Tag: dailyprompt

Understanding the Mandela Effect: Time Travel or Memory Glitch?

What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable?

The Mandela Effect: Proof That Someone’s Messing with Our Timeline

Here’s mine, and I promise it’s not flat-earth or hollow-earth level nonsense: I think the Mandela Effect is real evidence that time travel exists, and that someone out there is quietly editing our history for us or attempting to edit history, and has messed up horribly.

Let’s start with the basics. The Mandela Effect is that strange phenomenon where huge groups of people remember the same event, image, or phases. They all remember it wrong, in exactly the same way. It got its name back in 2009, when a researcher discovered that tons of people distinctly remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. Except he didn’t. He walked out of that prison and became President of South Africa. Meanwhile, half the internet swears they remember watching his funeral on TV.

Person holding newspaper beside Retro Arcade and Looney Toons signs
A startled shopper encounters familiar cartoon branding and newspaper headlines on a busy city street.

Scientists have a boring explanation for this, thank you Neil De Grasse Tyson. The reality is memory isn’t a video recording; it’s a reconstruction of everything the brain processed and recreated. Every time you recall something, your brain rebuilds it from scratch, and it’s prone to suggestion, gap-filling, and good old-fashioned misremembering. That’s the “safe” and laymen’s term of the answer.

I am a scientist, a molecular biologist to be exact, don’t buy the boring answer. I think it’s time travel. Says, the person with limited Neuroscience background. Pause.  Scientists do not create equal stop asking your cousin that study astrophysics if you should go to the doctors for growth, you need to go to the doctors. The growth needs a biopsy and better test results and tell you what the growth is, it’s probably a cyst, but don’t ask your cousin the astrophysicist, they know thermodynamics, placement of stars, and how to calculate the distance of black holes.

Here’s my theory: somewhere down the line fifty years from now, a thousand years from now, whenever we finally crack it, humanity figures out how to travel through time. And every single time someone goes back and tweaks something, it doesn’t erase the old timeline completely. It just overwrites it mostly. A few stray memories slip through the cracks, like static from the old channel bleeding into the new one. That static? That’s the Mandela Effect. It’s not a glitch in your brain, it’s a glitch in reality, left behind by whoever’s out there playing timeline Jenga.

Take Nelson Mandela himself. Picture it: he dies in prison in the 80s, and it sends the world into a spiral. Something catastrophic happens as a result maybe South Africa collapses into chaos, maybe the ripple effects are felt globally. So someone from the future looks at this disaster, decides it’s unacceptable, hops in their time machine, and quietly makes sure he survives. World saved. Except a chunk of us still remember the original, uncorrected timeline like it was yesterday.

Or take the corporate angle, which honestly might be my favorite part of this theory. Ever notice how companies barely sell physical copies of anything anymore? Everything’s digital, everything’s a subscription, everything can be patched, updated, or quietly rewritten overnight. I think that’s on purpose. If a company put out a hundred million physical copies of something and time travelers started messing with details in the past, there’d eventually be a mountain of physical evidence that doesn’t match the “current” version of events. Digital is easy to erase. Physical copies are witnesses. Keep everyone renting instead of owning, and there’s nothing left behind to prove the timeline ever looked different.

And don’t even get me started on Chick-fil-A. I would bet good money that logo used to have a “k” in it. Chik-fil-A. I can picture it. Now it’s “Chick-fil-A,” clean as can be, and nobody blinks. Somewhere out there, something happened that was bad enough that someone had to go back and fix a fried chicken logo. We don’t know what yet. But when we figure it out, don’t say I didn’t call it. *While cleaning my desk, I found an old chick-fil-a calendar. It had the ck… so maybe not chick-fil-a.

Now, to be clear I’m not out here claiming the earth is flat, or hollow, or that we’re all NPCs in a simulation running on some cosmic PlayStation (7 billion people, rendered in real time, 24/7? No chance). I like to think I know where the line is between “fun theory” and “actually unhinged.” But the Mandela Effect? That one I believe. Every conflicting memory, every “wait, I *know* it wasn’t spelled like that” moment, is a little scar tissue left over from a timeline that almost was  evidence that somewhere out there, someone hit rewind, changed a few things, and hit play again, hoping we wouldn’t notice. We noticed.

