The Formal Sitting Room

Victorians knew how to separate the public from the private. They had to. All socialization was face-to-face unless waiting for months to receive a letter was an option. You had to invite people into your home to have just about any interaction with them. So they created very clear distinctions between what was for the viewing of others and what was kept to themselves.

There was a well defined barrier between the two. The private space was modest, comfortable, and familiar. It was lived in. The public space was built for show - Gilded and impressive. It was the Facebook of home decoration: Putting your best parts of display to make your life seem better than it truly was.

New Orleans has mastered this concept. The decadence that is associated with the city is the ultimate public parlor, the formal reception room that you're invited into to keep you out of its private spaces. The city holds your attention so you don't go wandering off into its real life. It takes reality and amplifies it, creating a gaudy pantomime of itself to sell to the world. This is how it stays alive, by presenting a parody for mass consumption.

It's very purposeful. The decision was made for the survival of this place. The city knows what you want to see, what you expect, and it will provide that. For a fee, of course. But is it really any different from what we all do every day? We pick which traits to amplify and which to keep hidden based on the image we want to project. We try so hard to become what we assume others want us to be. The payment is more abstract - Companionship and acceptance rather than money (usually). But the sentiment is the same. In the end, we're all just selling ourselves to others and desperately hoping that someone, anyone, will buy us as is.

The Game

I always forget that leaving the house looking halfway presentable automatically means that my only reason for being out is to attract someone. It couldn't be that I wanted to see a show or even to have a conversation with other humans. It couldn't be that I enjoy looking attractive because it makes me feel good about myself - It makes me feel like I took care of myself for once. No, it's always interpreted as trying to get laid.

It puts me on the defensive immediately and I wonder what is must be like to be able to leave the house without worrying how you will be pursued and what you'll have to do to protect yourself. To be able to let your guard down without it being taken as an invitation. I suppose I wonder what it must be like to be a man.

The biggest problem is freezing up. I want to be out and socializing like a regular person so I understand that making a scene when a line has been crossed is not the best way to handle the situation. It's impolite in public. So instead, I freeze up like a prey animal in the sights of danger. It's arguably the most toxic reaction as it's usually interpreted as consent rather than fear. With each failed social interaction, I add another behavior to the "Don't" column. Don't accept drinks being bought for you - It means you owe them something. Don't show too much skin - It means you're promising something. Don't forget to bring shoes that you an run in if you have to - It means you're asking to be victimized.

I look forward to getting older because it's safer. When you're no longer in the age range that's considered desirable, it's easier to move around in public. You become invisible. When your only role in society is to be a prize to be won or a territory to be conquered, falling outside of what is considered attractive make you nothing. A non-object. Useless to the world. There's something very comforting about that. Safety through non-existence.

There's also something incredibly depressing that my only hope in this situation seems to be disappearing. Taking myself out of society by destroying anything that makes you an object to be pursued, either by age or by sheer force of will. There's no option of it changing. That hope is beating out of you very early on, usually by thirteen or fourteen. By then, you've already been hunted for years by men old enough to be your father or even grandfather. Old enough to know better. Old enough that they're supposed to be the ones protecting you instead of the ones you need to protect yourself from.

So you wait instead. You harden yourself to it, steeling yourself against the thousand little cuts inflicted every day. You freeze when it happens, making yourself as quiet and small as possible, hoping they'll give up and leave. You rope-a-dope them, letting them tire themselves out until you're no fun anymore. Until the game ends and they move on to the next challenge. You hope that it doesn't make them angry and you plan your steps if it does - The shoes for running, the pepper spray in your bag, the words to yell so someone will take notice. You wait until their disinterest grants you permission to continue on with your life. You savor that freedom until the next one comes along and the game restarts anew.

Near Misses

My first hurricane barely missed us, veering to the east at the last moment. I keep swinging back and forth between relief and something close to disappointment. The anticipation and the anxiety are so enormous that to have nothing happen to justify them feels like I've wasted so much energy. Logically, I know that we're lucky to have missed the destruction. I couldn't have dealt with the lost wages or the possibility of damage to my care. The experiences I can take in stride no matter how trying they may be. Money is always what ends up breaking me.

It seems like that's always been how it worked. There's no denying that I've done my fair share of making bad choices and reacting to situations in inappropriate ways. The repercussions of these have been long lasting and in some cases, have changed the course of my life in terrible ways. But it seems like each way I tried to turn, lack of money had erected a barricade in my path. It's useless to sit around and think about what could have been, but it's inevitable some days. Nothing changes and yet it still sucks me in.

At a family gathering, a rarely seen relative asked me what I wanted to be. My eight or nine year old self was very certain - I wanted to write movies. I had already spent countless hours staring at the television, watching the same movies over and over until the tape started to degrade. My free time was filled with Marilyn and John Wayne. When they weren't available, I buried myself in the highest forms of literature I could find at the time - Nancy Drew and Babysitters' Club novels. I studied their writing styles and character development as if they were maps to storytelling.

