Madeleine Trebenski - Do I Feel Better Yet?: Questionable Attempts at Self-Care and Existing in General

Copyright 2022 by Madeleine Trebenski.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

The following essays were originally published on McSweeneys Internet Tendency: I Got My Bangin Beach Bod from an Evil Sea Witch and So Can You!, My Life Has No Meaning, but Have You Tried the New Toaster?, The Ten Commandments of Workism, Anything Men Can Do I Can Do Bleeding, Im Your Outdoor Dream Girl and Not an Evil Wood Nymph Who Wants to Steal Your Soul.

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ISBN 978-1-7972-1254-8 (pb)

ISBN 978-1-7972-1255-5 (epub)

Design by Pamela Geismar. Cover design and interior handwriting by Alex Merto. Author photograph by Rob Stone. Typesetting by Happenstance Type-O-Rama. Typeset in Minion and Avenir.

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For my mum and dad, who have always tried to make me feel better about everything.

If youve ever dared to express a negative feeling about the state of your lifewhether its because of physical discomfort, nagging dissatisfaction, or just general unhappinessyouve probably received various suggestions, both wanted and unwanted, on how to fix it. Maybe youve told your parents youre stressed, and theyve replied, Have you tried working out? Maybe youve gone looking for answers to your problems on the internet with search terms like crystals for anxiety? or depression in my microbiome? and gotten answers like, Have you tried reiki? or Have you tried probiotics? Or maybe youve explained your chronic back pain to your coworkers while lying on the floor next to your desk, and ended up with questions like Have you tried a standing desk? or Have you ever heard of cryotherapy?

Ive found that the more I make it known that Im some amount of sad, angry, hurting, worried, or stressed, the more well-meaning advice Im likely to get on how to make it better.

Have you tried:

• Meditation?
• Pilates?
• Getting up at dawn every day?
• Drinking vinegar every morning?
• This $30 adaptogen dust?
• Intermittent fasting?
• Eating only raw foods?
• Setting aside just fifteen minutes a day for you time?
• Setting aside just fifteen minutes a day for you to intermittently drink raw vinegar and eat adaptogenic fasting dust before doing a meditative Pilates session at dawn?

I both love and hate these kinds of suggestions, and I get them frequently. Because, for whatever reason, I seem to be more willing than most people to let everyone around me know when Im not okay; maybe my brain is a bit broken, or Im missing some important social filter. For better or worse, I get an above-average amount of helpful suggestions for how to take care of myself, and Ive tried a fair number of them at this point. I love the momentary burst of hope they give me. What if this one thing is the answer to it all? But I also kind of hate them because what if a tangible solution isnt always what Im looking for when I tell people Im not okay?

After I try most things, I find myself thinking, Did it work? Am I fixed? Do I feel better? It can be incredibly hard to tell, especially since Im not confident that Ive ever known what it feels like to be 100 percent okay. The truth is, it can be surprisingly difficult to differentiate between decent advice (exercise provides good endorphins) and utter nonsense (sticking a jade egg up your vagina provides healing energy). It seems safe enough to trust suggestions like sleeping more, eating vegetables, and getting your heart rate up occasionally. But what about the more difficult to pin down promises of things like: fad diets, dream jobs, antiaging face masks, scented candles, fancy underwear sets, gratitude journals, matcha lattes, energy healing, aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, flotation therapy, green juices, acupuncture, urban farming, herbal supplements, astrology, eye creams, nature bathing, obsessive hydration, and cleaning appliances equipped with artificial intelligence? Does any of that stuff make you feel better? And how do you know for sure? How does one measure the effectiveness of a vaginally inserted jade egg?

All the preceding suggestions, whether theyre legitimately helpful or not, get lumped under the umbrella of self-care. Maybe this term was once just a helpful reminder to take care of yourself, but more and more it seems to be used as a catchallthe ultimate solution to every little ache, pain, wrinkle, or insecurity in your life:

1. Feeling down?
2. Have you tried self-care?
3. Feeling burned out by your demanding job?
4. Its time to practice some self-care.
5. Suffering from some mysterious stress-related pain that doctors think is psychosomatic?
6. You just need a little self-care!

The definition of what counts as self-care seems infinitely expandable to cover anything and everything you could possibly want to justify. I wouldnt be surprised to see it used as a legal defense someday: Your Honor, my client had to rob that bankit was an act of self-care.

The thing is, despite my skepticism of the term and all that comes with it, Ive fallen for its promises on numerous occasions. Dont we all attempt to fix complex mental health and lifestyle issues with an essential oil diffuser at least once in our lives? I know Im not the only one who has thought that drinking homemade kombucha, doing hot yoga, or owning handmade ceramics was going to single-handedly solve all my problems.

Some of my attempts at feeling better have been extremely dumb, some have kind of worked, and some were brief hallucinations that never actually happened. For this book, Ive gathered them into a collection of stories, jokes, and occasionally utter nonsense, and organized them according to the following categories: exercise, food, work, buying things, love/sex, nature, religion, relaxation, and taking care of something other than yourself. I cant claim to be an expert on any of these subjects, but Im going to offer up my thoughts anywaymostly based on what Ive learned from being so incredibly wrong so many times.

Its worth noting here that nothing I write is meant to be taken as serious advice. Im not a very serious person, and giving advice is for someone who knows what theyre doing with their life, not someone who once bought an expensive weighted blanket to help with their anxiety and ended up giving themselves a claustrophobic panic attack instead. Listening to me too closely would be like letting the serotonin deficient lead the potentially serotonin deficient right off the maybe-I-can-find-happiness-somewhere-outside-of-myself cliff.

What Im hoping is that my mostly failed attempts at self-care will make you laugh, make you feel less alone, and maybe even make you feel better for just a little while. I dont think anyone has all the answers, but I also think its fun to keep looking for them anyway. Hence, why Im still asking myself that elusive question I may never have the answer to: Do I feel better yet?