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My Top 5 Apps (Plus an Honorable or Two Mention)

Hello Readers,

This was orginially a Daily Prompt offered by WordPress, and in my goal to do 30 essays in 30 days, i did this one because I thought it was fun. I have lost the Daily prompt draft I created but still wanted to share. Enjoy! Any of these apps want to sponsor a post. Reach out to me!

I saw this prompt on WordPress and it stuck with me: what are your top five apps on your phone? Not top five rappers (though that’s a whole other debate we need a scoring system for), not top five anything else just the apps I reach for every single day. So, here’s my  or , unranked by cool factor, ranked by real life list. Along with a few extra, and one that I tried to leave off the list but… I couldn’t Pikachu wouldn’t allow it.

5. Voice Recorder

This one might surprise you, but it’s been essential since the beginning of COVID in 2020. I use my phone’s recorder to capture my thoughts before they disappear into the ether. Ideas I can’t get out of my head, ramblings that turn into essays, voice notes that are basically my personal diary. Half the blog posts I’ve ever published started as me talking to myself in the car. Some of it turns into something good. Some of it is just me sounding unhinged. Either way, it works.

4. Spotify

Yes, I know. I know Spotify barely pays artists and has its own controversies. I’m trying to be a conscientious consumer, but I also host trivia and I’m always on the go, so realistically, Spotify runs my life. My only real complaint: it used to introduce me to new artists and genres constantly, and lately it just keeps feeding me the same 150–200 songs on repeat. I don’t need “Don’t Stop Believing” again to give me something new.

The audiobook addition, though? Genius. I’ve “read” three books I never would’ve paid for otherwise. I’ll start a book physically at night, forget to bring it to work, search for it on Spotify. So, I can continue to listen to the book at work, or even on the drive home. Then once I’m back home, I pick the physical copy back up right where I left off. Seamless.

3. Plague Inc.

This is the one game that made the list. I don’t download it often because I will lose hours to it, but there’s something about building out epidemiology scenarios and watching how diseases spread that scratches an itch in my brain. It doesn’t teach me public health (that’s what school is for), but the modeling side of it is genuinely fascinating. An ex-introduced me to this game, I think it freaked him out how much I loved the game and would show him all the different ways I would create diseases.

2. Too Good to Go

When I’ve got a little extra cash and want food from a new spot, this is my go-to. Some of my favorite markets, Whole Foods or Fresh Market, sell surplus food through the app for a fraction of the price. Right now, I am in love with Pure Raw Juice, because Too Good, to Go.  It’s how I get to try places I’ve never been, eat well, and not feel guilty about food waste. It’s also perfect for stocking up on food or a quick surprise meal.

Honorable mention: Tumblr. I’ve had this account since 2008 and I’m not leaving. It’s my refuge from every other chaotic social platform (you know who you are… Book of Faces) a little corner of the internet that still feels like mine.

1. Google Maps

No contest. Even with the “raggedy” voice I keep meaning to change, I check this constantly not just for directions, but to gauge traffic before I even leave the house. It tells me exactly when I need to walk out the door to make it to work on time, and honestly, it’s saved me more stress than almost anything else on my phone. Yes, I know it’s tracking me. No, I don’t really care, I’m just going to work and back anyway. Sometimes it saves me from driving to Virgina, when I am just trying to go to Bowie.

Runners-up that almost made the cut: Keep Notes, Google Docs, Audible, Kindle. Maybe YouTube probably not due to this new algorithm.

p.s. It Pokémon Go. I have logged one too many hours on that app. My quest to get a shiny Charmander again, has driven me to the ends of Baltimore Street. I am embarrassed to say Pokémon Go is the reason I get 20,000 steps in every weekend like clockwork.  Walking around and catching little Pokémon and sending them to Professor Oak, we all know he runs an illegal chop shop of Pokémon.

If you would like to support my Pokémon hobby à https://ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

P.S. if any of these companies would like to sponsor a post… I am here for it 😊

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What My Retail Job Taught Me About Finding Lost Treasures

What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?

