I watched the actual documentary a year or two ago, and last night I watched the HBO movie with Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. I really enjoyed it, much more from having seen the original and so being able to see just how well Lange and Barrymore nailed their performances, and also having the opportunity to have questions that the documentary raised answered with the backstory presented in the movie.
But this was probably not the week to view this film. My anxiety disorder is kicking in again, after having been rather quiet for the last two/two and a half months, and one of the things I am worrying and obsessing about is my certitude that everything in this house is falling apart or on the verge of falling apart and I have absolutely no idea where the hell I am supposed to find the money to fix all of it. So, you know, naturally this movie brings to mind fantasies of me and D living in our own little version of Grey Gardens, becoming crazier and crazier and poorer and poorer as our home falls to pieces around us, until we too are living with feral cats and raccoons in the living room and people have to cover their faces with their scarves when they enter. Ha! It could happen! (Except we don't have any billionaire ex-first-lady relatives to bail us out, so y'know. It'd be worse!)
And so now I'm going to say something extremely politically incorrect and maybe shocking if you know me. Part of the backstory that the movie filled in was that Big Edie, formerly a very rich woman, when divorced by her husband, was left with a tiny settlement/allowance that was barely enough to live on, never mind keep up that huge house. And certainly a formerly rich woman of her generation had absolutely *no* skills that would enable her to even try to support herself. Meanwhile Little Edie, though in her youth harboring dreams of being a dancer and actress, really had only one chance in life--to snag a rich guy of her own social class when she was young and pretty--and when she failed to realize that, she was basically doomed to poverty. It's easy to watch the movie and think, OMG, how horrible to be a woman in those not-so-long-ago days, how horrible to be unable to support yourself in any kind of comfortable manner if you didn't snag, and then keep, a man.
Except you know what? Every single woman I know my age who hasn't managed to snag and then keep a man (in matrimony) for many years is poor or on the edge of being poor, struggling with serious debt or one or two huge home repair/car repair/medical bills away from serious debt. I don't know any unmarried women in their late thirties or forties or fifties who feel in any way even a little bit financially secure. I'm talking about college educated women, bright and hardworking and responsible, who nonetheless have had periods of unemployment which, without a partner's income, absolutely guarantees debt, or who (like me) while remaining steadily employed, have done so in female-dominated professions, which usually guarantees low to middling wages, or who have had to take the main responsibility for raising kids while getting inadequate or nonexistent child support. Maybe there are plenty of single women out there who are making 100k or 150k a year, who have never lost a job and stayed unemployed for a significant amount of time, and who haven't had kids or if they have, have had their kids' fathers paying their fair share, but I just don't know any of them.
From my POV the vast majority of people in this society who are financially comfortable are in couples, couples where both people work. The other people who have a decent chance of being financially comfortable are single guys (usually childless) who work in the kind of male-dominated industry/profession that pay a crapload of money. Mostly, being a single woman means, if not poverty, then a constant low-level threat of poverty. And maybe that's our own fault. Maybe we need to be pushed into going into more lucrative professions, even if our interests don't lie in those directions. Maybe we need to be taught to manage our money better. Maybe we ought not ever get knocked up until and unless we're absolutely sure we're going to be with that baby's daddy till baby turns eighteen. I dunno. But in any case, it's depressing. We still pretty much need a man, sorry to say.
(And, oh yeah, I'm sure some of you are all saying to yourselves, "But, Andrea, you'd be a lot more secure if you didn't blow your life savings going to massage school! That's voluntary poverty!" To which I would reply, yeah, except those life savings were the money I *would* have used to help D with his college, had he been healthy enough for higher education. So, they'd have been spent anyway.)
xoxo
10 comments:
I suppose you're on to something, and I'm sorry about that. Males can paint themselves in a corner, too. I've been reflecting on the sort of working life I'm bought myself with two liberal arts degrees and a succession of bad life choices and plain bad luck. My left brain, when well, tries to insist that my right brain play the hand we've been dealt.
I've heard that Guatemala is nicer than the D.R. and nearly as cheap. Time to add Spanish to my language skills.?
Sigh. If you retire to Guatemala, dude, *how* are you going to procure me a nice Haitian baby to illegally adopt? C'mon now. Think of your responsibilities here.
:-)
(Our lil MILF's mom owns what is said to be quite a nice house in the DR that she rents out for some ridiculously small amount of money [like $500 a month, American] if you reconsider Santo Domingo.)
Maybe it's the my divorce talking, but I retain very little sympathy for gender-based garment rending where grey or any other kind of gardens are concerned. This is not to deny unconscionable income inequality, but, rather, to point out my anecdotal observation that living within ones means is an art remarkably absent among those of a large portion of the distaff set. (A portion I will declare right here and now I do NOT believe includes the original author of this post!!!)
