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gaiatheorist · 5 years

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“Does it spark joy?”

2.30am on a Sunday morning, and I’ve read yet another article on Marie Kondo. I’m coming unravelled again, and setting myself distraction-tasks, to avoid plummeting into one of my rabbit-holes. They’re holding strategies, last year I had the garden, this year, I have the house and the garden. I’ll grow some of my own food, because the UK unemployment benefit doesn’t leave any leeway for anything but bills. (I’m lucky, I ‘Won the Golden Ticket’ of an award of disability benefit, it’s highly probable that it will be declined when it comes to renewal in less than a year, despite my brain injuries being permanent.) I ‘caught’ myself moving things around a few days ago, it’s one of my anxiety-behaviours, I don’t have very much control about the external-world, so I focus on what I can control.

Moving things around. Do I want/need ‘that’? Is it of any practical use now, or am I just holding on to it for sentimental reasons? (There’s very little here that isn’t of practical use, I don’t really ‘keep things’, and I do have regular periods of purging what’s left.) There’s no ‘sparking joy’, just an awful lot of irritability. My strange friend Creepy Carpet Tile Man visited recently, and pointed to various ‘things’, saying “Why don’t you put that on eBay?” “It’s not mine.” “Surely it is now? He’s been gone long enough, doesn’t it become legally yours after all these years?” My loft is full of the ex’s ‘stuff’, and I can’t use my garden shed, because that’s packed with his belongings as well. I hate being ‘tethered’ to him, I’m sick of asking him to take things away, and him ‘forgetting’, or ‘having something on’, he’s unreliable, he always was. I’m also cautious of snapping at him in front of our son, so this is, in part, a situation of my own making. The ex is doing what he always did, “Leave something long enough and someone else will sort it.”, he’s ‘not the most useful arrangement of molecules’, as the kid once described him.

The practical thing for me to do would be to tell the ex again that I want his various stuff gone. I don’t want to be responsible for it, I have enough difficulty being responsible for myself some days. He doesn’t have the time, or the storage space, his parents aren’t well, and our son is in the final year of his degree. ‘Never a good time’ again. I’m angry at him for being generally inept, and I’m frustrated with myself for absorbing the emotional load again. I am not responsible for him, and I’m stuck in a loop of all the times he’d tantrum “I’m not happy!”, projecting his own inadequacies onto me, making himself the centre of the universe, and blaming me for not being what he wanted. I never really was, he wanted a compliant house-mouse who would bend over backwards to serve her Lord and Master, I’m not that. He wanted me to be an extension of him, and I’m a distinct entity, like Peter Pan’s shadow, I made the separation, but I’m still scrubbing away his stains, three years on.

That’s not a metaphor, I am literally scrubbing away stains. As well as being inept and egocentric, he was dirty. The lettings agents inspect the property every six months, when he was here, that would lead to me dousing the house in Febreeze and bleach on the morning of the inspection, after he’d gone to work. Housework was ‘my’ responsibility, and, apart from hurriedly shoving piles of his own worn socks down the arm of the sofa when his Dad visited, he didn’t do anything. I allowed that to continue. He never once washed the dishes, or vacuumed, and if he spilled or dropped anything on the carpet, he’d either just leave it, or blot it with one of his socks. He expected undying gratitude for mowing the lawn, and once sulked for days because I didn’t praise him for cleaning the outside of the vacuum cleaner. (No, he didn’t use it, or even empty it, he cleaned the outside of it, the man’s a melon.) At the last inspection, I asked the agent if there was any action required on my part. “No, it’s just the cleanliness again.” “Pardon?” “Well, your carpets and that, we know some of the stains were here when you moved in.” ‘Some’ of them, the rest were the ex, and his rancid dog.

I can’t remember when we bought the Vax carpet-cleaning machine, it’s not really something I’d have marked on the calendar, but it most probably was in response to a spill of some description, and it probably wasn’t me that spilled it. (I am incredibly clumsy, more so since the brain injuries, but if I spill something, I clean it up straight away, so it doesn’t set as a stain.) The Vax worked the first time I used it, and then the second time I tried, there was no suction. The ex said he’d look at it, but it wasn’t a motorbike, or pornography, or a YouTube video of UFO conspiracies, so he didn’t look at it. For years, the lettings agents would ask me to address the stains on the carpets, and I’d end up on my hands and knees, with a bucket and a scrubbing brush, because the Vax was ‘broken.’ One year, after I’d blistered my hands really badly attempting to scrub the carpet, he hired an industrial carpet cleaning machine for me to use, then berated me for not using it properly, and leaving streaks on the carpet. The machine was faulty, he said he’d ask for a replacement, but that never happened, he ‘forgot.’