Shopper finding a sparkling ring on the floor beneath a clothing rack
A shopper discovers a sparkling ring beneath a clothing rack during a busy sale.

Whenever you ask people what the best thing they’ve ever found on the ground is, they inevitably say money. It’s always money. “Oh, I found a crisp twenty in a puddle once!” Good for you, Jeff Bezos. A long time ago, I worked retail, which means the ground is less a venue for windfall cash and more an archaeological dig site of human despair. Over the years, my broom has swept up stray toy parts, pocket lint, and, on one unforgettable Saturday morning, an actual, literal intrauterine device. An IUD. Just chilling by the impulse cookie section- the irony. Was it a runaway medical anomaly? A dropped OB-GYN demo model? Did someone shed it in a fit of retail rage? Don’t ask me how I recognized it; retail transforms you into a forensic scientist whether you like it or not.

So, my broom pushed me to sweep the floor in the morning. I heard a CLANG against the store’s baseboards on a Saturday morning. Anything is better than that rogue piece of birth control was my baseline expectation. Instead, I found an absurdly demure diamond engagement ring. To understand how this happened, you first have to understand the sacred incompetence of the retail night shift. I was only in the store at 8:30 AM because my coworkers had sent a text saying, “Sorry! It was so slam-packed last night we couldn’t sweep!” Naturally, being a busybody, I checked the register logs. Their last sale was clocked at 8:01 PM. The store closed at nine. They had an entire hour of paid stillness to push a broom, stock the Snack display, and reflect on their life choices. Instead, they stood around people-watching and did the bare minimum, leaving the store looking like an abandoned storefront after Christmas.

So, I’m aggressively sweeping up their dust bunnies when the broom hit the ring, like a hockey play; I swept it into the baseboard—a real, diamond ring. I did what any reasonable, underpaid 25-year-old would do: I ran it down to a jeweler for an appraisal. The jeweler studied it, looked up at me with dead seriousness, and said, “This is exquisite. Maybe God is trying to tell you that you’re about to get married!”

Now, 25-year-old me had an immediate existential crisis over the fact that my boyfriend at the time was completely wrong for me, meaning God’s retail delivery system had severe targeting issues. Also, not that anyone asked if it slipped onto my ring finger like it had been molded in a laboratory specifically for my hand. Common sense returned and slapped me back to reality. I quickly took it off, placed it in a tiny paper envelope labeled “Customer’s Ring Found on Floor,” handed it to management, and watched it disappear into our bolted-down steel floor safe.

And there it stayed.

For five entire years!

We checked local lost-and-founds. I stalked early Craigslist boards. Silence. The ring sat in the dark behind a combination keypad, totally forgotten, until our store hired a new manager who possessed the specific, greasy energy of someone who views inventory sheets as creative writing. One day, the safe opened, the safe closed, and the diamond was… evaporated into thin air. A few weeks later, half the staff got fired over a cocktail of phantom discounts, register shorting, and the grand theft of a Diamond Ring rock (not quite; it was really people shorting the register that got them fired). The ring was gone, the statute of limitations was ticking, and we all moved on.

Until the ghost of retail past walked through the front doors. Five years after that fateful morning sweep, a woman strolled into the store. She was glowing, thriving, and happily reminiscing about our discontinued caramel nut mixes while visiting from out of state. Then she dropped the bomb: “You know, I actually lost something here right before I moved away years ago.” My broom’s hand twitched. “What did you lose?” “My engagement ring,” she sighed. “It never fit my finger right. I came in on a Thursday night to get snacks for my drive…”

A Thursday. Thursday. My brilliant, hardworking colleagues hadn’t just blown off Friday night’s cleaning duties; they hadn’t touched a broom for forty-eight straight hours. That diamond had been kicking around the carpet through two full business days of foot traffic, surviving purely because our staff was allergic to physical labor. She told me she had retraced her steps on Friday, found nothing, and realized the universe had handed her an exit ramp. Two weeks prior, her boyfriend had proposed, and she’d been harboring immediate, sickening regret from saying yes. When she confessed she lost the ring that weekend, the man utterly detonated, screaming, cursing, and revealing every toxic red flag he owned in one explosive tirade.

