Dear 1BR PetsOK Wlkup Cozy GrtRenov NiceViews,
Boy and I will spend today attending Open Houses. Yes, we are considering home ownership. Never mind that my younger brother has owned his house for years now; I am feeling very grown up (and somewhat ambivalent about that fact). With great earning power comes great mortgage responsibility; also the expectation that I know what the hell I'm doing. I have this vision of walking into an Open House, realtors and other more savvy buyers staring me down and scoffing at my fumbling naivete. I imagine real estate lingo mangled in my mouth, as bloodthirsty sellers watch on and gleefully add a bevy of extra fees and costs because hey! How the hell would I know the difference? If you need to find me later, go looking in a *Super Spacious Walk-in Closet!* somewhere. I'll be the one huddled in the corner.
Part of the cozy middle-class American lifestyle is the tendency to take for granted our right to continuous and comfortable shelter. I am guilty of this as much as anyone; however, I have also always been keenly sensitive to how fraught and tenuous living spaces can be. I'm not talking about my misanthropic allergy to roommates, nor my clean-freakishness and its attendant stresses, nor even my deep hatred of moving (and tendency to do so often nonetheless). Rather, I have experienced and seen first-hand how very profoundly an address shapes the very contours of a person's life, liberty, and pursuit of relative emotional stability.
You and I are both now living in temporary situations, frustrating in their own different ways. Because we're both guilt junkies, we're both likely to try and keep our focus on how lucky we are to have the opportunities we currently have; I would suggest, however, that it's also OK to share a moment of fuck-off despair about the hole in your bedroom wall and the lumbering, significant footsteps over my head.
Someday, sooner rather than later, we'll look at properties together for our (charter school? ice-cream shop? crafting store? art gallery?), hand-in-hand and masters of the roofs over our heads. Boys can come too.
Love you miss you,
A pea.
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1 comment:
There are so many kinds of claustraphobia, no? (and so many ways to spell c-phobia) Footsteps, holes in walls, the state of Wisconsin-- odd and impossible little hindrances to our comfort. I am crossing my fingers for your hunt.
xoxoxo
p
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