The Vax wasn’t ‘broken’, it was clogged. Dog-hair, and dirt, and grit had obstructed the inlet to the vacuum, and dried in position. Unclogging it would have been more pleasant if the machine hadn’t evidently sucked dog-urine out of the carpets. His dog pissed on everything, and he said he couldn’t smell it. I could. Apart from the constant-stink, wet carpet has a tendency to absorb more dirt, between the allotment, and the ex working in engineering, there was plenty of dirt. (Also lots of sand and grit, he had a tendency to dump fishing and camping gear on the carpet, “I’ll shift that in a bit.”, then he’d assume his position on the sofa, dropping yet more crumbs from toast and crisps.)

“It was just the way he was raised.” was my old excuse for his behaviour. His family had a very traditional-patriarchal structure, the men went out to work, and the women had ‘little jobs’, and assumed responsibility for all of the housework. That was his ‘normal’, but not mine, my mother was an utter slattern, she worked full-time, she vacuumed once a week, and sporadically responded to my step-father’s desire for a basic degree of cleanliness by storming into my bedroom with a bin-liner, and a beating. Teaching me how-to-housework wasn’t on her agenda, I suppose I ought to thank her for not trying to shape me into some sort of Stepford Wife. Nobody taught the ex how-to-housework, either, when he split up with the girlfriend before me, the Mother-in-law took on his cleaning, laundry, and evening meals, lest his precious testicles fall clean off if he touched a duster. That stopped when he introduced me, and there was an assumption that I’d take over.

The first couple of months that we lived together were absolute chaos, I was working two jobs at the same time, so the house ended up looking like it had been rolled down a hill. The in-laws would ‘tut’ when they visited, and then the Mother-in-law straight-out ‘told’ me “You really need to Hoover every day, because of the dogs.” Me, not him. Some friends of his pointed out that I was ALWAYS washing dishes when they visited. I was. It wasn’t a house-proud thing, he’d always offer visitors coffee (which I was expected to make), and the mugs would all be dirty in the sink, because washing dishes wasn’t a routine thing.

I’d moved in with him in the October, and in December, I became ill. ‘Viral illness’, which is doctor-code for “We’re not entirely sure, might clear up in time.” I’d changed jobs at the start of November, and was on a temporary ‘seasonal’ contract, which wasn’t renewed when my sick-note expired. I was unemployed, and really quite unwell, but I was ‘home all day’, and the ex quickly shifted from “I don’t expect to come home from work to find pots in the sink!” to “You need to get another job, or go.” Fine, whatever, being ‘kept’ was never going to suit me. A succession of menial factory jobs followed, frequently doubling-back, and staying for the ‘afters’ shift after doing the ‘days’ shift. Oh, look, the dishes are STILL in the sink. The company he was working for was having ‘financial difficulties’, and would ‘pay him next week’, so I kept accepting the double-backs, because it was only going to be a short-term thing. It wasn’t. The company went into administration, he was unemployed, and the dishes were still in the sink.

He found another job, and we entered another period of clutter-and-chaos, kicking crap behind the sofa when the in-laws car pulled up outside. Their tutting and eye-rolling was never directed at him, their blue-eyed-boy wasn’t expected to cook or clean, he had a woman to do that for him. Except I didn’t. He’d have sporadic tantrums, usually directed at my books, or letter-writing, “I didn’t grow up in a scruffy house, YOU didn’t grow up in a scruffy house, why do you let it get like this?” Erm, I did grow up in a scruffy house, and a couple of books aren’t really the issue here. He denigrated the me-things, it wasn’t the physical presence of books, or writing paper, or bits of art-and-craft materials, it was the fact that while I was reading, or writing, or making things, my attention wasn’t on him.

