#PromptParty 1 post on courage (or, a hopefully uplifting poem in which I drop many many f-bombs)

Thanks to @Shawnamawna for starting #promptparty and giving us all a chance to reflect on a weekly theme or topic.

One of my struggles is anxiety about issues I can't control. Usually these issues are small and pertain only to me. They are adolescent worries about belonging, public humiliation, thinking everyone is laughing at, completely disregarding, or being appalled by me.

These are nonsense worries. They are energy vampire worries. They seem real enough to me when they're making my hands shake and my thoughts race; but in the grand scheme of this world, this America, this white supremacist patriarchal hellscape I'm living in with relative privilege, they matter notatall.

I've decided, this is courage: to care about others. Not just to say we care, but to actually give our mindspace over to that caring, while necessarily letting go of the nonsense worries about saying something wrong in a work meeting or whatever stupid me-centric thing it is I'm worried about on any given day.

This poem came to me last week as a first stanza while I was showering, and I laughed while writing it because I didn't think it would see an audience and therefore suspended my anxiety about it seeing an audience (except oh look, Steemit audience, eek). I wish it were this easy! But nothing worthwhile is easy, and having the courage to care about others is not just worthwhile, but vital. This poem is born out of my frustration with my anxiety, my desire to be rid of it even as I insist that some things are worth caring about--and that in fact, caring about REAL things and people is the best distraction from anxiety (that and writing silly poems, of course).

I hope you like it.

I won't apologize for my potty mouth, but you can bet I'll worry later about having offended all of you. ;)

How I broke my giveafuck-er

Sat on it. I wanted it to kiss my ass
and it wouldn’t, so I fixed the problem
of fucks-giving by taking a seat, first class,
hot towel sopping up hot martyr mess.

Aged a bit. I’m letting the silver grow in,
ethereal threads that speak my past
without tethering me to it, waving around
my shoulders at the years like silly dears.

Loved my body. Literal fucks only to the worthy.
Lotus in the AM, PM child’s pose,
sensible shoes, mountain trails, sunscreen.
An apple a day keeps the fucks away.

Differentiated. Anxiety has never had
a giveafuck-er but I have, and we
are not the same thing
and I’m a person not a fucking thing,

and so were the boys those cops killed,
and so were the women those men raped,
and so were the children those rich bombed,
and so were the lovers those ‘phobes hate,

and if you think I’ve misled you, that this
is my giveafuck-er Lazarus-ing, you’re wrong,
this is my heart and a heart
doesn’t have a giveafuck-er either,

a heart doesn’t give a fuck
who it loves, just loves, just
shoves the parsley of fucks aside
to get to the meat and potatoes,

gluts on no fucks, belches no fucks,
throws fucks away wrapped in a paper napkin.
Be like a heart, my giveafuck-er never said,
because it knew real cares would kill it dead.