![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfire My ambitions in my life have always been basically the same; partner, cats, dog, house, car, garden, lazy Sundays, books, stability,
It seems that I can never hold on to more than one of these things at once. Which is...disappointing to say the very least.
Over the years one thing seems more urgent than another and I find myself longing for its realisation. Every fibre of my being desires it and every moment of my spare time is spent in my imagination. So vivid are these fancies that I can almost feel the chill in the air as I sit down in the undecorated, sparsely furnished living room of the house I own for the first time. I can hear the dog sneeze with excitement in the kitchen as I put my shoes on in the hallway to take him for a walk. I can feel the weight of the paint cans as I heave them out of the boot of my car one sunny Saturday afternoon, met at the door by the cat who rubs round my ankles and I clutch the paint cans tighter for fear of dropping them on the cat. Tripping over the books stacked against every wall before I've had chance to put the bookcases up.
And then a customer shouts at me, and I go and serve them, and grimace through their rudeness, or politeness, as it goes. And I am brought back to reality with an uncomfortable bump.
Right now I'm trying to work out the shortest route to buying a house and having that. I think shared equity would be the only way I'd be able to afford a deposit. And I know for a fact I wouldn't be able to afford even the smallest possible deposit on a place in Brighton. So I need to move back to the East Midlands. Most often my little fantasy pastes in a house on the housing association estate they built in my village about 14 years ago. Is that realistic? Is that what I want?
These fantasies, desires, hopes....dreams, whatever you want to call them are the reason I hoard books. I just book a new bookcase, because even though I might only be in Brighton for another 4 months, it's always something that will take me just a hair's breadth closer to the dream.
In these uncertain times, I really don't even know what is realistic to hope for any more. I have friends who never left the East Mids who have jobs and own their own houses, they got in before the recession, and they have been in full time work for the last 7 years.
Don't get me wrong, I don't regret leaving, I definitely don't. I don't regret my degree, or my Masters. I don't regret living in Brighton when money has been so tight. I just wish these things didn't come at the expense of stability. I wish my Masters hadn't coincided so completely with the beginning of the recession where all graduate training schemes were more or less withdrawn the day I graduated. I wish I hadn't made myself apparently unemployable by pursuing the further study of a niche subject purely because it interested me - but I don't wish I hadn't done it.
I know I could compare myself to a hundred and one of my peers and see they are all in the same situation - I know they are, I recognise it as a stark fact. But 'being like every one else' is not the motivation, so such comparisons aren't useful, they alter nothing. I want these things because I want them.
I do, however, recognise, that all of these dreams are attached to one very clear payoff in my mind; they will make me happy.
Happy.
It's an empty word, it can never be all of the things it claims to signify. You can't have all the things happy means at once. And you sure as hell don't get happy from moving somewhere in order to get one box ticked off whilst simultaneously unticking a load of other boxes.
And me? I don't get happy from any of the brilliant get-happy-quick schemes I come up with. I don't get happy by fleeing one place to the next. I don't get happy from another new bookcase. I won't get happy when I get the house, the flat, the girl, the dog, the cat, the book, the garden, the Sunday. I won't. 'Happiness', illusive as it is, can be achieved by degrees and in the small moments, but for me? It's not gonna come just yet. Because the days where I get home and just cry keep happening. The days where I stand in front of the mirror to brush my hair and it takes me 5 minutes to actually lift my arm, keep happening.
But because the road to a place where I don't feel like that is so long, because the journey is unmapped and unclear; because on the days where I cry the hurdles to overcome seem so absolute, so huge; because all of these things I keep on looking for the quick fix. And the quick fix is imagining how utterly my life would be transformed the day I signed the mortgage on my house, or rolled over on a Sunday morning to see the face of the woman I love for the hundredth time, knowing I'd see her again every day for the rest of our lives.
These are my most favourite daydreams.
It seems that I can never hold on to more than one of these things at once. Which is...disappointing to say the very least.
Over the years one thing seems more urgent than another and I find myself longing for its realisation. Every fibre of my being desires it and every moment of my spare time is spent in my imagination. So vivid are these fancies that I can almost feel the chill in the air as I sit down in the undecorated, sparsely furnished living room of the house I own for the first time. I can hear the dog sneeze with excitement in the kitchen as I put my shoes on in the hallway to take him for a walk. I can feel the weight of the paint cans as I heave them out of the boot of my car one sunny Saturday afternoon, met at the door by the cat who rubs round my ankles and I clutch the paint cans tighter for fear of dropping them on the cat. Tripping over the books stacked against every wall before I've had chance to put the bookcases up.
And then a customer shouts at me, and I go and serve them, and grimace through their rudeness, or politeness, as it goes. And I am brought back to reality with an uncomfortable bump.
Right now I'm trying to work out the shortest route to buying a house and having that. I think shared equity would be the only way I'd be able to afford a deposit. And I know for a fact I wouldn't be able to afford even the smallest possible deposit on a place in Brighton. So I need to move back to the East Midlands. Most often my little fantasy pastes in a house on the housing association estate they built in my village about 14 years ago. Is that realistic? Is that what I want?
These fantasies, desires, hopes....dreams, whatever you want to call them are the reason I hoard books. I just book a new bookcase, because even though I might only be in Brighton for another 4 months, it's always something that will take me just a hair's breadth closer to the dream.
In these uncertain times, I really don't even know what is realistic to hope for any more. I have friends who never left the East Mids who have jobs and own their own houses, they got in before the recession, and they have been in full time work for the last 7 years.
Don't get me wrong, I don't regret leaving, I definitely don't. I don't regret my degree, or my Masters. I don't regret living in Brighton when money has been so tight. I just wish these things didn't come at the expense of stability. I wish my Masters hadn't coincided so completely with the beginning of the recession where all graduate training schemes were more or less withdrawn the day I graduated. I wish I hadn't made myself apparently unemployable by pursuing the further study of a niche subject purely because it interested me - but I don't wish I hadn't done it.
I know I could compare myself to a hundred and one of my peers and see they are all in the same situation - I know they are, I recognise it as a stark fact. But 'being like every one else' is not the motivation, so such comparisons aren't useful, they alter nothing. I want these things because I want them.
I do, however, recognise, that all of these dreams are attached to one very clear payoff in my mind; they will make me happy.
Happy.
It's an empty word, it can never be all of the things it claims to signify. You can't have all the things happy means at once. And you sure as hell don't get happy from moving somewhere in order to get one box ticked off whilst simultaneously unticking a load of other boxes.
And me? I don't get happy from any of the brilliant get-happy-quick schemes I come up with. I don't get happy by fleeing one place to the next. I don't get happy from another new bookcase. I won't get happy when I get the house, the flat, the girl, the dog, the cat, the book, the garden, the Sunday. I won't. 'Happiness', illusive as it is, can be achieved by degrees and in the small moments, but for me? It's not gonna come just yet. Because the days where I get home and just cry keep happening. The days where I stand in front of the mirror to brush my hair and it takes me 5 minutes to actually lift my arm, keep happening.
But because the road to a place where I don't feel like that is so long, because the journey is unmapped and unclear; because on the days where I cry the hurdles to overcome seem so absolute, so huge; because all of these things I keep on looking for the quick fix. And the quick fix is imagining how utterly my life would be transformed the day I signed the mortgage on my house, or rolled over on a Sunday morning to see the face of the woman I love for the hundredth time, knowing I'd see her again every day for the rest of our lives.
These are my most favourite daydreams.
