Image credit: Mariah Aro Sharp @mightymooseart
A bipolar, body-positive bread enthusiast with a fucked-up pretty much healed ankle and a history of disordered eating chronicles health, weight-loss, and gardening. No diets allowed.
The world wants you to feel guilty. Don’t believe me? I dare you to listen to Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” and not think about all of the puppies that you aren’t saving.
OH I’M SORRY DID YOU FORGET THAT COMMERCIAL?
LET ME REMIND YOU.
Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t at least think about calling that 888 number.
(It’s 1-888-354-4441. No phone nearby? HERE IS THE WEBSITE.)
Even Sarah McLachlan wants you to feel like shit.
Look, there are at least 1000 things I feel guilty about without even trying:
- Last month when I told my husband I recycled the two tons of Amazon boxes but really I just threw them in the garbage because the recycle can was full.
- That time I accidentally Bettie Page’d my bangs and made my best friend cut her hair to match.
- Polar bears living in zoos where there is no snow.
- Animals living in captivity in general.
- Grocery bags that aren’t reusable.
- All of the years I drove a car that only got 12 MPG city.
- Having bipolar disorder.
- Having kids.
- Having kid(s) that have bipolar disorder because of me having them even though I have it.
- Plastic.
- Global warming.
- Leaving the light on in the downstairs bedroom for three days.
But here are some things I just will not feel shitty about:
Nutella
OK. It’s basically fat and sugar. I know.
YOU KNOW WHY?
BECAUSE AMAZING THINGS ARE FULL OF FAT AND SUGAR.
SURE it has palm oil and palm oil like exploits people in underdeveloped nations. BUT the people at Nutella say they ethically source their palm oil, and I believe them. And frankly, if they’re lying, I don’t want to know because Nutella is fuckin delicious.
I will never stop eating it. I will never try to replace it because there is no hippie-ass coconut oil cacao cocoa-nib replacement for something this incredible.
Sleep
You know what your body needs to survive? Water and sleep. If you’ve got a bag of dry pinto beans and corn tortillas, you literally never need anything else. (That’s true and I’ll never forget it because my weirdo philosophy professor who lived half the year in Oaxaca taught me that in between Aristotle and Nietzsche and my muffled sobs of exhaustion.)
I skipped out on sleep for like 20 years at least. Guess what happens when you “push through” and “toughen up” because the world made you think that’s how you get ahead? YOU DIE BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE.
All that lack of sleep = stress and stress = elevated corticosteroids and blah blah science. Just trust me. Losing sleep will almost never benefit you.
I will sleep. Whenever I can and/or want to.
Honey
Dammit, you vegans. Why are you trying to make me feel like shit for eating honey?
You do know that honey is essentially bee vomit, right? Like, they don’t need all of that and they don’t actually care that we are taking it. And it’s a delicious natural sweetener and also the only food that has no expiration date.
So shush about it and let me enjoy my bee puke in peace.
Leggings
Just stop saying leggings aren’t pants. Pants are things that cover your legs. Leggings cover your legs. Leggings are pants.
And even if you could somehow redefine pants to exclude leggings, I’m still going to wear them because I hate buttons and zippers and anything else that makes me feel like I’m being stabbed every time I sit down.
My pug
Yes, I have a purebred dog. Yes, I paid actual money for her. NO it was not to the pound. SORRY SARAH, BUT FUCK OFF.
I also have a dog from the pound, a cat that we found in a bush at a school, a tortoise that was willed to me by a former hospice patient, and four hens we got from a ranch where a four-year-old demon child was taunting them.
I paid for my dog. Since then, I’ve paid for her to have a face lift, bladder surgery, multiple eye treatments (ultimately resulting in loss of vision in her left eye), many cases of unexplained diarrhea, AND an eventual right eye removal. I hear you accusing me of breeding her, and she’s spayed so just shut up.
This dog has cost me more than a pretty nice car and now she’s completely blind and spends hers days barking at a chair, bumping into the wall, and whimpering at the bottom of the staircase when she realizes she’s downstairs alone.
I’m paying the vet’s kid’s college tuition okay?
Wasting water
Yes, California has been in a terrible drought for many years. And yes, we do grow a lot of the world’s food. So yes, we need that water.
But my luxuriating in a bath is not causing any people in any nation to starve. So I am going to fill that bitch to the very top and them I’m going to drop a Lush bath bomb that I paid too much money for in it. And when I’m done, I’m not even going to recycle that water for ANYTHING.
It’s going down the drain, and I’m going to sleep.
Screw you, Sarah.
(Just kidding, I love you Sarah. I’m going to give $100 to the SPCA right now.)
