The Road to Caring Less

9:05 PM Laura Clarissa 0 Comments

At first it starts off like it will never really end. The thing with wanting to care less, is that ultimately you do care to begin with, in fact you probably care a lot. You care so much that it becomes a routine, like putting your clothes on in the morning. But it would be better if that was so, because clothes, with just a few shakes and a few pulls and tugs; they're off. Probably lying on the floor in a crumpled heap, to be picked up whenever it becomes bothersome to step into them whenever you walk into the room. Caring is more like putting a second set of skin, or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth, and maybe even a sixth. It's not rare that someone would wear two sets of skins, but more than that and it starts to get heavy, and it starts wearing you down, and everyday you wonder why your back pains never really go away or why you feel like you've become the older, fatter, uglier version of yourself, or even worse, that you've become a whole different person altogether, buried beneath all of the layers.

Wanting to care less means you've reached a certain peak in caring. If you don't do something about it then, it'll all probably go downhill from there. The worst might be you sobbing in a corner, running your hands over your arms and your legs, desperately trying to feel your bones through the skin and the muscles, and the layers you've built up over caring. You become desperate to feel something not so contrived as the things you've learned to care about, something pure, something yours. Something that hasn't been diluted by a father who seems to be busier in trying to plan out your life than live his own, or hasn't been suppressed by the memory of a love too strong it makes all your own dreams seem menial and temporary, and that the only thing worth looking forward to in this world is the thought that you are not waking up alone the next day. Something that hasn't been crushed by the opinions of those who, from nameless faces in the crowd and names you can only remember the sound of but never the names really, turned to shadows and clowns with jeering faces and broken mirrors and nightmares worse than those that made you pull the covers over your head way back in fourth grade.

So, how do you pick yourself up from this heap of a mess? How do you stop caring?

Care more.

Yes, it sounds ironic, more so stupid. But if you think about it, if you look at it carefully, what's really wrong with the picture? You forgot to care about one thing while you were busy running around caring for you only know well enough what. You forgot about yourself.

We care so much about other things to the point that it becomes a need, and every little thing that isn't quite right about those things sets us off. The tiniest things. A word, a look, a mistake, we roll it around in our minds and let it gather all the other thoughts and insecurities. Just like that, from one tiny thing it snowballs into something that can send us over the edge. Just like any addiction, we become so fixated on the things we've put on top of ourselves that we find that there's no other way to be happy. We let ourselves get consumed and we just spiral into it, and just fall deeper and deeper. Because who doesn't want to be happy? If that's what makes you happy why not do it?

Well imagine if someone took away all those other layers you've been carrying around. Let's say, we use the clothes metaphor. One by one, they peel away, but you've worn them so much, that your own clothes, have become attached, drenched in your sweaty desperation to hang on to them. Then as the second layer peels away, taking with it your own clothes, you're left, naked.

It's never a bad thing to care. So why not care about yourself a little more? You think that the only thing that can make you happy, make you feel safe, make you feel good about yourself, the only thing that can fix you, are all those things and all those people that you're carrying. the truth is there's only one person most equipped to do that. You.

So care more. Instead of sulking about something that happened at work, immerse yourself in your hobby. Do things for the sake of you and only you. You feel like nobody's talked to you in days? Not even a message? Talk to yourself. Tell yourself about you, what makes you a good person and what things you think you might want to change. Tall to yourself about your dreams, regardless if there's anyone to praise you or not if you achieve them. If you care about yourself a little bit more, caring about other things less will probably go hand in hand.

Invest in yourself. Because at the end of the day, you just want to strip yourself down to your birthday suit and feel good about yourself. Regardless of whether there's someone to see it or not. I mean, who cares really?