New Rules: 3 Mantras For The Modern Me
New Year’s Resolutions be damned, you can make new rules at any time of the year. These rules have been in motion before now, I want that to be clear. I’m not making a sudden, snap decision. Rather I’ve made these into rules following the realisation that I want to make these mantras a part of my day-to-day thinking.
The thinking that led me to these new rules began when I was reading the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 comic book. The first volume shares a name with Dua Lipa’s hit song, and this post, “New Rules”. Both share the sentiment that, at a certain point, we have to realise that the set of ways in which we operated, the way we lived and how we feel about our actions and the actions of others, have changed.
So, without further ado, here are my three new rules.
New Rule 1: You don’t have to drink alcohol
Within the last year I’ve come to the realisation that alcohol doesn’t make me feel good. I thought it did. I think I was a bit brainwashed by media and my favourite fictional characters, the ones who drank to drown their sorrows, or got pissed and did the thing they always wanted to do but never had the courage to do. I’ve done lots of things I didn’t think I would be able to do, just because I was drunk. Some of it good, some of it bad, most of it “not me”.
I can’t claim that drinking made me into a different person. Often I still have the memories and those memories are of my body dancing on tables, kissing people in parks, having obnoxious arguments, lying alone. What I didn’t realise at the time was that the alcohol was the trigger for a lot of the more painful emotions that I was trying to keep at bay. The highs were high but the lows were low. The falls and the rises all came when I was drunk.
Bars and spaces serving alcohol are often what we think of when it comes to queer spaces, gay bars in particular are a mainstay (although dwindling in numbers in cities like London). They are layered into the queer narrative, at least as it has been.
I don’t have to drink alcohol any more, and that includes at parties or bars. I’ve read that, anecdotally, those sorts of events are the hardest for people not to drink at. When I think of those doing Dry January or some similar self-inflicted detoxes, they tend to avoid those events because they are triggers to drinking. The pressure or expectation or want to get as tipsy and drunk as everyone else is too much to resist. But the FOMO keeps them away, or else they go and let themselves go back to the norm. Drinking.
Now, I don’t think that I’m an alcoholic, and that’s important to say because why I’m not drinking and how I modulate it is in a way that is comfortable for me. It won’t be the same for someone who can’t stop themselves from drinking to excess, which I can do. I used to call it my homing beacon because at a certain point my brain would wake up and tell my body to make a french exit and go home. I’d have clear memories of walking, swaying on the bus, even getting my keys in the door then blank. I’d wake up in bed the next day, with all my stuff and a bit of a hangover. Some people I know can get so drunk they throw up (multiple times), get in fights or just pass out from drunkenness instead of stopping.
The most powerful part of realising that I don’t need to drink alcohol is that I also have enough conviction to deal with people who want to question that, including family and friends. Some people get very uncomfortable when those around them are not drinking and they are. That’s fine, as long as they don’t make me feel like I should be drinking after I rebuttal it. Because then that’s a toxic situation and I’m not here to tolerate that. It’s not worth it for me. I’d rather be sober than with people who don’t want to be around me when I’m not drinking.
New Rule 2: My phone is not a replacement for a friend
This might sound like quite an abstract one, but it’s actually specific. I’ve started to notice that Instagram has begun adding interstitial messages when I’ve “seen all the posts” in a specific time frame. Aka, when I’ve scrolled through so many Instagram posts that I have seen all the ones posted in the last, say, two days. That is frightening. Either I follow plenty of people who rarely post, or I have been spending too much time checking my social media.
Since going freelance, I’ve had even more time to check in on Twitter, Tumblr (I’ve re-downloaded the app to my phone) along with other various quick-hit-endorphin apps. Hitting an icon to open one app after the other, cycling between them one after the other, over and over, for minutes and hours, has become such a frequent, go-to, that its muscle memory. Sometimes I close the app, lock my phone, then immediately pick it back up and open the same app again. SHOCKINGLY, in the maybe 3 seconds it takes to do that, there weren’t any new posts! If there are, then I’m back down the rabbit hole.
Since Instagram added the new Stories part, where you can add short videos or still images of what you are up to, the time I can spend engaging with that app alone has increased greatly. In fact, I’m starting to think that users on the app are updating the Stories function more than actually posting. A theory I’ll leave for someone else to properly investigate in due time. What I’m looking for when I open Twitter or Instagram, the two most common ones I use, is some tidbit of information, or comment from someone I know that I can respond to. I want to connect, share a thought or have a discussion. I do it when I’m alone, lonely or bored. I want someone to speak to. In that way it feels like I’m treating the phone like a friend, looking to see someone who is available or willing to chat, when really I should be USING the phone to call or text someone.
Giving someone a reaction on social media feels like the polite way of not interrupting their day, as though they’ve raised a topic and given you to opportunity to comment on it. It’s your chance to make conversation. At least that is the nicer way of putting it. You might also see it as the other person acting like someone who just got engaged and who is twirling their hand around trying to get the people around them to notice they have a new adornment.
Social media can be a valuable tool for many, but if the interaction that you are having feels like you are interacting with the device, rather than the person on the other side, that has to be an issue, right?
My new rule is to make sure that my new phone isn’t the “friend” I reach out too, only that it’s the tool I use to reach out to someone. Prepare yourselves friends, you are about to get some phone calls! (I know, in this day and age?!)
New Rule 3: Accept the past, but live in the present
I am notoriously bad at living in the present. My own mother recently reminded me that I have never really been spontaneous or even close to that. More often than not I’ll make an internal monologue-esque speech to myself which takes just long enough for me to convince myself not to do the thing I wanted to do but wasn’t sure I should do. My own mind has a paralysing power over my body.
The other way in which I let myself deep dive into a solitary existence (not to be dramatic about it), is that I overly dwell on the past. I want to right the wrongs, both in terms of what others have done to me and what I’ve done to them and myself. I thought only Catholics had this much guilt. Like most people, there is a lot that has happened to me, big and small, and the lasting effects of which have made me who I am. For better or worse. One of my oldest friends, someone I met at school, once told me that in order for me to be who I am today, I had to make all the exact choices I made that got me there. It felt prophetic at 13 years old, and it stuck with me, though I didn’t really take it in until recently.
Accepting the past, for me at least, doesn’t mean being completely comfortable with everything but it means saying: that happened, I’ve accepted it, and it’s not a rule that I have to live my life by. Too often, I’ve spent time reflecting on the past and deciding that it is the template for which I should be living my life. It could be small choices, like saying I don’t like lamb or don’t like rap music, or bigger ones, such as I can never trust that person after they betrayed me or I need to prove my sexuality to those closest to me in visible ways because I don’t think they believe me. Most of these assumptions and rules aren’t based on who I am now, but who I was then and how I reacted then. I’m 28 years old and I’ve changed a lot. Now I need to accept that I have a new normal.
Accepting the past also means forgiving others, though not forgetting what they did. Punishing someone when they have no idea what is happening, whether they care or not, is only more work for me. IT HAS TAKEN ME SO LONG TO GET THAT. It’s the difference between knowing and understanding. I have known that for a long time, but I didn’t get it before.
I’m sure there are many more new rules that I’ll make along the way, these are the three that stand out most to me right now. They are the ones to remind myself of, the ones I need to remember right now.
