(Fuck-You) Money and a Room (in a Dwelling) of One's Own
A thousand pens are ready to suggest what you should do and what effect you will have. My own suggestion is a little fantastic, I admit; I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of...
A blog post.
As I've begun to slowly dismantle and clear away lifetime of obfuscating smoke and mirrors that I and others have set up in my little internal world, it leaves me thinking about what I really want as opposed to what I've sometimes assumed I want all these years. What do I want my life to look like, really?
The hard part is realizing that most of the more traditional models of lifestyle that seem to work for others just don't seem to look good on me. Things that most strive for and find meaning in--the successful career, the marriage, the kids, comfortable domesticity, the ownership of fine things...these all end up leaving me feeling cold. Sometimes even ill. I have tried to make these things fit me, because (I think) I have assumed that if I didn't apply these more common models, there would be very few people who I could connect with. People UNDERSTAND when you want a traditional marriage or love relationship. That makes THEM comfortable, and so they tend to be comfortable with you and treat you well. When you opt for something other, well, that makes people uncomfortable. They don't understand and often with lack of understanding or ability to relate comes fear. And with fear comes anger and often cruelty or alienation.
I have been learning, and getting on well with doing so, how to stop caring what others think, and just live in my own state of being and desire. To start tuning out what works for others so I can focus on what really works for me. The thing is, as I said, nothing I've ever seen so far seems to work for me. I feel I need something different than the standard. And yet, sheer creative invention of my perfect world from naught--from pure imagination--is a hard thing. Mostly, I think, because of old lingering fears.
Mostly fears of support. I need time and space to be able to design what right looks like to me. But the things I don't want: an office job, a family, a capital-H kind of Husband who I'm a capital-W Wife to, staying always in one town in one place...I find myself yearning for the freedom from these things. I find myself wanting to END RIGHT NOW all these things to whatever extent I have them now, or any inroads I've laid towards them. I just want to walk away, into the new thing. I feel so desperate for this, I feel sometimes like I'm clawing at air, trying to get out of some physical confinement and into some new space where I can breathe. But how will I be able to support for/care for myself if I give up these common dreams? These are the dreams of security, of safety. This path is how you gain safety, we've always been told. This is the way, the only way, to ensure you don't end up alone and eating cat food in your 80s.
On a radio show I listen to, they often use the phrase "fuck-you money;" a concept which I love. By it, they mean having enough money to know you could walk away from anything if you felt like it, and you would be okay. If your boss was giving you a hard time, if your job was getting miserable, you could just say fuck you and be off on your way, no harm no foul. Because you know that regardless, you'll be okay...you can afford it. What a sense of freedom and power, to have that! How intensely I desire that. Knowing that no one can make you do something out of fear of poverty or financial insecurity. Sacrifices, if made, are made entirely out of free will and not practicality. This is what I want. I want fuck-you money. I want the freedom to be able to create anything I want, to work at whatever I want, with no financial concern roping me in to choices that make me miserable or even semi-miserable. I've had jobs that are bearable. I just don't want anything to be bearable anymore.
So if I'm going to imagine what right looks like for me right now, what happy looks like, well then right now I can see two very clear things--I want serious fuck-you money. And I want a dwelling. At least one. Preferably more than one, in locales that inspire me.
Right now, happy looks like living on my own, in a place that feels luxuriously mine, with lovers and interesting, creative friends always near at hand. By luxurious I don't necessarily mean extravagant. I mean lush. I want a salon. I want a library. I want books and conversation and lounging and laughing and dancing and music and dinners and just general, continual exchange and life. I want special people, and I want my solitude. I want to be like Jeanne Moreau or Mae West; I want to grow old and independent and strong and loved (romantically and otherwise) by a variety of people who touch me, physically and intellectually and spiritually. A happy choice. A joyful one. Not made for lack of other choices. Made because it is my choice, freely chosen, and it fits me beautifully. I look stunning in it.
From there, I can go after many other things. But these two things, if I can have them right now, it will make everything else open up. So this small tweak of old Virginia's mantra: I need fuck-you money and a room in a dwelling of my own.
...my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives...she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh...if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.
