May you achieve just enough success to keep you from giving up and finding satisfaction elsewhere, but never enough success to truly relax.
May the colleagues that you badmouth the most have nothing but kind things to say about you when you’re not around, leading everyone in the office to conclude that you are a fundamentally disagreeable person.
May you be like Guy Fieri: may the things you love the most be considered ridiculous by the world at large.
Whenever you want to watch either Working Girl or 9 To 5, may the other one always be the only one streaming on Netflix Instant.
May none of your friends take your food allergy seriously; may they always pretend to forget just before serving you something you’ve told them you can’t possibly eat.
May you be labeled “difficult” after you have left the room. May your colleagues stonewall you without ever explaining why they don’t want to help. May “I don’t know what you’re talking about” become the sentence you hear most often, and the sentence you dread the most.
May all of your closest friends receive book deals for ridiculous and overly-topical premises; may your obvious disdain for their undeserved good fortune put such a strain on your relationship that you both remove one another from your gchat list.
May your life’s passion be met with global indifference.
May your incompetence never recognize itself as such; may you remain forever in the dark when it comes to the limits of your abilities. May you never quite understand why you never get the job you believed you were perfect for, but were in fact ludicrously underqualified for.
May the fears about yourself that wake you in the middle of the night all be the truest things you ever think about yourself.
May you be seen crying at work.
May your social media presence be so off-putting that it causes your real-life friends to distance themselves from you.
May the most substantive emotional support you can offer a grieving friend be the febrile sentiment “Sending good thoughts your way” in a Facebook comment.
May everyone you lend books to return them unread or keep them forever.
May your partner never be awake when you whisper “Are you awake?” because you desperately need a sign that someone or something cares about the anguish of your heart, that connection is possible. May your partner feign sleep in order to avoid intimacy with you.
May you become the emotional burden you sometimes fear yourself to be.
May your children think of you the way you think of your own mother.
May you never be understood in the comments.
Tags: curses, magic, witchcraft
“May none of your friends take your food allergy seriously; may they always pretend to forget just before serving you something you’ve told them you can’t possibly eat.”
When I was little I was allergic to concentrated orange juice, but no one believed me (and I didn’t really believe it, either), so during elementary school I was throwing up ALL THE DAMN TIME.
Well, now I’m just terrified to leave a comment.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Is that supposed to be funny?
I’ve always favored “may your divorce last longer than your marriage.”
Think about it.
That’s some cold shit.
Goddammit.
Noooooooooooooooooooo Mallory WHY
May you ever be trapped behind a group of people walking abreast on the sidewalk.
May your phone never fully charge.
May all your posts go unliked.
May all your meals never quite hit the spot.
“May your social media presence be so off-putting that it causes your real-life friends to distance themselves from you.” One of my most shameful and, until now, unacknowledged fears. Thanks Mallory! <skulks off to pout in a corner>
oh god oh god oh god oh god
one of my real-life friends stopped following on Twitter but he hasn’t distanced himself from me, so I’d call it a success
There were a bunch of guys I’d have had crushes on except for social media, and now I can’t even talk to half of them, insofar as Libertarians/Nice Guys/both.
Sounds like you dodged some bullets.
May you base entirely too much of your self-esteem on the number of likes your pithy blog comments get.
May pithy blog comments be the extent of your average day’s original thoughts.
May you Tweet endlessly into the void.
May people see your tweets and fave instead of retweet.
May people see your tweets, laugh, and ignore it.
May you make the same joke in the comments 5 minutes too late and the other person has like 100+ likes so not only do you feel foolish you look unoriginal to everyone reading the comments.
You guys are mean.
I already know that the things I love the most are considered ridiculous but does this really mean that I am “like Guy Fieri”??
Oh god
Guy Fieri is truly the worst.
May all your terrible puns be misunderstood; or worse, may they be perfectly understood and (justly) scorned.
I FEEL BAD FOR THAT DUDE HE JUST LOVES A LOT OF THINGS
HE DOESN’T EVEN GO HERE
Pun failure achieved, whoops. :-\
And now I feel bad for Guy Fieri. Darn.
