and just plain nasty because they, quite clearly, don’t care about what others think; then when I say even the remotest and most inoffensive of things, an Internet shit-storm erupts. In light of this, my husband said something so perfect, so true, I almost felt like crying that someone finally recognized the situation for what it is. He said: “Heather, why does everyone else get to say whatever they want, but you and I can’t?”

Because I’ve always cared too much, and they knew it.

The burden of all this caring has weighed on me far too much, though. It’s stressed me out and made me miserable. At some point, I must have realized this on a subconscious level; or more likely at some point I realized that no matter what I do and how much I care, there’s always going to be something wrong and someone unhappy because you just can’t make everyone happy all the time, and more importantly because I wasn’t being true to myself.

So I realized this and the figs began falling from my caring tree.

At first it was just that I didn’t give a shit about what clothing I wore or what make up I had on in specific places. Then most days of the week I stopped wearing make up altogether. I don’t like wearing make up, why am I doing this?! I started asking myself, with my hair everywhere and my yoga pants and tank top reaffirming this new decision.

And then I did this year’s Christmas shopping. I typically agonize over what to buy people. I want them to appreciate the gifts, have use for the gifts, and also be impressed with the intuitive sense I had to get them exactly what they needed or wanted without having to be told. Ridiculous? Um, yes. I still did it, though, because I cared too much.

This year, however, the number of fucks I gave over what we gifted for Christmas was correlative to the number of hours I spent agonizing over it all.

Zero. I spent zero hours. Well, 0.25 to be precise: in just fifteen minutes, I bought gift cards online for everyone and the entire affair was over. Let me be clear: I gave 0.25 fucks about Christmas giving, when every year in my previous 33 years I’ve given all the fucks I had to give.

When I realized that was when I really accepted that I just don’t care anymore. At all.

I don’t care what people think of me or how I look or what I do or what my hobbies are or how I am as a parent or what I wear or how my hair is styled or what I have to say or what I think about any given topic, and I don’t even care about whether or not other people like me or include me in their bullshit. Nine times out of ten I wouldn’t want anything to do with it/them anyway.

By the same token, I don’t care about how others look or what others do or what hobbies other people have or how other people parent or what other people wear or how other people style their hair or what other people have to say or what other people think on any given topic. I’ve been feeling this way for a while now without really realizing it, and now that I do I can see how much less stressed out I am.

I mean my stress level has gone from absurd to “wow, she’s super chill.”

When I was in high school, people used to think I was high on weed pretty much all the time. Now while I did partake in my fair share of pot smoking (what high school kid in the Midwest didn’t?), the times I did were few and far between. The reason why people thought I was high all the time, really, was because I just didn’t care back then. I did what I wanted, said what I wanted, wore what I wanted, and owned who I was. I was relaxed all the time, and loved my life to the point of contentment.

If getting back to that means people assume I’m high all the time, or drunk at every occasion, or – what they’ll all actually assume – just completely insane, well that’s the way it is. Guess what? They can think whatever they want, I know what’s true and that’s really all that matters.

What they think? I just don’t care anymore.