The dropped ring was her ticket out. She didn’t want to marry the man; she knew it wasn’t right. After that nasty argument that weekend, she decided to flee the state and start a glorious single life in Ohio. “Ohio,” my brain thought, but I let it go because she looked amazing.  She smiled and asked, “Did anyone ever end up finding it?”

I paused, looking at this radiant, completely unburdened woman who had successfully escaped a terrible engagement because of the wrong ring size.

“Oh yeah,” I told her casually. “I found it that Saturday morning. It sat in our safe for five years until a shady manager stole it and got sacked by corporate. Her face was pure, unadulterated relief. The ring had ruined a thief, dodged a toxic marriage, survived two days of retail neglect, and paid for nobody’s wedding. Sometimes the best things you find on the floor aren’t meant to be kept; they’re just dropped so someone else can finally run.

This was a dramatic retelling of me finding a ring on the floor at work. A lot of factors changed, times changed, and memories aren’t always accurate.

I am always going to ask: if you would like to help me get a right-hand diamond ringà Ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

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If I Figured Out Time Travel, This Is What I’d Send Back to my 20-year-old-self

Daily writing prompt
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
View all responses

Note: Two days in a row I am doing the Daily Writing Prompt….

Love Letters & Hard Lessons An Essay by Che Michelle

If I Figured Out Time Travel, This Is What I’d Send Back

Things I wish I could tell my 20-year-old self — about the plan, the light, the Ford Focus, and the Midol.

By Che Michelle ·   Thriving, and Still Going

Dear You — yes, you, reading this in what I can only assume is mild confusion — I mean you just found this letter while your 20, young and going to school.

If you are reading this, it means I figured out time travel. I cannot change what happens, the timeline doesn’t work like that, but I can emotionally prepare you for what’s coming so you can navigate it better, smarter, and with significantly fewer financial failures. What you do with this information is up to you. If you think it’s nonsense, throw it away. If something in your gut says pay attention and it will, because your gut has always been smarter than your logic, then use it. Use every word.

And if I suddenly get new memories? I’ll know you changed something. Let’s hope it worked.

On Your Family and Your Friends

Your family is right about some of your friends. I know that’s not what you want to hear. I know it feels like interference, like they don’t understand, like they’re being over-protective to the point of suffocation. But here’s the truth that it took me longer than it should have to accept they have simply lived longer than you, and they can read signs you haven’t learned to recognize yet.

They’re not jealous. They’re not trying to isolate you. They want you to have friends, real ones. The kind that builds you up instead of quietly chipping away at your confidence while smiling at your face. And honestly? For a family that could have been much harsher about it, they were incredibly gentle with you. Gentler than you realize and with more patience than you ever offered back. Listen to them when the advice is not in an authoritative tone, but a softer, loving tone. It’ll save you from an existential crisis that, otherwise, is going to land right on schedule at 39 and feel entirely like your fault. Some of it will be your fault. I can’t help you with that part (Bonus advice, take accountability and change your bad behavior). Just listen to the family about your friends, they have your best interest at heart especially when those friends show their true feelings in front of them.

On the Plan You Had for Your Life

I know about the plan. You get married at 28, first kid at 30, second at 32. Tidy. Organized. It’s you, planning your life down to the date. I need to tell you, with all the love I have in my heart: That plan got blown up to absolute smithereens, and it is the best thing that ever happened to us.

You were not emotionally ready to be anybody’s wife at 28. You did not have the resources to be anyone’s mother at 30. And the life you actually get to live in the space where that plan used to be? It’s going to make you smile in ways you cannot currently imagine. You still end up with love. You still end up with the things you want. Just not when you think. And the version of you who gets there will be so much more prepared to actually receive it and reciprocate it to person who deserves it.

“You may have dreamed about being a wife. But you’re going to live a life so much bigger than that dream. Let the dream go so the best version of your life can find you.”