He’d occasionally decide he was going to clean up, but that usually lead to him emptying all of the videos out of the cabinet, dusting the shelves, and then deciding to watch a film, he really was rubbish. I started trying to play house, to please him, I had no idea what I was doing, literally, I shrunk his laundry, scorched his ironing, burned his dinner. Psychologically, I played right into his coercive control, we’d had the whirlwind romance, which had led to me excluding most of my friends, because he didn’t like them, and I didn’t want him to be angry with me. I didn’t like most of his friends, but I pushed the feelings, and their wandering hands away. I made myself less-than, back then, I idolised him, I had made him my ‘everything’, thrown myself into him, and this rabbit-hole precipice now is because I’m struggling to ‘find myself’. (Sick-bucket, please.) I spent 20 years walking on eggshells, trying not to upset him, more than half of that time, we’d accepted that the marriage was over, and I’d agreed to stay with him to avoid unsettling our son, or upsetting the Father-in-law.

Ironically, the near-miss with my brain haemorrhage made me more aware of cleaning. My sense of smell is heightened, and I have constant visual disturbances, as well as a tendency to knock things over. Heaps and clutter are just accidents waiting to happen. More than that, nearly dying made me realise I wasn’t really living. There’s a tangent here, the ex’s mother died after a brain haemorrhage, I both didn’t-want-him, and didn’t want to be a constant reminder of his past-loss. I survived what killed his idol, she was the strongest woman he’d known, until he met me, and I really didn’t think it was fair on either of us to continue with the sham half-life.

So, I’ll continue paring-down, throwing-out, and inventing new swear-words. Does the Vax machine that I’ve repaired with brute force, twisty-wire and duct tape ‘spark joy’? Of course it doesn’t. Does the fact that I’m finally managing to remove the stains he left from the carpet ‘spark joy’? Don’t be ridiculous, it’s physically painful, and every time I get the carpet wet, it re-activates the stench of dog-piss and engineering grease, I’m ploughing through my supplies of scented candles and wax melts at an alarming rate. I have a sense of achievement that I’ve managed to Womble-fix the Vax, and I know I’ll feel more content in myself after a couple more sessions of Vax-ing.

That was the point, I don’t do much in the way of ‘joy’, an old friend recently used ‘joy’ in a Facebook private message to me, and I shook my head. Looking for joy-and-only-joy is a futile existence, I’m not as miserable as the persona I project to the world, but humans aren’t designed to exist in a permanent state of ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’. It’s a fine aspiration to explore and embrace the truly wonderful, but it’s not a realistic expectation that everything-can-always-be-perfect. It can’t. These blogs are usually negative, it’s my way of purging, I do look for the positives in life, and there are many, but that Instagram-perfect isn’t me. I do false-front, I acknowledge that, but I refuse to buy-in to this something-saturation we’re bombarded with, I don’t need affirmation that I’m ‘enough’, I don’t need-to-be-needed, wanting-to-be-wanted is a different matter.

I am ‘enough’, and I struggle with other-people pushing ‘happy’ as the norm. I’m content with I-don’t-hate-this, and accepting I-hate-this-now-but-it-will-be-done-soon.

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sarahburness · 5 years

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Happily Single: Why Marriage Wasn’t a Good Fit for Me

“I’m not sad about any of my life. It’s so unconventional. It doesn’t look anything like I thought it would.” ~Edie Falco

I knew what was coming. My co-worker Rose was midway through her second chocolate martini and feeling loose enough at our after-work get-together to stop talking about her marriage and instead, start talking about my non-marriage.

“I don’t get it. Why haven’t you ever been married?” she asked, in a disbelieving tone.

I sighed. “You know, this is the third time you’ve asked me that. Remember? We had that whole conversation about it at the office Christmas party last year.”

Looking deeply perplexed, she sipped at her drink, not ready to drop the subject. “I just mean…you’re so attractive and you have such a great personality. How is it that you’ve never been married?”

That’s what she said. What she meant was: What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of a freak? Couldn’t you get a man? Are you man hater? Or a lesbian? (Not that there would be anything wrong with that—and actually, it’s no longer a valid excuse to be single, now that same-sex marriage is legal).

It’s possible that I was imagining more subtext than Rose intended, and to be fair, she was not the first person who’d put me on the spot about my single status.