Never understood in the comments. 🙁
donkey sauce
Not all Guy’s are like that
It’s not so bad; he’s the mayor of Flavortown.
may your internet search history be unwipeable. may it be revealed that you google your own name far more often than is normal, and may the world turn from you in disgust.
May you never quite shake the feeling that your boss is unhappy with you in ways he can never articulate but that will affect your career for decades.
That one stings. It stings hard.
I’ve been having a great time at work lately. Can you tell?
I dunno. I think the allergies one is actually just straight-up attempted murder.
May you publish something online in your early 20s and not have been edited.
May it be the thing people you’ve only just met know you for.
You guys are REALLY mean.
Perfect comment for your username!
God I WISH that was what it was
May the day you decide your skin is just too bad to try to fix with makeup be the day your communications manager arrives at your cubicle with a camera, demanding a headshot for the company website
literally lol-ing at the desk. thank you 🙂 and i am sorry!
ouch
These were funny until they were too real. These were the worst:
May you be seen crying at work. (This happened today. Break ups, man.)
May your social media presence be so off-putting that it causes your real-life friends to distance themselves from you.
May the most substantive emotional support you can offer a grieving friend be the febrile sentiment “Sending good thoughts your way” in a Facebook comment.
May you become the emotional burden you sometimes fear yourself to be.
May you never be understood in the comments.
I have a special place dedicated in the conference room for where I go if I need to cry. When there are meetings going on, I’m in deep trouble.
I’m there re: crying at work re: break ups suck so at least you’re understood in your comment replies 🙂
“May everyone you lend books to return them unread or keep them forever.”
Having this problem right now with two books that are irreplaceable and I feel very cursed.
OH MAN don’t ever lend me a book; I am the worst at returning them.
While reading this a cavernous guilt set in. I gotta go return some books!
Listen, if we live in the same place, I don’t mind if folks keep my books for years. I can just drive over and grab ’em if I need to! But in this case, I lent books to a close friend who, because of different life paths, drifted into being more of an acquaintance, and now she is moving and not coming back to visit for at least a year, and I NEED THEM BACK.
I KNOW THAT FEEL. I lent a then-roommate a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, my favourite book, AND THEN SHE MOVED TO AUSTRALIA.
That book is so gone.
May you always forget the laws of escalator etiquette the moment you set foot upon them, standing left like an asshole while a clog of commuters muttering passive-aggressive comments forms behind you, hating you, wishing that you would spontaneously combust and they could walk over your smoking remains to get to their goddamn train on time.
dude just say excuse me
Ew you don’t TALK to people on public transportation.
you talk past them as you shoulder your way around them
You ESPECIALLY don’t talk to TOURISTS on public transportation. Vom.
(srsly though, come barreling down those steps while booming STAND RIGHT and you’ll probably be fine. or you’ll collide with someone but they will deserve it and you won’t be as hurt because you will be filled with righteous indignation.)
If you can’t convey all of that in an “excuse me” you need more mass transit practice
HA I got like half of these already CAN’T TOUCH THIS
Even worse, “May the most substantive emotional support you receive when grieving be the febrile sentiment “Sending good thoughts your way” in a Facebook comment from someone you dislike and whose opinions or feelings you put no stock in.”
what is dead may never die
I am particularly susceptible to the 9-to-5/Working Girl curse, being an obsessive fan of both Dolly Parton and shoulderpads, but a fortune teller once told me I could take steps to protect myself. I BOUGHT THEM BOTH.
I find these sorts of things useful when you’re driving and another driver is being a jerk…except that I usually curse them to horrible deaths: May you die in a ditch. May the last sensation you ever know in this world be the smell of your hair as it burns…
It’s probably a good thing that I’m not actually a witch. Though I have to admit, it’s much more satisfying than just muttering “asshole”.
I… I go with “may your transmission fail. May the police see you doing that.”
I just pretend that I have telekinetic powers, and can instantly empty their gas tank AND slash all four of their tires
Modern benedictions:
May your readers always know that you keen out not an indictment but the common anxieties between you.
May your wifi never waver, nor your bars drop below four.
May your co-workers understand the mundane truth that “It is what it is,” but never give you a plaque inscribed with those words in the Secret Santa swap.