Do Not Buy That Ford Focus

I am completely serious. The blue one. You brought it either in 2015 or 2016, I don’t remember when, but don’t buy it! You’ll know when your then boyfriend suggested for you to get that car and not the Two-door Honda Accord, that you like. He will make it sound like an it’s good idea, has great value. It is not a good idea. That car is a money pit on wheels, and it is going to cost you in ways that will make you say words you didn’t know you knew. Find someone you trust, go to a different dealership, and buy something else. Better yet, don’t take that man with your car shopping! Anything else will be a million times better than that of the Blue Devil. This is the most logistical piece of advice I can offer you and I need you to take it personally. No BLUE FORD FOCUS!

On People Who Try to Dim Your Light

They’re coming. I want you to be ready. People are going to try to dim your light, and they’ll do it for one of three reasons. The first is jealousy, pure and simple, from people who have never learned to believe in themselves. The second is desire: they want what you have, and because they can’t figure out how to build it for themselves, they’ll try to dim your light by making you doubt your light, your intelligence. The third is the strangest one, they’ll try to dim your light to protect you from other people who want access to it. Fear dressed up as concern. They will tell you about doing events, cause it is not the norm. These people will use logic, and concern to convince you not to try, or not to put yourself out there for people to know who you are. It looks like love. It isn’t, its fear and it will confuse you. Stand strong in your belief and do it!

Here’s how you handle all three: practice your affirmations. Write your dreams down in blue ink in a notebook. Make a plan and execute the plan. The life you’re building will not be out of someone else’s paranoia, but out of your wisdom, your intuition and your vision for your life. You don’t owe everyone a front row seat to your becoming. Let people who try to imitate you do it. They’re too unoriginal to sustain it. Walk away and let them figure that out without your help and energy.

Also, I mean this does not let anyone talk you out of your intuition. Your intuition has kept you alive, when your survival skills were lacking. Your Spidey sense has kept you out of rooms you had no business being in. When you get goosebumps along your arm, it is usually a no, and you need to act accordingly.  Trust your gut every time.

On Dreams Changing (and That Being Good, Actually)

You are a jack of all trades, and people are going to say it like it’s an insult. It is not. The full quote which people conveniently cut short is “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one”. When people cut the quote short, they want to diminish someone to only be good at one thing. You contain multitudes and should explore all of your different layers. Each of those layers will, lead you to a new dream, a better dream. Your dreams are going to shift from your 20s to your 30s to your 40s, and every single shift means you’re growing; you’re seeing more of what’s possible, you’re becoming someone bigger and better than the person who made the original plan. Don’t let anyone shame you for evolving. That’s the whole point of life is to evolve.

On Your Health — Please Listen to This Part

Keep working out. I’m going to say it again because I need you to hear it: keep working out. Protect your body now so it can carry you to places you haven’t dreamed of yet. Your health is your wealth in a way that isn’t a cliché, it is a literal, practical, logistical fact. The other side of not protecting it is not somewhere you want to visit. Stay active. Watch what you eat. Still enjoy your life. Those things are not mutually exclusive, I promise. Also, take care of your damn teeth, we like you have a beautiful smile so you need healthy teeth to smile. ( I bet you started sing Shanice-“I love your Smile”, if so good.

And take the Midol. I’m going to give this its own section because it matters more than it sounds.

Take the Midol (No, Really)

There is a friendship in your life, one of the truest, most generous, most genuinely loving friendships you will experience. There is going to be a moment when you are in real physical pain, the kind that makes you pass out after your shift, and you are going to say something to your friend, while in that pain that you cannot take back. And that person is not going to want to hear that it was the pain talking or that your sorry. It will be too late, and they will walk away from this friendship.

 I am telling you now, Take the Midol. Eat something before going to work that day. Listen, don’t speak as they talk to you. If you can save that friendship, save it. It is worth more than whatever you’re about to say in that moment. And if you lose it anyway it was always meant to be a season of friendship in your life and not a lifetime friendship. I want you to know that it was still real, it still counted, and you will carry the best parts of that relationship with you longer than you know. But try to watch your mouth. Take the Midol and listen with no response.