On a regular basis, people I meet express astonishment at my never having tied the knot, taken the plunge, walked down the aisle to what is widely assumed to be a happily ever after existence. I am expected to explain myself—to defend my life choices—often to people I’ve just met.

Well-mannered folk who would almost never consider prying into the private lives of a brand new acquaintance have no reluctance in doing so when they find out that she’s an old maid. (Yeah, I’m owning that term.)

I’ve experienced this with bosses, co-workers, a man at a class reunion whom I hadn’t seen in thirty years, dental hygienists, a stranger sitting next to me on an airplane, manicurists, and various random strangers at parties.

A polite conversation can suddenly turn awkward if I let slip that I am an old maid. (I did recently have a different experience with a hair stylist who is divorced and struggling to raise two kids with no financial help from her ex. When she found out that I’d never been married, she said, “How’d you get so lucky?” But that reaction is the exception.)

People want an explanation. A story. Something that makes you make sense to them. After all, isn’t everybody supposed to grow up and get married?

For years, I’d stammer out some cliché intended to put people at ease, like, “I never met the right guy,” or “I moved around a lot for my career.” While that may have satisfied their curiosity, it invariably made me feel worse. Why did I have to apologize for who I was? Assure others that I was normal (in most respects)?

As I grew older, people became even more inquisitive and judgmental. After all, the bloom was off the rose. Even if I came to my senses and made a determined effort to find a spouse, I had aged out of my peak mate-attracting years.

Eventually the questions took a toll on my self-esteem, causing me to question myself and my choices.

Had I made a horrible mistake by not prioritizing getting married? Did everyone else know something I didn’t know? Would I someday deeply regret not having “Mrs.” in front of my name?

Seeing one friend after another get married multiplied my doubts and made me wonder: “Is there something wrong with me?”

I’d wake up abruptly in the middle of the night, overwhelmed by a sick feeling of dread, thinking: “I FORGOT TO GET MARRIED!”

When I was young, I did assume that someday I’d get hitched and have a family. I didn’t have a clear picture of what that would look like, although I was definite about not wanting to do a lot of housework, like my mother did. (I still don’t; I pay someone to clean my house). I had no interest in cooking—another of her daily chores—and as for motherhood urges, I preferred Barbies to baby dolls.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, for many people. I have lots of friends who enjoy sharing their lives with loving spouses—and I’m happy for them—but marriage is not a good fit for everyone. Those who do not, for whatever reason, get married should not be subjected to “single shaming.”

For my part, it took the hindsight reached after decades as a singleton to realize that I’d been deeply ambivalent about matrimony all along. I saw marriage as a choice that would affect all other choices, a partnership with many benefits but one that would tie me down and limit—at least to some extent—my ability to follow my own dreams.

What I really wanted was adventure. My parents’ traditional marriage worked for them, but it didn’t appeal to me, a child of the sixties and seventies who saw new doors swinging open for women, offering us opportunities that had not been available to my mother when she was coming of age.

I wanted an interesting career—preferably something outside of the mainstream—and I knew that marriage would restrict my options. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a spy. That didn’t happen, which is just as well for America, since I can’t keep a secret. Perhaps predictably, I went in a direction that allowed a lot of communication and became a radio personality.

Had I been married, I would not have been able to advance my career by moving all around the country, bringing comedy and commentary to listeners in various states. I got to broadcast from the back of an elephant in a circus, a hot air balloon high in the sky, and a pace car making the rounds at a racetrack. I introduced bands like REO Speedwagon and The Judds at concert venues and made guest appearances on local TV shows.

Early in my career, when I’d worked my way up from teeny tiny markets to a merely small market, I got a job offer from a radio station in San Francisco. San Francisco! In one move, I could more than double my salary, which at that time kept me just above the poverty level.

Of greater importance to me was the opportunity to work with major market personalities and reach many more listeners than I ever could in Champaign, Illinois. Additionally, I could go from the Midwest to an exciting city in California.

I thought about it for a hot second, and then said, “Yes!”

I didn’t have to ask a husband if he wanted to move. If he would be able to transfer or find a new job in the Bay Area. If he would be willing to leave behind friends and family, forego the recreational softball team for which he’d played third base for so many summers, abandon the garden he’d lovingly hewed out of the wilds of the backyard.

