A comfortable life is not what I’m after.
Maybe I’ll be happy with a baby and a house and a dog and a Volvo.
I wrote that in my journal once.
I will never be happy with a baby, a house, a dog and a Volvo.
It’s not that I don’t want them. The reason the supposition is so tempting is because I really do. In fact, I am working my way through the list – I bought a Volvo a few months ago and every time I look at it I still feel a wave of something somewhere between excitement and satisfaction.
But I’m also the idiot who wanted to live in my rusty Golf with a German Shepherd called Cyril and the soggy footwell that I couldn’t for the life of me find the cause of, and set off into the sunset with no money and no plan.
I don’t fit in the conventional places. I begin to die when confined.
When I wrote that phrase in my journal, I was facing the prospect of conceding my wildest dreams for a conventional, comfortable existence. Settling for a peaceful life. I was trying to convince myself it wouldn’t be so bad.
And I did concede. I sold my soul for the promise of the middle class dream, whatever that is. I thought I could live with it. I don’t know why.
Luckily for me, it was the farthest thing from peaceful I think I’ve ever known. If it hadn’t been I might still be there now, languishing amongst the material, completely deprived of true sustenance.