On Death, and the Things People Say Near It

You are going to lose people. Some of those losses will come quietly and you’ll be okay. Others are going to tear something open in you that makes you rethink everything and somehow, in that rethinking, you’re going to find a clarity about your own life that you couldn’t have gotten any other way.

Here is what I need you to know about people who are close to leaving this mortal realm will do, they sometimes say things near the end that sound like rejection of you, erasure of a friendship, erasure of your meaning to them. They will rewrite the entire relationship either as more positive than it was, or that you were just strangers in the night who only said hi once a day. Don’t hold onto those words. I think something happens when a soul is getting ready to leave the mortal realm, like they’re trying to serve as many ties as possible so they can leave more freely. I am telling you to hold onto the dinners, the conversation with nuggets of wisdom. The times they fed you knowledge, praised your skills, and gave you the game of life. Let the last words go, if they sound unlike them. They were not the truth of what you meant to each other.

“Their life was never in vain. And neither was your love for them. Hold onto that and let the rest dissolve.”

The Rules (In Order)

Rule 01 Don’t let anyone take your shine. Not negotiable, not situational, not up for discussion. Your light is yours. Guard it accordingly.

Rule 02 Stop looking for love and start loving yourself. The love you’re searching for outside of you is being built inside of you right now whether you feel it or not. Trust the process.

Rule 03 Take the trip. Go to Japan. Go wherever you’ve been telling yourself you’ll go when things calm down, when you have more money, when it makes more sense. It will never be the perfect time. Save the money quietly, tell no one, and go. You will not regret a single stamp in that passport.

Rule 04 Get the accountant. Do not tell your family. Do not tell your friends. Just find one, pay the fee, and let them help you build the financial life you deserve. This is one of the best decisions you will ever make, and it’s going to feel so adult and so right the moment you do it.

Rule 05 Protect yourself always! Protect yourself enthusiastically, without apology. Your body, your energy, your peace, your destiny. All of it. Energy transfers are real, and some people come into your life specifically to take what’s yours. You are not obligated to make it easy for them.

What I Most Want You to Know

You are not living the life you dreamed. You are living the life you desired, and those are two very different things. You dreamed of being a wife. You became someone who poured love into people who needed it, on your own terms, in your own time. You dreamed of being a mother you have mentored and loved and invested in more children and teenagers more than you can count, and they carried pieces of you whether they know it or not. When it’s time for the rest, it will come.

The people who show up for you the real ones, the ones who love you exactly as you are going to amaze you. You don’t have to beg for their love and acceptance. You don’t have to change yourself for it. You don’t have to wonder if you’re worth it. You are. Full stop. The friendships you have to chase were never yours to begin with, and the ones that stay without being chased are going to be some of the best things in your life.

You have held down two jobs for twenty years simultaneously. You have built something real, quietly, without anyone handing you anything. You are funny, brilliant and more creative than the people who tried to convince you otherwise.

I love you at 20. I will love you in your 30s, and I love you now as we head into the mid-40s. I love every version of you that happened in between, including the ones who made the mistakes that this letter is trying, gently, to help you avoid or at least prepare your for. You are an adventure worth living. Stay healthy so we can keep going.

With everything I’ve got —

Your future self
(Who is doing great, by the way. You’re going to be so proud.)

PS No I didn’t give you lottery numbers. No stock tips. We were never meant to win that way, and honestly? What we built ourselves is better. You’ll see.

P.P.S. — The Ford Focus. I cannot stress this enough. Do not buy that car if you do trade it in as soon as your credit is better.

★ Che Michelle is a writer, cultural commentator, and person who writes her dreams in blue ink and on real paper if you know, you know.

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Setting Boundaries: Preserve Your Energy and Well-Being

Daily writing prompt
Write your guide to setting healthy boundaries in relationships.
View all responses

Life & Self-Preservation an Essay by Che Michelle

A Field Guide to Not Getting on My Last Nerve

On boundaries, energy vampires, unsolicited weight commentary, and the radical act of minding your business.

