An entry from April 17, 2007. Not sure why I let it sit in the drafts folder for 6 years. Ironically, 6 years later I find myself practically destitute, scrambling to land on my feet again....
Anyway, here is the post:
It was a discouraging day listening to a 401K presenter today.... the realization that I don't have enough peanuts stacked away for financial autonomy.... a result of spending my life seeking psychological autonomy..... not giving in or ever knuckling under to the status quo. But what a price I paid for that, for emotional emancipation and freedom, and sometimes I wonder if it wasn't too steep a price.
Alone in the world, I have to live off what I make. Couples double their odds at making it financially, over single people. They can contribute more to plans like this, they defray the cost of living between 2 people. One person isn't absorbing everything.
That's the downside of being single.... you absorb everything yourself. Everything. You sink or swim on your own. I remember thinking about autonomy years ago. Real autonomy, I quickly realized, could be a burden and not something all can bear. Yet, I chose it. Or, rather, it chose me, for there were diversions from the state of being single to be coupled...but they just didn't work.
Sometimes I think they didn't work because the image I projected, by design, not choice mind you, was often very sensual and feminine. It could feed a lot of fantasies for the other person.... that is, until I opened my mouth. Then the image would slowly shatter and crumble.... crumble in the sense of Sarte's concept of the "other". When we can't possess the other, then we want to destroy it... and I was always the one who could not be possessed. Always there was retained a bit of "self" that no one could reach. And always, when the person in my life realized that, they sought to destroy it and there are a thousand ways to try and do that to a person, and I think I've been subject to most of them.
Yet, I held on and somehow always managed to resurrect myself from the ashes... a bit stronger, a bit more determined. Yet here I sit now, just too tired to fight for more, too tired to fight for my share, just not giving a damn about any of it right now. I've fought for everything my entire life.