Fear of provisional shortcoming is one of those classic male nightmares that I'm quite sure fuels a lot of the heart attack statistics by which a lot of those males predecease their blissfully unconcerned female counterparts who are running up the family credit card bills in the meantime. Some assholes do, indeed, as apparently did Big Edie's ex, abscond without due care for whom they abandoned in the process, and that's hardly excusable, either, but, geez, it's a big house and you can't afford it. That means you have to move to a smaller one. Unfair, perhaps, but necessary. Why is it so hard for so many people to figure that out?
The classic parting quote from my divorce negotiation which gave her well more than half of everything including more than half of what would be made from then on was "But what if it isn't enough?" I'm quite confident that if it did, indeed, prove not to be enough, she'd still be living in that house until it crashed down around her from neglect, much like Big and Little Edie there on Long Island. (You should already see the state of the place even so). That's not because she doesn't have enough money, in my opinion, but because she feels like she "deserves" a new deck and a new dock and a new high-def flat screen TV and a new boat. (Amenities which it should go without saying are not enjoyed over at my place these days because I can't afford them).
Fear not--Lowell condo living is very reasonable these days!
You're proving my point for me though. There is no way in hell your ex-wife would have the things she has if she hadn't been married to you for twenty years. There is no way in hell she would have financial security, nevermind a big house in a nice suburb *on an effin' lake no less*, an SUV (actually, I dunno if she has one or not...I just picture her as one of those scrawny little blond women driving their massive SUVs that people like me like to unfairly despise with every molecule of their beings :-)), and everything else if she had been single all those years. Even without kids. She'd have at best some little condo or a house in a much more downmarket location that needs work, if the experience of every other single woman my age that I know is anything to go by.
I see it another way--in my experience, solvency depends less on means than it does fiscal self-discipline. I find that many if not most folks in downmarket, needs-work arrangements don't work if they can sit, and the results are written all over their general surroundings of dilapidation. (Otherwise they have very nice places, as you do, regardless of their zip code). Some become distracted by flat screen TVs and feel like *that* is the essence of the difference, but I'd say such things have absolutely nothing to do with anything other than an expression of personal priorities.
Until people stop buying excess shoes, purses, booze, cigarettes, lottery tickets, dose(s) of daily Dunkin', and any manner of other frivolities, I will refuse to feel sorry for their difficulty in making rent. Can't tell you how many dumpy looking cars I've had the misfortune to be invited to sit in that are far newer than both of mine, which, BTW, I've budgeted to afford and would be doing without if the budget didn't merit the indulgence.
Piles of trash, empty coffee cups, unopened mail, and who-knows-what-else are not the sign of a responsible adult--and that's got nothign to do with gender.
Oh, yeah, I've got a lovely home. <--(Can you just picture the eye roll there?)
Really, my whole life I bought into the bullshit that if I went to college and then I worked hard and did well at my job and didn't buy stuff that I didn't have the cash in my checking account to pay for, by this point in my life I wouldn't have to worry about bills. I'd have plenty o' money *and* nice clothes *and* a house *and* be able to travel and go out to eat all the time and get pedis and blah blah.
Well, I've worked hard consecutively since I was nineteen (except for that decadent six weeks of maternity leave in 1986) and I have right now, no debt, but I have a house that's a money pit, savings depleted again from buying that new roof (see previous) and every time I try to live like I think a "normal person" who's worked hard and consecutively for 28 years should be able to: going out with my friends because it's summer and it's special occasions and I want to be able to enjoy myself instead of just staying home all the fucking time, buying things for my house because god knows I haven't bought any significant furniture for 10 years, "indulging" myself with one fucking pedicure a month, buying shoes *on sale* or taking a class I really really want to take, when I *do* those things I think a person at my stage in life with a goddamn supposed professional job should be able to do, oops, more money went out last month than came in, so obviously, no, I can't do them. It's fucking depressing and discouraging.
And I'm not saying that it isn't all my own fault, because obviously I should have chosen a more lucrative line of work and not paid cash for massage school and not bought all those shoes and all those purses for the past twenty years and should have deprived myself more and not made any number of other bad and stoopid decisions I've made in my life. But the fact that it's my own fault doesn't make me feel any less like crying now when I think about it, especially when it hits me that the rest of my life is going to be like this and that I'm gonna have to work my ass off until I drop dead.
