A Spell for When You Have Three Minutes and No Fucks Left

I came up with this spell in a Trader Joe's bathroom on a Tuesday in 2022. My ex had just called to say he was taking the dog for the weekend, which was not actually his weekend, and I had a cart full of frozen things slowly thawing in the parking lot. I locked myself in the family bathroom (mercifully empty) and stood there for what I now realize was about three minutes. By the time I came out, I had handled it, which is different from solving it.

I have used this spell since then in airports, at my mother's funeral, at the DMV, at a Christmas dinner I should have left forty minutes earlier, and once during a small panic attack in the hardware store while picking out drawer pulls. It works because it doesn't ask you to feel better. It just gives you a small structure to lean against until you can move again.

Here is everything you need.

You Will Need

• A beverage (any temperature, any type, even if it's cold coffee you reheated twice and forgot about again)
• Approximately three minutes
• The ability to breathe
• No fucks left to give about doing this "correctly"

What You're Actually Doing

This is a reset spell, but it isn't for your life or your circumstances or your asshole landlord or your check engine light or the fact that your mother still pronounces "quinoa" wrong on purpose to upset you.

This is a reset for you, right now, in this moment, when everything is too much and you can't deal and you still have to deal anyway.

The Spell

Step 1: Hold your beverage. Feel the weight of it. This is the only thing you need to hold right now.

Step 2: Take one breath, just one. It doesn't need to be a "cleansing breath" or a "deep breath." Just a regular-ass breath. Your lungs know what they're doing. Trust them.

Step 3: Say, out loud or in your head:

"I am not required to solve everything today. I am only required to survive until bedtime. I release the lie that I'm not doing enough. I am doing enough. I am enough. This coffee is enough."

(Substitute your actual beverage. The universe is flexible.)

Step 4: Take one sip. Let it be good enough.

Step 5: Return to your bullshit with 3% more capacity to handle it.

Notes

• You can do this in a bathroom stall, a parked car, a supply closet, or anywhere you can carve out three minutes of not being required to act like a functional person.
• You don't need to feel transformed. You just need to feel slightly less like you're going to scream in the middle of Target.
• If you have time, add a second sip. Luxury.
• If someone interrupts you, you're allowed to continue silently in your head while making eye contact with them. Assert dominance.

The Magic Part

You're probably wondering, "But Ivy, where's the actual magic? This is just drinking coffee and lying to myself about being enough."

First of all, affirmations aren't lies. They're aggressive hope.

Second, the magic is in the pause, in choosing to stop the spiral for three minutes, in deciding, however briefly, that you are the most important thing in your immediate vicinity.

The universe doesn't care if you cast your spells with $300 worth of crystals or a gas station coffee and spite. It just cares that you're paying attention.

Now go forth and survive until bedtime.