White house.
I grew up to beige. Everywhere my mother and I went in our sojourn of shelter was beige. Chicago was beige. Atlanta was beige, when I travel it’s always been beige.* Lead beige, latex beige, low emission beige, cheap beige, always beige, beige painted on top of beige. A color so prevalent that institutions and residences alike use the color; it’s neutral, have them tell you.
I should have known something was wrong with my first marriage when She Who Still Has My Last Name (Why I don’t know?) said “We need to repaint the living room.” So we went and got paint samples, she deliberated for two weeks and then picked the color. Another week passed by, and then we prepped the room and began painting. Soon after starting She Who Still Has My Last Name (Why I don’t know?) feigned an injury, left me to do the work on my own and when the paint dried we realized it was the exact same color; no shit. Who repaints beige to beige?
Beige has always left me wanting…
Anytime I’ve ever suggested white to people they’ve recoiled. The only time I’ve been inside of houses that were painted white,I could best be described as being in the role of “The help.” White is an absence of color that I have always associated with peacefulness, wealth, art & museums. I was a little black kid raised on the south side of Chicago; my mom wouldn’t even let me have white tennis shoes “You’ll dirty them up” she’d say. White makes me feel at peace, but it also makes me obsess over dirt. When i'm relaxed though I somehow feel a stillness that I’ve never felt in beige surroundings.
*When I spoke to the love of my life about painting our house white, she politely reminded me that we have two kids.
White can admittedly feel unsettling and stark. You can’t live in white, you must live with white, there is a difference.
wrong side...
I woke up a little anxious a few mornings ago. Usually waking up to stress means that I have something unresolved or it’s a money issue. I sometimes associate the anxiety about work, by default. Like I’ll literally wake up and think “Is this it? Is this my life, just doing this job thing to exist, so I can wake up to do it again?” It’s a weird question and it’s never been settled or muddied with the thought that if I could just find something I love, then I’d be ok. It’s a prevailing theory I hear from people though, not people who love their work btw. People who love their work usually say “I love my job.” They never say to me “You gotta find something you love.” In the magazine articles and in the culture of content consumption we hear that is the trick, you gotta find the thing you love. The “He was a wall street banker/now owns a dairy farm and is ecstatic about his 18 hour day; he loves what he does.” stories are less about love and more about meeting people who found a way to monetize their obsessive traits with a very niche hobby or singular interest that they excel at; more on that later.
This could all be about me waking up and realizing I wasn’t loved enough as a child. But I think that probably could have been resolved with either owning a dog or having a sibling. I was left to fend for my own when I was a kid. My parents were doing their thing and I was along for the ride; their life didn’t stop when I came around, I might have slowed them down a bit, in truth though, my mom probably didn’t crash and burn cause I was there to slow her down, unlike my duty shirking father, he died on the vine that was heroin, a speed ball to be precise.
And let me be clear, it’s not that chickenshit wake up either, the one where you’re paralyzed and don’t want to get out of bed. My anxiety has me hopping out of bed and wondering through my day, searching about for my place in the scheme of things. I don’t find the answer usually (ever) I usually just try to assign myself some duties and I look for things that might be bothering me.
I don’t really know what else to do. God has never answered my call in a literal sense and my boyhood side still holds some resentment about that. Therapy seems odd, I should pay to talk, really many would say I talk too much already. And I have just enough talk-to-myself juice that I ask myself the same questions. I sometimes think about a support group, guys in a circle, we’re not alone, coffee at night, some smoking, hugs for sure; uhm…
I am resigned to finish my ten year goals and then I think I’ll be just fine, my Poe character uneasy will tick no longer, but until then, I think I will continue to have some restless nights and uneasy mornings and maybe that’s how it should be. I never got anything but fat when I was comfortable.
Is this the new me?
Tryouts
It feels weird to imagine that I’m doing this wave of writing, where I work on a piece, post it, then I make it dormant. I feel like that session player trying to come in on a free form jazz group, I want to catch their groove, I try a few licks, strum a few notes (my music analogies are maybe one notch better than my sports metaphors) but I know that’s not quite it.