And when I realize that if I had just found myself a decent and responsible guy with a good job to remarry when I was in my late 20s or early 30s (and still attractive), I could be having that kind of life (full of, really, very very small and modest luxuries) now, it makes me even more depressed. I tell our lil faux MILF all the time, you get over your bitterness and disillusionment with guys *now* while you're still absolutely adorable (as well as smart and sweet and kind, which she is) and you find one who's gonna take good care of you, because you don't want to work your ass off for years and years, raise your kid all on your own, and end up like me, middle aged and with no end to the work and struggling in sight. Not when there's a better way. I know that's a horrible betrayal of every feminist principle I have ever had, but it's true. I wish someone could have made me believe it when I was 26.
Maybe I didn't walk far enough into it--I thought your home was very nice. (But what do I know, I live in a 130 year old industrial building with a leaky basement).
Your home is a great place to start and continue the discussion, since its status as a money pit begins with the choice that you make every day to stay in it. Other alternatives abound, and not just condos in downtown 01852. (Some smaller units of which are going for less than $100,000 samoleans, though you'd need more room if you plan to continue to subsidize your male dependents).
The greater question of what we've all been told, and what reality actually holds for us, is another story. I'd observe that if you weren't carrying two unemployed Y chromosomes on your monthly Visa bill, you'd likely be living a more posh life, and perhaps one almost as swanky as mine. Yeah, I enjoy mine in addition to setting up the ex via her alimony, and maybe even make more than you do even after that, though who could be sure, but I'd like to think you'd be doing pretty well if you weren't also being the financial equivalent of Mother Teresa and maintaining that money pit for their benefit.
I firmly believe that lives are created from choices, and are not as limited by external forces as you imply.
Either way, you're still plenty cute (and buxomy, don't forget buxomy), and I will bet you right here and now you would have no problem scaring up a breadwinner if you really wanted one, ESPECIALLY with your mad massage skillz.
My problem is the conflict of interest I would have about said breadwinner's likely hesitation to have you maintaining your previous friendships in the manner to which you have become accustomed...
Are your reading comprehension skills deserting you, Mr Barma?:-) I *said* that the reason I am where I am financially is mostly a product of my own stupidity, total financial ignorance, and bad decisions, not to mention craziness, not "external forces". I suck in many, many ways, most of which I am well aware of.
(And if you add those ways up with the fact that I don't look the way I did when I was 26, the inescapable conclusion is that, no, even if I tried, I couldn't find anyone who would ever want to take care of me. That ship has sailed and I didn't even know when it was in port, hahaha. That doesn't mean my sweet lil co-worker cannot learn from my mistakes!)
Sorry, blog readers. I'm hoping after I have my surgery in a couple weeks, I can come off the effin' hormonal birth control and will revert to being less of a total buzzkill. Just ignore me for now.
But that's where I'm disagreeing--your major choices aren't attributable to either stupidity or financial ignorance--they're choices to live where you do and take care of your family in the process. They have consequences, naturally, and those consequences, among other things, leave you exposed to leaky rooves and selfish, non-shoveling neighbors.
Of course, we could all improve by "smartening up" on our habits, and, who knows, maybe your calamata olive fetish is something in need of examination. But your first option, if sleeping soundly is your first preference, is to sell, downsize, and either induce your roomies to pay their own way, or find others. (or live a solitary, cat-defined existence--your choice).
i opted for something like that (except with gerbils and regular lady callers) and it's working for me...
But, see, it's the thought of trying to sell the house that's got me all wound up and panic-attacky in the first place. Yes, absolutely, when my dad dies, I want to sell that house, because it's too big, too much work, and too much upkeep.
And I've told you before what I want to do: take the money and buy D a little tiny condo of his own--he just needs a studio, all the boy needs to be content is a sofa, a TV, a coffee table, a refrigerator and microwave, internet access, and a bathroom--and a bigger one for myself, close enough to him so I can keep tabs on him but he can still have some independence. In order for me to do that, and not have either of us living in some scary dump, I would have to sell my house pretty much for what the city values it at.
And for me to do that, besides the market having to rebound somewhat, means I would have to fix everything that's wrong with it and do at least some of those upgrades that HGTV and all those real estate people on all those boards I read insist are imperative before anyone would even deign to look at my house, nevermind buy it. Which costs lots and lots of money that I'm like, yeah, where's that coming from? I've got a whole five rooms upstairs carpeted in disgusting wall-to-wall that's pretty much my kid's age. Do you know how much money it would cost to replace that? And to replace it with the hardwood that I'm "supposed" to have? I mean, I *guess* I could sell a fucking kidney.
So, yeah, it's all very very stressful for me to think about when I am depressed and anxious, as I am, and watching movies that are my worst-case horror story scenarios about what happens if I can never sell that house for a decent amount of money DOESN'T HELP. But people like you who aren't mentally ill don't understand that. :-)
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