Ākāśa - Space
I've lived in my house for almost 7 years. It's 900 square feet. Up until 2 weeks ago, I always had at least one empty drawer.
My friend Sarah found it when she came over for tea one night. She was looking for teaspoons and stared down, non-plussed. "You have an empty drawer."
"What now?" I said.
"Right here. Left of the oven. There's nothing in this drawer."
"Sweet!!!"
Even though I'd mostly forgotten that drawer was empty, it still freaked me out a couple of weeks ago when I bought a toaster and had to move all the spatulas into the empty drawer to make room.
Now I have no empty drawers.
The psychological weight of living in a house with no empty drawers is perceptible. It's so heavy, in fact, that I wondered if I should return the toaster, thereby moving the spatulas back to their rightful place in a canister on the counter and returning my formerly-empty-drawer to its original glory. After all, I'd survived years without toast! I started eye-balling books, shoes, appliances, and furniture, all in an effort to find things I could get rid of in a mad effort to reclaim emptiness.
Exacerbating the toaster conundrum is the boxes in the basement. Like many, somewhere between COVID and turning 40, I gained weight...just enough to preclude me from wearing all of my former clothes but not so much as to eliminate any hope of them ever fitting again. My friend Stella and I made boxes called, "I'm a Chubby Bunny!!!" to hold the offending clothes. They are in the basement taking up space and making me even more nervous.
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| This is bollocks. |
There is something about living in a house that is mostly empty that I find very soothing. A barren drawer, a sterile basement... these signify that if I really had to, I could pack up and leave at any time. I wouldn't have to depend on anyone else to help me. I could go to the grocery store, ask for apple crates, pack everything up, and just leave, as I have done so many times before. I could start over again somewhere else.
Emptiness means I am not trapped. I don't need anything because I don't have anything. I'm not fully invested.
When I lost my one-year-only position in Rockwood, I survived by finding a job making $15K a year and moving into a co-worker's basement. I couldn't have done that if I'd had a bunch of belongings.
When that job concluded and the co-worker needed her basement back, I moved to a small apartment in Dogtown. My storage unit was emptied out without my knowledge, which just goes to show that owning things is dangerous because then you can be robbed.
I lived in a new-urbanist development for awhile, but when the lady I was renting from lost everything, I had to move again. This would have felt impossible if I'd accumulated a bunch of stuff.
I know on a theoretical level that people move every day. But most people have others they depend on for things like pickup trucks or packing boxes or driving U-haul vans. When you own a bunch of stuff, it puts you in the vulnerable position of needing people. And if you don't have people, then you are trapped.
I hate being trapped.
I suppose this is why it was such a huge deal when I took the one-year-only position at FHN. It was essentially the only big risk I've taken in my life. I'd seen first-hand how one-year-only's could work out, and I went for it anyway.
And not only did I go for it, I pulled out all the stops. I bought chalkboard paint and banners and flags and pom-poms in black and gold. I decorated the shit out of that room, believing that if I refused to acknowledge there was any risk involved, if I fully moved into every corner, the risk would simply go away. That was my room, dammit, and it was going to remain my classroom for the rest of my teaching career!
If believing could have made it so, it would have. I left no empty drawers. I left no empty spaces of any kind. I gave everything this year, to this school, to this classroom, to these kids.
Everyone is very full of advice now. Go work for a tech start-up. Go work at Starbucks. Go work at Boeing. Go teach at a private school.
What no one seems to understand is that I've got nothing left to give.
After yoga this week, Lala said, "I have to hand it to you. No matter what Life throws at you, you just get up and keep putting yourself out there. With dating. With jobs. Not everyone can do that."
I was confused. "I don't do it because I want to. I do it because I don't have a choice."
But Jade agreed with her and insisted that resilience is a choice I make every day. I guess I could kind of see that with dating — I don’t have to go on dates. But I still don't know what they were talking about with jobs. I've never had a choice about being resilient, occupationally! I don't have the luxury of being able to move back into my folks' basement if I just give up on Life and let the depression take over.
Is it really a choice if you have no other options?
I told Cara that I cannot keep going. I feel as if I were walking along a path and an asteroid blew it off the map. And now it's not a matter of choosing a fork in the road. There's no road left. There's not even any countryside. There's nothing but a hole, a gaping wound in the landscape.
There's something Abbie used to always say during yoga classes when I first started: Come to lie flat on your back. Stretch your arms out, stretch your legs out. Take up as much space as you want.
Take up as much space as you want.
So many times, women are exhorted to take up less space. Physically, we should weigh less. Emotionally, we should feel less and put less out there for others to deal with.
There are so many kinds of space and so many words for space. To take up space is to be unavoidable, inexorable.
I allowed myself to take up space, and it blew up in my face. Now I'm standing at the edge of this crater, wondering how in the hell to start over.
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