The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

feeling the pinch

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It’s a tough thing, living in this Western World of ours. Our ideas have become convoluted, perhaps even ridiculously indulgent at times, and it never feels wrong, at least, not for the greater majority of us. We are a society of goals and standards, and any failure to achieve them will result in a tsunami of muddy emotions that might drown us where we sit. The dream is this: you grow up, you get the diplomas, you attain the perfect job, you find a perfect partner, you have the perfect kids, you have the perfect sex for fifty years with said partner, you have the perfect grandchildren courtesy of perfect children who have made a wonderful living at their own perfect jobs, and then you die at the age of one hundred, in your sleep, with your perfect partner lying next to you. Oh yeah, they die too. At the same time. You are holding hands, actually. The afterlife is going to be like a second perfect honeymoon, one that goes on forever, and who wouldn’t want that?

Then, the vast majority of us get our rude awakening: the act of dreaming itself is a reality, but the dream that we take from it is just a pleasant, ephemeral souvenir. Most of us do not have perfect lives, no matter how hard we wish for it. It gets messy, with broken love or a job that gives you varicose veins or a house with a mean termite problem. You could be grateful for all the things that are working for you, or you could be like me and the other millions of people out there who will feel like you deserve things to be better than they are.

Take last August, for example. I came home from work one day, a management job that I’d had for over thirteen years (a major international clothing retailer whose name sounds a lot like ‘crap’), and I collapsed into a wooden Muskoka chair in the backyard with my love, M., who had made me a cup of tea, so we could sit under our pear tree and take in the last of the afternoon. I remember this afternoon distinctly, mostly because of the day which followed it, and I remember drinking in the tea and swallowing, after which I exhaled and said drunkenly to my love, ‘I’m so happy at this moment’. Never mind that I’d never particularly loved my job (I’d always fancied myself too good for it), and never mind that I had just spent nine hours on my feet, moving the floor fixtures about to make way for the fall collection which was meant to arrive the following morning. I was sitting under a pear tree in my very own backyard, and I was comfortable at my job even if I didn’t like it. I had friends at work who made me laugh, and I was beginning to save a little money after recently getting a small raise to reward me for my performance over the past year. I had my own parking space downtown, one in which no one else had permission to park their car, and I recently dropped nearly fifteen pounds, so I looked better than I had in ages. No, I wasn’t working at my dream job, but I’d begun to wonder if I’d been kidding myself about that kind of thing all along. What if it’s about finding a job, any job, and just working, not ever considering if it makes us happy or not. What’s the point in straining ourselves when ’good enough’ is happening all around us?

The next morning, I lost my job. It was supposedly a random, ’corporate restructuring’ kind of scenario in which I was blindsided and came home sobbing. To rub it in good, my swift exit from my personal parking space was hampered by the discovery of a flat tire. I sobbed all the way home, worried I might not make it on the flattened rubber, but determined to get where I was going without stopping. It was not a good day.

Since then, I have fallen back into the trap of thinking I am meant to do something more worthy of me. I have been telling myself that a better job is waiting, something I will be jumping out of bed for each morning, smiling and humming madly as I ready myself to go. I have been determined to avoid the fickle world of retail management again, doing what I can to think of something more mother-friendly, more human-oriented. I fiddle with the idea of going to school, of training for something enviable and interesting, but I usually lose focus and concentrate on things like finding the best apple crisp recipe, or how to get paint out of my daughter’s clothing.

When I left my job, my former employees all called and emailed me to tell me that I was meant for ’bigger and better things’, and I wanted to believe them. If they thought this about me, it must be true, surely. The ’Western Dream’ is to find the perfect job and make oodles of money at it so that there is no uncertainty about one’s future or finances. I decided to believe them, after all, because it made me feel better about myself to consider that I am meant to be happy, that it is my right.

Somehow, a year has passed, and I am still jobless. I have not been aggressive about it though, something I am mildly ashamed to admit. I decided to spend time at home because it’s what I like, to be blatantly honest. I like to be with my daughter, and I like to make her bed each morning, and make her dinner and talk to her about the things that matter the most to a three-year-old. All of my favourite activities seem to take place in the home, and I have been (selfishly) stalling so that I might be able to enjoy them. I have been cooking and reading and writing. I clean daily (my therapy), and I sometimes crawl into bed in the afternoon to steal a quick nap. I like to be near my love M., who works at home as a simulator aircraft designer, and I like to bring him tea when he doesn’t expect it. I want the Western Dream, just like most people do, but I don’t want to give anything up to get it.

I was a good student. I have won speech contests, and I was the Grade 8 Valedictorian, and I have had straight A report cards. I was considered someone who would be ‘going places’, and I believed that I would be. I got into the journalism program in University that I had been wanting since I was a child, and when I got there, I turned around and came home. It was fear, I think. I didn’t want to fail in my pursuits, so I stopped pursuing.

But now, things are tight. I want things, you see. I want security and I want good coffee and sometimes I want Szechuan delivered. After a year off of work, I have exhausted my finances and I have had to use my limited creativity to come up with inexpensive dinner ideas or activities that we all can do for free. M. is not making loads of money at his job, and even if he did, he believes both parents should be contributing, which I sometimes struggle with accepting. I want to make home improvements, and I want new clothes, and I don’t want to buy generic just so I can avoid spending an extra fifty cents. The Western Dream does not involve generic shampoo, at least, not the last time I checked. There is a mortgage here, and a car payment, and I always have to buy someone I know a birthday present. Being resourceful isn’t always easy and satisfying. Sometimes, you want the extras.

I am proud of myself for adapting to a leaner kind of life, for being able to get by without indulging, but I have to admit, it’s getting old. I am a Westerner, and as such, I am from a land of want, rather than need. Of course, having a roof over my head isn’t about want. I will need a job soon, and it might not matter if I like it.

Things could be much worse. I complain about wanting new clothes or a new couch, but there are people drinking dirty water on the other side of the planet. There are bands of innocents living in tents who do not know if they'll die from hunger or disease or at the hands of madmen who think themselves godlike and powerful. I know this, and I understand the distastefulness of my grievances. I am shamed by it.

It’s the feeling of failure, though, which is the real problem. I am feeling the sting of complacency, of surrender and uselessness. I’m feeling it pinch me, and it’s leaving a mark.