Oof, she’s been a bitch tonight.
Man I can barely write I am so sad.
If you told me at 32 I would be laying of the floor of my childhood bedroom, tears and snot ruining my naturally dyed baby Alpaca throw pillow (one of the staple home pieces I managed to salvage from when I flew the coop) I’d have said ABORT whatever you’re doing and PRESERVE THE FANTASY.
Preserve the Fantasy. Meaning play act the supposed linear version of events to the best of your ability that will enable this future. Marble farmhouse style table with long reclaimed wood benches, Sambada ringing in the morning and fresh squeezed orange juice for all? Family dinners on Sundays and children’s birthday parties in relaxed Ganni dresses? A writing desk for mama and jute rugs abounding, Saturday morning farmer’s market with cold brew and mothers with pursed lips smelling heirlooms in unironic Lululemon?
Anyone else?
I think I am just so smitten with all my highly detailed, yet entirely unspecific possibilities I completely lost sight of um, reality.
Preserve the fantasy also meant living carefully. It’s like me in roller skates–tragic. Just accept it. Just change it. Just change you. Just do it. Just take it. Yep okay a little more to the right…just a smidgolaaa more…keep going…OKAY GREAT.
Dial the expectations down, then dial that in. Okay you’ve reached a new low? Let’s try this one more time…
And the thing is…it still feels good. It still feels good when the promise land of dinner parties and his-and-her sinks seem like it’s only one more compromise away.
But the marker will always move just a little bit more. And with that small parts of your precious untamed person get eroded. Until you’re shaved down to your soft little artichoke center thinking, “Is it worth it?”
And then, “Am I worth it?”
The Fantasy is great. It’s comforting. It’s silly. It’s a good way to spend a daydream. It’s palatable enough to drone on about; when people ask me what I see for myself in my future, I can usually get away with describing a party I’d like to throw for my nonexistent husband’s 50th Birthday Party. (Hotel Citroen–tropical shipwrecked chic; it’s a resort on island where Steve Zissou rescues Alistair Hennessey from pirates in The Life Aquatic).
But the Fantasy is dangerous if I allow it to rip me away from what’s most interesting about my current moment. As my father would say, time is a construct. All that exists, both past and future, is now. I don’t want to spend so much time pricing a copper pan set that I miss out on the spectacular and prickly sensations of my present.
In my twenties I lived for what was to come.
In my thirties I only want what is here.
So let’s see how this decade goes.
Son in the City 