May the world be large enough to accommodate your idiosyncratic passions, and small enough to find others who do.
Wait, I have an urgent question. Do you know someone who received a plaque that says “It is what it is” as an office Christmas gift? Because that might be my dad.
I do know someone who was given an “It is what it is” plaque, but I don’t think she’s your dad.
[edited to add: only because if you were her kid, you’d recognize my name and picture and this question would never have come up. I wasn’t making some snarky binary-gender joke, though I see and regret that it read that way.]
These are beautiful beyond measure.
Are you Baba Yaga?
That is the nicest compliment I’m likely to get today.
Ooooof. Started getting itchy and panicky around “may you never quite understand why you never get the job you believed you were perfect for”, then just lost it at “may your partner never be awake when you whisper ‘Are you awake?’” I’ll be hiding under my desk for the rest of the afternoon, all of my most banal fears realized.
May your break up be featured in the NYTIMES, so forevermore that’s what people see if they Google your name
May your incompetence never recognize itself as such; may you remain forever in the dark when it comes to the limits of your abilities. May you never quite understand why you never get the job you believed you were perfect for, but were in fact ludicrously underqualified for.
Ouch. Thanks for articulating that nameless anxiety that strikes me in the early mornings before I’m awake enough to quash it.
The one thing is that I like my mom and if I have kids that end up thinking about me in the same way I’ll be pretty happy.
May you tell everyone your English degree ISN’T to become a teacher but a WRITER and then realize how inconsequential your written thoughts are while reading witty comments on a blog post you could never dream of writing. Warning: Very costly.
May you always get the exact responses you normally get when telling someone you have an English degree
May you shamefacedly give up on writing for a living and go to law school only to find out too late that being a lawyer sucks
And may your attempt to extricate yourself from a legal career be thwarted by hiring managers for non-legal positions who believe that you’ll just bail the moment a lawyer job opens up.
STORY OF MY LIFE
May someone always spoil the book you’re reading for you.
“May your social media presence be so off-putting that it causes your real-life friends to distance themselves from you.” working on it
*dead silence…mouth agape*
May your google image search results (for anything, and everything) always include a photo with holes and pods.
*cries*
my feelings may be born of the dark place i’m in right now, but i feel like someone time traveled, saw this, then went back and cursed me with all of them a couple years ago. all of them.
“may you be able to say ‘fuck my life’ with a depth and conviction that nobody will ever understand”
Fuck, that is rough, and it might be time to bury a cow heart full of nails in your yard/ a nearby park.
These are intensely mean and powerful and vicious and perfect.
Worse than the febrile sentiment of “sending good thoughts your way” is the completely shallow, devoid of all meaning and substance “**HUGS**”
I hate it. I hate fakey internet hugs with the heat of 10,000 suns.
Use your words. If you don’t have something of relevance to say and you’re commenting only for the sake of commenting, do me a favor, leave the comment field blank.
Them’s fightin’ words.
May you have writer’s block when your friends are in need of comfort.
*glomps u*
Which is worse?!
May you never achieve the perfect bite of salad.
May you craft the perfect bite of salad then knock it off your fork en route to your mouth.
May you find yourself relating to the darkest and most bitter Mountain Goats lyrics.
Ooooh that was the entire last couple months.
Oh man, I’m sorry. I hope things get better asap!!!
May your commute always consist of trailing people who don’t understand the concept of a passing lane.
May you drop your smartphone the first month after you’ve activated your two-year contract, leaving a harsh scratch that is deplorable, yet not justifiable for spending all that money to replace it.
Teju Cole: “May your house appear on cnn”
Beautiful and chilling!
I feel uneasy about many aspects of my life now.
That is the nicest compliment I'm likely to get today.
May your pets never starve – even after they've eaten the face off your corpse.
This post made me cry at work….
May your children think of you the way the way you think of your own mother.
Literally. My. Worst. Fear.
May the username you chose in 1997 because no one else had it (no numbers after your name!) and have had ever since, which you use on all social media and your personal email, become the name of a hate group, a boy band, or a reality show.
May sheer procrastination lead to you losing your job.