Joan's Resolution

Every year, Joan gets fatter and more depressed. She tries her very best and yet it seems to barely slow her downhill descent.

Every year, Joan resolves to get fitter, shed a few pounds, get a promotion, and get her life on track.

Every year they are the same resolutions, and none of them ever seem to get done.

When Joan was younger, she felt the world was her oyster and she only had to slurp it. Now she is older and it’s just an oyster and the salty after taste and an ugly shell is all she has left.

She tries! Oh how Joan tries. But the rat race was made for people far younger and hotter and thinner than Joan is, smarter and stronger and wiser, and she can’t seem to catch up. Every day she seems to be cleaning yesterday’s messes, every morning a struggle to get out of bed. Oh Joan! Why is your life like this, when 10 years ago you thought you could have it all?

It’s the last day of the year, 2pm, and Joan drags herself out of bed. She was doing a diet, but she forgot to keep doing it and so she never saw results.

“Look at yourself, by the time you hit 50 you won’t be able to walk!”

Her skin is dull, her body aches. She does 5 minutes of yoga, and it doesn’t really help.

“Joan, you are a lazy slob”

When she looks into the mirror, Joan sees a tired hag. Her hair is greasy, and she had bags under her eyes. There is no way she will manage to make herself look good tonight. Like always, Joan will be the ugliest one at the party.

Down in the kitchen, Joan makes herself a tiny amount of food that makes her sad. It feels sad as she chews it, and slides morosely down her throat. Her stomach would shed a tear if it had eyes, but it only had Joan’s eyes, and they were trying to deny how miserable the food was.

Joan’s eyes squinted through the slightly cracked blinds into the garden outside. It was quite wild because she never had the time or energy to garden.

“The garden looks terrible.”

Joan berated herself out loud but actually there was something nice about the way the garden just did what it liked. She wondered if the grass cared about being the greenest, or if it was just happy with how green it had managed on its own.

She’s back in the bedroom picking out an outfit. To nobody’s surprise, Joan thinks everything sucks. The curtains are drawn, and the room is all shadows; Joan’s reflection looks like a monster. Her eyes are large and empty looking, her mouth softly downturned in the look of lazy distaste.

“I look like the walking dead wearing sequins”

She can’t even be witty to herself, let alone other people. Tonight is going to be a night of miserable socializing, alcoholism and existing. At least she will avoid the fomo. Hopefully, there will be a good picture and she can post it and pretend she had fun. She chooses some jeans and a black halter-neck from the closet. Plain enough. She will blend in. she doesn’t feel yuck.

In the bathroom putting on mascara, Joan can’t seem to catch a break from her own critical eye. A wrinkle, a spot, a tiny zit. The magnifying mirror will catch it all.

Why does she even use this thing, when it just makes her more unhappy about her skin! Joan puts the mirror down, and uses the normal one to do her makeup. The voice in her head settles.

Joan backs away from the mirror.

“You look ok.”

Well, perhaps it’s a positive start?

Joan has a few hours to kill before the party so she thinks about eating, and then decides not to. She sits on the floor in her darkened room, and waits. Her tummy growls. She lies on the floor, and closes her eyes, trying to forget about the hunger.

She scrunches her eyes deep.

She tries hard to think about anything but food.

…

The carpet is soft, a little bit scratchy. Joan can feel her whole body lying on the carpet, connecting with the floor. She is melting. Her body feels infinite. There is a beam of sunlight from between the curtains, it’s warm on her wrist like a friend’s soft touch.

The sunlight is now an addiction, and Joan stands up and walks into the garden. The fresh air and overgrown vegetation hit her nose with a sweet fresh smell. What a time to be alive! Wildflowers are blooming and the sun shines bright green through the tall grass.

“I could never have grown a garden like this if I tried”

Joan said to herself, but even though she meant to berate it came out more like a gasp of wonder. It was really beautiful, and it had just grown out of nowhere when Joan had let it be. Orange and yellow flowers danced in the mess of green, an organic mosaic for the birds, the bees, and Joan to see. Little blue ladybugs hid on the undersides of leaves. There was a trail of ants marching into a crack in the pavement, and pretty birds chirped all around. From her dark and gloomy morning Joan felt like she had stepped into another world.

Joan didn’t feel hungry anymore, and she also didn’t feel sad. Joan wasn’t thinking about her dry skin or her pudgy tummy, that her peers all had better jobs or nicer flats or cooler cars. Nothing in the garden cared about what the rest of Joan’s world was doing, they were all so wrapped up in their own groove it didn’t really matter. The ants didn’t care if the ladybugs had a cooler leaf, and the grass didn’t wish it were an orange flower rather than green. Joan spun in the sunlight and landed on a short patch of grass, slightly dewy and with little bugs crawling all around.

And none of them cared about Joan! They just moved through their day around her, and none of them thought ‘Oh she’s not very pretty’ and none of them thought ‘She has no friends or career’ and Joan knew this and she suddenly didn’t feel like saying something mean to herself like she usually did and instead she laughed

“I don’t care!”

Joan jumped up and raced to the kitchen, she ate something that made her tummy feel good. She smiled.

She looked in her bedroom mirror at her body, which she was still not happy with. And she thought about how the ants just crawled over her anyway, and she felt something fall off her shoulders and she learned to care just a little less.

She stretched her arms high and smiled and she realized she was right! She did look ok. She looked totally fine!

No resolutions, no goals to fail at and no disappointments to make. Joan had suddenly found a new way of thinking, and with less than 10 hours left of the old year, she found herself with new eyes facing the new year free.

…

Joan came into the new year without a single resolution, not one made and not one broken. She still had work to do on herself, on her life.

There were bad days where she let herself feel hungry or sad still.

But she let the garden grow wild and cut herself a bit of slack, and I think she’s going to keep having better years from now on, with no resolutions.