I was able to make a major decision based solely on what I wanted to do, and it was exhilarating. With the exception of the job interview I’d flown in for, I’d never even been to San Francisco, but I was thrilled as I packed up and hit the road for a new position in an unfamiliar city.

Ironically, that job turned sour pretty quickly, for reasons that had nothing to do with its location. After a year, I left for greener pastures (okay, Chicago) just as easily as I’d headed for San Francisco. And that wasn’t my last move, by the way.

Imagine if I’d uprooted a husband, convinced him to go to the Bay Area to start a whole new life there, and then turned around in a year’s time and told him that I’d changed my mind. If he had objected to moving yet again—which would have been completely reasonable on his part – I might have been stuck indefinitely in a job I hated. I would likely have brought that bitterness home from work every day, where it would have affected my marriage.

Being single enabled me to make the career decision I needed to make at that time. Not all of my decisions have been brilliant; I haven’t always had a lot of money, but what I do have is mine to do with as I wish, as is my time. Whatever actions I take or choices I make are done without having to consult with, negotiate with or ask permission from anybody, and I enjoy the hell out of that.

I go where I want to go on vacations, sleep in late when I feel like it and commit to time-consuming projects that appeal to me. I act in plays and sing in a band. I’ve run half marathons, traveled through Europe, and worked as a personal assistant to a movie star. My annual Halloween costume party is legendary.

I’m constantly learning new things; my current efforts include speaking Italian, playing the bass guitar, and sewing.

The point is: I spend my free time doing what I love to do, without having to accommodate someone else’s wants, needs, or schedule.

Married women, of course, get a lot done as well, but their accomplishments are not shadowed by the big “but,” as in, “She climbed Mt. Everest and discovered a new solar system, but she never found the right guy. How sad.” An old maid could find a cure for cancer, figure out a way to reverse climate change in a week, and invent high heels that felt like cushy slippers but at her funeral, people would still whisper, “She never married,” as if that canceled everything else out.

What’s interesting about this is that as a society, our ideas about marriage and family have undergone profound changes in recent decades.

Biracial couples who might have raised eyebrows some time ago are commonplace now and are regularly featured in TV commercials. Same-sex marriages are being accepted—or at least tolerated—to a greater extent now. It may have taken Aunt Vivian awhile to accept the fact that her niece Carolyn will be exchanging vows with someone named Diane, but Viv wouldn’t think of missing the wedding.

But what about people who don’t get married to anyone? Now that’s radical.

Why would someone want to go through life uncoupled? After all, being single past a certain age means being lonely and miserable, right? In a society that relentlessly promotes coupledom as the normal and only desirable way for adults to live, that negative perception about single women (in particular) persists.

That negativity eventually got to me. I became convinced that I was the last unmarried woman over forty (ok, over fifty) on the planet, and that I had made a big mistake in taking the road less traveled. I couldn’t reconcile the happy, busy, friend-filled life I had with the perceptions of other people. That they were people who didn’t know me well didn’t seem to matter.

My friends loved and accepted me for who and how I am. Why wasn’t that enough?

Like everyone who feels alienated, I found myself looking for my tribe.

I discovered that there are plenty of “old maids” out there who are living their lives fully and enthusiastically, despite the annoying questions and side eye glances that come their way. Many are still open to the idea of marriage but they are not waiting for it, not keeping their dreams on hold until the perfect partner comes along. They are complete, just as they are.

Many of them (okay, many of us) thoroughly enjoy the freedom and autonomy that go along with being single.

It’s a tribe that’s growing in size. The percentage of single people in the U.S. is greater than ever before, with single men and women making up 47.6 percent of households in 2016, according to U.S. census data. More singletons were women: 53.2 percent compared with 46.8 percent who were men.

It took me awhile, but I reached the point where I no longer summon up clichés to explain myself to people who can’t think beyond the conventional. I’ve realized that it’s not my responsibility to reassure them that I’m normal. I am normal. I’m just not married.

About Maureen Paraventi

Maureen Paraventi is a Detroit-based writer of fiction, nonfiction, stage plays and songs. Her book, The New Old Maid: Satisfied Single Women, is available from Amazon and Chatter House Press. When she’s not writing, Maureen sings with McLaughlin’s Alley, a pop/rock/Irish band that plays in venues all over southeast Michigan. Find out more about her at maureenparaventi.com.

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