The response was unexpected, although nothing in my life so far could have led me to believe that any other reaction would have been possible. But we are cursed by the naivety of youth which tells us that anything is possible and ensures our constant disappointment until the lesson is finally learned to stop hoping. "What about being a teacher?" she asked. Surely that would be obtainable for someone like me, which the limited resources and opportunities that would be available to me. It was sheer practicality that prompted this. There was no malice or even any forethought of how this would effect an impressionable child. But intentions are not magic and it had the same result no matter the reasoning behind it.

I don't remember consciously realizing the implications of this conversation until years later. What I remember is the sudden disinterest in what had been my main drive in life. I kept watching movies, kept reading anything I could get my hands on. But there was no intention behind it anymore. Of course I couldn't write films. How ridiculous to even let the thought enter my mind. People like me didn't do magical things like that. We had nothing to say that could inspire others the way I had been inspired. We lived routine lives of manual labor, early marriage, unwanted children, and numbness. The greatest chance I had was as a teacher and even that was questionable due to the education required.

Did she end up being right because she understood the cold, hard reality of my situation or because her words altered my perception of what was achievable? I'll never know. But I proved her right. There was no money for education no matter the level of my ability. There was no stable environment where I could do the work needed to overcome finances. There was no one to provide encouragement and support. Everyone around me already had their dreams beaten out of them by the constant barrage of life, of poverty, of accidental pregnancies and bitter marriages. They knew what my life would be because they were already living it. As a child, I was already subconsciously beginning to accept it.

In the end, I ran from it. It was already too late to reclaim that person I had wanted to be as a child, but I could at least not fall into the same traps. I've become a hybrid of what I wanted and what was possible. Climbing out of that kind of cesspool requires baby steps. It's a generational game. I escaped, but I'm already far beyond the point of even considering attempting those lost ambitions, but maybe I've been able to show that it's possible to get out. It's doubtful that I'll ever have children to take the next step forward. My disposition doesn't lend itself to family building, most likely because I've only experienced the damage those relationships can inflict and not the joys of it.

So what's my end game? I'm honestly not sure. I've already done everything that I let myself believe was possible. I left. I have the freedom to go as I please (in the confines of finances - there's that ever present fence again) and think for myself. I can behave as I wish and there's only me to both make the judgements and suffer the consequences. My life is my own and I'll sacrifice so much to keep it that way, mostly in the way of relationships and bonding. But there's never been an end game. Survival mode doesn't allow for ends. Maybe it's time to finally allow myself the luxury of looking to the future. I don't know if I have it in me, it's so foreign to everything that I've used to construct the nature of my personality. But maybe the next stage of that survival is planning.

There are no ends. There are only means.

I've Seen the Future, Brother; It is Murder

Survival. The very word brings to mind images of alpha animals chasing down prey and disaster scenarios worthy of IMAX screens. But real survival is much more insidious, much more mundane. It's both easier and much more trying than we realize as we go through the motions of it every day. All it entails is waking up every day and continuing to breathe. It's just functioning at the most basic level.

There are the times when that basic level, the one that only contains the minimal effort it takes to keep living, feels like climbing a mountain. Then there the are times when you breeze through the highest levels of function almost unconsciously. The two seem to come and go at random, with no rhyme or reason dictating which level you'll end up on from day to day. But we keep going because...why? Because we have to? Because the evolutionary drive forces us to? Because it's actually easier to keep going than to stop? Stopping involves overriding our body's impulses and it doesn't take kindly to that change in programming. Stopping is hard.

I've become something of an expert at survival over the years - Not because I wanted to be but because that's what it took to keep going. I kept going when I was told that I wasn't wanted in this world by the people that were supposed to protect me. I kept going when the neglect got so bad that I had to be hospitalized for completely preventable conditions. I kept going when the false charges were lobbied against me in an attempt to free themselves of this unwanted responsibility called parenthood. I kept going as my shoes were locked away and my pencil confiscated, both too dangerous to be allowed in my hands. I kept going when the man who professed to love me brandished a sledge hammer and told me that I wasn't allowed in the house unless he gave permission, forcing me to sleep in the car after he left for work. I kept going when I left everything behind and ran away to a city where I knew no one and no one knew me. So far, at least. I kept going because it was somehow easier than stopping.

When there's no safety net, you learn how to walk the narrow ledge between survival and destruction. I don't recommend it - It's needlessly exhausting and terrifying, never knowing if you'll make it. No one should have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps over and over until those straps are hanging on by a frayed thread. The struggle doesn't make you stronger, it makes you weary. It makes you jaded. No one should have to fight to survive. It's true that I wouldn't be the person I am today without those experiences - I'd be better. I'd be trusting of both people and situations, never worrying that I'll wake up tomorrow and have empty cabinets or a drained bank account. I'd have learned the tools needed to thrive in this world without the painful missteps, always having to claw knowledge out of mistakes that could very well have killed me at times.

I've lived in survival mode for decades, scrambling at all times. Now the time has come to learn how to exist outside of it and that's more terrifying than anything I've ever had to face.