You Can’t Choose Your Hard

This one’s been on my mind for awhile so I’m gonna go ahead and include the warning that I’m writing this while angry. There’s this meme all around the internet telling people that they can “choose their hard”. It goes something like this: “Being overweight is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard. Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard.” I think this message is crap. Yes, being a human is hard. Really hard. We were not put on this planet to judge the life choices of our fellow humans that truly do not impact us in any way. I say this as a very judgey person. I judge rude people, people who don’t tip well but are clearly able to, people who don’t wear masks, but most of all I judge people who spend their days judging other humans for simply living.

Let’s start with the whole overweight thing. According to the BMI scale, I’ve been overweight since I was 15. Currently, I’m 8 pounds away from being considered obese according to the BMI. And yet according to me and my clothes, I am just fine right where I am. I suppose if I were to only eat 1000-1200 calories a day and never do any weight bearing exercises to maintain muscle mass that I could probably drop 30 pounds in a relatively short period of time and be considered “healthy”. My hungry little self wouldn’t have the endurance to go run however many miles she wanted on a given day or lift heavy weights, but I’d be “healthy”. Yeah, no. If there’s a choice to be made here, I’m gonna choose the one where I get to eat foods that not only make my body feel it’s best, but also taste super delicious. 

For a period of time in high school, I got all sorts of self conscious around my body and tried to control how it looked by depriving myself of food. I had what we would consider to be disordered eating aka if I’d continued on that path, it would have likely led to anorexia. For me, a lot of that time revolved around trying to gain control over what I could because my anxiety was at a high. But a huge chunk of it was also the messaging that we give young people, particularly young women. That there’s a “right” way to look. That in order to feel good in our clothes, in our shape, that we have to maintain some sort of magic weight or pant size. And that’s frightening. We were all made with different, beautiful bodies. Many people could eat 1000 calories a day and exercise until they are blue in the face and still be “overweight” because they were given a body that is just gonna be the shape it is. Maybe you have PCOS or endometriosis or any sort of inflammatory condition that causes your body to be “overweight”. Maybe we shouldn’t place any emphasis on the shape or weight of a person but rather on how they feel. Because there are a lot of “overweight” people in the world who choose to be both “overweight” and fit. And that’s awesome. 

Next up, marriage and divorce. Yep, they are both hard too. I can only speak personally about marriage because I haven’t been divorced but marriage is super hard. Choosing to spend the grand majority of your life with another person is hard. Considering that person’s wants, needs, and desires when you make your choices is hard. You give up a great deal of independence when you choose to get married. You are confronted with the need to constantly communicate with another person and feel intense empathy for them. I’ve witnessed how hard divorce is too. The factors that go into someone choosing to end a marriage are heartbreaking and immensely hard. But I do believe that anyone who chooses divorce does so because they are taking the necessary step to take care of themselves. We are at our core as humans responsible for putting our needs at the forefront of our lives so that we may live the joyful, rich life we were created to have. And sometimes that means that the relationship we chose to enter into isn’t working and the best choice is to end that relationship and move the eff on. The alternative for many people would be living in a marriage that has no joy. And if you have children, even if you are the greatest parents in the world, a shitty marriage is just basically two roommates who are excellent at parenting but are bitter at each other. And then kids see that and hear how you relate to each other and soak up all that bitter. You can’t choose your hard here. You can choose whatever is best for you. For some people, that’s marriage. For some people, that’s divorce. Both are perfectly valid and acceptable decisions and this judgey meme might make someone think they should stay in a shitty relationship. That sucks.

I want people to know that while life will always be full of hard choices, very few choices are wrong. The reason I’m so angry about this meme is because it clearly makes a value judgment about what is right or wrong. Somehow being overweight or getting divorced are wrong. Therefore, people who are divorced or overweight must feel lacking in some way and so so sad  and we should feel pity for them and try to help save them. No dude. Every “overweight” person that I know is pretty fucking awesome. While society tells them constantly that the way they look is wrong, they are out here living lives full of joy. Similarly, everyone I know who’s been divorced seems to be in a much happier place as time passes. They made a brave choice to get themselves out of a situation that wasn’t working for them. I think that’s a huge cause for celebration and joy. It takes so much courage to go through a process that many people just as a failure when really it is a beautiful way to take control of your joy and live the life you deserve. When people live with a moral code that values kindness, respect, and love not only for others but for themselves, there’s no room for this whole “choose your hard” business. There’s just room for being the best you every day and you are the only person who gets to define what that means.