Eva Jaber ’28 (she/her) is a prospective English or international relations major. She is a member of the Cleftomaniacs, an a cappella group, an ESL tutor and hopes to encourage peace-minded advocacy on campus. Contact her at ehjaber@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
I’m gonna cut right to the chase. I’ve been taking everything this week super personally. It’s the 13th Apple, so maybe we’re just cursed from the start. Like, look at this question that someone sent in:
“eva when oh WHEN will you quit with the six seven?! what does it even MEAN?”
I’ll answer your question with a different question. Who do you think you are? You might as well have just insulted my mother. You know what I read when I look at this pathetic question?
“Hi Eva. Why is your mom, Rolla Jaber, such a fool? What kind of name is Rolla? Had your dad been named Marwan Coaster, she would have been named Rolla Coaster. Ever thought of that? Your mom’s a loser and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. It literally fell vertically and didn’t roll and is just sitting right under the tree rotting right to its core à la Charli XCX.”
Hear me when I say this. Listen real close. If you EVER talk about my mom like that again, imma invite you to the staircase that I film my singing TikToks in at the late hour of 6 or 7 p.m. (it’s daylight savings, so it’ll be dark as can be outside.) Then, I will square up with you. And when I say square up, I mean it in the most literal sense. I will be juggling a bunch of cardboard boxes, throwing those squares up into the air. And you bet your bottom dollar I won’t drop them. Can you juggle? Prolly not. You’re gonna be embarrassed. You’re gonna wish you never uttered my mom’s name out of your pathetic little mouth.
[four(ish) hours pass and I come back to this Google Doc]Sorry. See what I mean? I’ve been taking everything suuuuuper personally. BUT, I learned something recently that changes the way I look at everything! Ever since four hours ago when I learned this fact, my world transformed. I will impart this knowledge upon you, so you can learn the one true solution to the question of the week:
“How do I stop taking things so personally?”
As you may have been able to tell, before my massive character arc, I took a lot of general comments to be attacks on my identity, character, family line, etc. But four hours ago I learned that not one, not two, not the two numbers after two, but FIVE planets are in retrograde right now! What does that mean? Apparently, retrograde is when a planet looks like it’s moving backward from Earth’s perspective. When Mercury is in retrograde, you can blame everything that goes wrong on it. So, when Mercury and four other planets are in retrograde, word on the street is you’re allowed to literally forget how to take accountability for any wrongdoing without facing any consequences.
This means that I was only taking things so personally because of the quintuple retrograde happening up there. So is the way for you to stop taking things so personally just to wait for there not to be cosmic chaos? Nononono you fool. Ever heard of a double negative? To right the cosmic balance, we have to put everything else in our life in retrograde. In other words, we have to completely repel everyone and everything until this curse of insecurity is negated. Trust me on this. Here’s how you do it:
- Put your friends in retrograde. All you have to do is cook a big pot of risotto and then ladle it into all your friends’ shoes while they sleep. Then, when they rush into class wearing their risotto shoes without any idea of how the risotto got there or any time to change, it’s time to strike. At a moment of deep silence in between lecture slides, shout “WHO STANKS OF RISOTTO?!” Immediate checkmate. Boom. You’ve embarrassed your friend beyond recovery. They’ll hate you forever and not speak to you again (I know this from personal experience.) Then, repeat once for every friend you have. So you’ll only have to do this like twice.
- Put your classes in retrograde. Stop going to class. Instead, send six or seven campus squirrels wearing a trench coat and a wig in your place. If your professor is especially observant, they’ll probably notice that you are, for whatever reason, much better looking today. They’ll compliment you on your glow up, to which the head squirrel will screech, snort and bark. This is a best-case-scenario-type situation because you get to put as much distance between you and your classes while still acing college! Good job.
- Put Thanksgiving in retrograde. Being thankful is for people who are so lame that they can only maintain healthy relationships by treating others with kindness. Only people whose love language is words of affirmation (i.e. losers) like Thanksgiving. We must set the turkeys loose. Pardon them all. Every last one. In their place on the farms we raid, we should put Wawa gobbler sandwiches (hold the turkey, though, or else this whole scheme was for naught.) When the farmers see the vegetarian gobbler sandwiches, they’ll be so distracted chowing down on this new menu item that they’ll forget about Thanksgiving entirely. Get retrograded, dawg.
“But Eva,” you say, “wouldn’t these strategies only make things worse?” Dear reader, and I mean this with not even a crumb of respect, zip your mouth shut and melt the key down into a stamp that says “loser” and then press it into an ink pad and stamp that onto your forehead. If you couldn’t tell, I’m trying to put you into retrograde right now. Don’t take it so personally.