By Che Michelle · Boundary Enthusiast & Credentialed Nowhere

I have boundaries. Several of them, in fact, and I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about them, refining them, and preparing to explain them to anyone who will listen and also to a few people who have made it clear they will not. This essay is for both groups. Consider it a public service announcement. Consider it a love language. Consider it a warning.

Let me be clear from the top: having boundaries is different from being difficult. It is different from being cold, or antisocial, or “a lot.” It is the same as knowing yourself well enough to say “Here is where I end and where you begin, and I would appreciate it if you respected that line.” That’s it. That’s the whole thing and yet here we are.

01Do Not Comment on My Weight

This is the one I feel most strongly about and will defend until I leave this earth. Do not comment on my weight. Not if I’ve gained it. Not if I’ve lost it. Not if you’ve noticed a change so dramatic that you feel physically compelled to say something. Keep it in your mind, or mouth. Swallow it. Let it go.

Here is the thing: you are not a physician. You are not a registered dietitian, a nutritionist, a physical therapist, a personal trainer, or a nurse. You are a person who has eyes and opinions, and I did not ask for either of those things today. If I gain weight, I am a woman in my 40s pick a culprit (probably the wine and estrogen). If I have lost weight, I have been watching what I eat. Either way, the situation is handled. We are moving on.

“You don’t know what I’m battling. You don’t know how stressed I am. And frankly, it is not your business to know. That’s the point.”

What I actually want what I think we all actually want for the people we love to be healthy. Not thin. Not a certain size. Healthy. Able to go on a walk without getting winded. Able to sit at a dinner table and eat without feeling anxious about every item on the menu. Comfortable. Present. That is the goal. And none of that requires your unsolicited commentary on my body. So. We’re done here.

02My Appearance Is Not a Conversation Starter

There is a difference a crucial, non-negotiable difference between a compliment and a critique dressed up as concern. “That outfit is giving me a headache, what happened?” Fine. Fair. I can work with that. We can have a conversation about the outfit. But “you never get your hair done” and “why does your hair look like that” and “did you even look in a mirror before you left the house” those are not feedback. Those are you putting your bad energy somewhere it was not invited.

The allowable version of this conversation is simple: “Oh, I like those earrings. Where’d you get them?” And then I tell you, and you either want them or you don’t, and we both go about our lives. That is the transaction. That is all it needs to be. Anything beyond that requires explicit permission that, for the record, I have not given.

03You Cannot Talk About My People

This one has nuance, so pay attention. If I come to you frustrated about something a cousin did, I am venting about the situation. I am not issuing a license for you to call my cousin raggedy. That license does not exist. It never existed. The fact that I said something about them in a moment of frustration does not mean you now have access to that same lane. You do not.

And yes, I take accountability here too. I try not to talk recklessly about the people I love to people who don’t love them the same way, because I will not give anyone ammunition to speak poorly about someone I care about not even when we’re in disagreement, not even when things are hard. If we’re beefing and you call them out of their name, I will correct you. That’s still someone I love. Watch your mouth.

04Respect My Time or Lose Access to It

I will tell you exactly why I stopped inviting people to things: because people change plans an hour before. Because “can we do Wednesday?” becomes “actually I can’t” at 6:47 PM on Wednesday. Because single does not mean available, and “you don’t have kids” does not mean I don’t have a life.

“There are people out there in improv groups. Knitting classes. Going back to school. Just because they haven’t told you doesn’t mean they have time for you.”

I also have a second job, which means I have an employer whose time I respect and coworkers who are counting on me to show up. I am not calling out on a Wednesday night because you decided at noon that you wanted to go to dinner. That is not a character flaw. That is called integrity, and it is becoming rarer by the day.

Making time for someone looks different than simply having free time, and I wish more people understood this distinction. I will rearrange things for you if I care about you and you give me enough notice to do it with grace. Last-minute chaos is not something I’m available for and the fact that I’ve stopped asking doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. I miss dinner parties with friends. I miss the conversation that happens over a meal with people you love. I just stopped being willing to sacrifice my schedule, my income, and my peace for events that might not even happen. That’s math.

05Ask Before You Vent

This one I learned the hard way. I used to vent to friends the way people used to write in diaries freely, regularly, and without checking whether the other person had capacity. And I thought I was just sharing. Turns out some of them thought I was emotionally relocating all of my problems into their living room on a permanent basis. We had different interpretations of the same conversation, and that difference quietly soured things.

So now I ask first. “Hey, is it okay if I talk about something?” And if the answer is no, I receive that no with grace because their no is not a rejection of me. It’s a person telling me where their bandwidth is today, which is actually a form of honesty I respect. I go write it down. I record a voice note. I go talk to my therapist. I handle it.

And look I say this with love if your support system keeps redirecting you to a professional, that is worth paying attention to. Not because your problems aren’t real. But because a therapist is trained for this, and your friends are tired, and those two things can coexist without anyone being the villain.

06Energy Vampires Will Be Blocked

They are real. I need everyone to accept this. There are people who walk into a room and immediately begin redistributing the oxygen somewhere it can’t reach you. Some of them know they’re doing it. Some of them genuinely don’t. It doesn’t matter. The effect on the room is the same.

You have the right a full, complete, God-given right to protect your energy from people who consistently drain it. This is not cruelty. This is not abandonment. This is you deciding that your peace is worth protecting with the same energy you’d use to protect anything else you value. Block the number. Skip the group chat. Wear the crystal if that’s what you believe in. Say your prayer. Do what you need to do. Your energy is not a public utility.

07Do Not Compare Your Life to Mine

We made different choices. That is the entire explanation. Your choices led to your life. My choices led to mine. Neither of us is wrong. Neither of us owes the other a justification. What you are absolutely not going to do is look at where I am, look at where you are, run some internal calculation, and then present me with your findings like I asked for an audit.

Comparison is human. I understand the impulse. But there is a line between a natural moment of reflection and deciding that your choices only make sense if mine were wrong and I will not be standing on that side of the line with you.

08My Spiritual Life Is Not a Debate Topic

I am a practicing Catholic. That is my business, and I have made my peace with it. What I have not made peace with, and will not, is the version of this conversation where you feel called to inform me that I could find God anywhere as though I haven’t considered this, as though the tradition I have chosen is not something I hold with intention and care.

You can talk to me about spirituality. We can discuss meaning, and practice, and the things that ground us. What you cannot do is treat my beliefs like a draft that needs your edits. Nobody’s spiritual practice requires your approval to be valid. Not mine. Not anyone’s. Mind the business that pays you, which in this case is your own soul.

“You’re over there. I’m over here. I’m not going to let you come over here. Stay where you are. With love.”

In Closing

Boundaries are not walls. They are not a sign that something is wrong with you or wrong with the people you love. They are honest communication about what you need in order to show up fully — for yourself and, consequently, for everyone around you. They will change as you change. They deserve to be stated clearly, honored consistently, and revised as needed without guilt.

And if someone in your life consistently cannot respect them? That is also information. Useful, clarifying, sometimes painful information. But information, nonetheless. What you do with it is up to you. Which, when you think about it, is the whole point of having boundaries in the first place.

★ Che Michelle is a writer, cultural commentator, and person with a very clear sense of what she will and will not tolerate. She holds no professional credentials in therapy or nutrition and would like everyone to remember that the neither do they the next time they feel like offering some unsolicited advice.

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Daily Prompt from WordPress 05-16-26

Midnight Duet” by Jen Comfort. Have you ever read a book you thought was based in the eighties but is based in the 2000s? Midnight Duet follows the story of a Broadway star and the Lead singer of a European Hair metal band. This book was hilarious. The side characters’ quips were epic. The plot was both simple and filled with intricate moments. Erika is a true Broadway diva who lands on challenging times but finds or, better yet, cultivates a better version of herself by the end of the book. I want to see this made into a 2024 rom-com. I also want to see it do a time jump, and instead of being in the 2000s, it takes place in the 1980s. This book is four out of five for humor. A four out of five for the spicy scenes and a four out of five for the plot twist. If you enjoy romantic comedies and a good plot twist, this book is for you.

You can read the full blog here –> End of Summer Update – Che-Michelle Tales

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