I have an addiction. I guess as addictions go it is not altogether a bad one; at least I am not haunting the back streets searching for my next hit (not that I couldn’t, I just don’t). I just go online and order it up anytime I fancy, and the postman delivers it to my door.
My addiction? Memoirs written by women; in particular, memoirs with a self help slant. The types where some middle aged white woman travels the world to find herself; a little Elizabeth Gilbert, but usually older (okay, my age). They decide to spend a year finding happiness, calmness, or themselves (who are there all along, standing just behind their shoulder throughout the whole journey, what a surprise!).
I don’t really understand why I am addicted to this genre, as while I enjoy them, I feel a constant tug at my thoughts. Two things in particular haunt me. One, it is always upper middle class white women of usually independent means, or rich supportive husbands who abandon hearth and home to discover that life is wherever you are. If someone has ever read of a poor indigenous/African/black/Asian single mother who managed this feat I would love to read the story! I could find myself if I could stare at a cone shell on a faraway beach too if I had oodles of money – if my guilt gene was first removed too.
These women always write that they read this book by so and so, or whosemacallit, and lo, they just happened to be nearby, or lo, they jumped on a plane and flew right to Paris and on the off chance phoned them and lo, they said come on around, and they discussed the meaning of life for three days straight before setting off on a Nepalese trek to a hermit cave, where lo (I do love my los) they could mediate for hours on end without their mind wandering even once as to how their birkin bag made it unscathed to the mountain top on the back of a llama.
I know if I tried such a trick the phone would be slammed down so fast my eardrums would hum. Darken their door – well, restraining orders come to mind first. No little llamas to lead me to nirvana, I’d be trucking my Target backpack all the way on my little own back. All the way back home once the border guards released me, that is!
The other type of memoir I fall for is the tree change. The city slicker who buys 90 acres on a whim one autumn afternoon and decides to raise goats and truffles ten miles from town. Oh, life is a hoot as those damn goats eat her Stella McCarthy one off designs that she has hung artfully over a string line (cue photos of elegantly pinned floral items) not to speak of the night she has to have a cold shower, but all turns right when the tall dark handsome country stud with his independent ways arrives on the scene to tune her engine. Cue happy ever after a life of gourmet farmers markets selling to their city slicker friends who marvel that a goat can be so cute and give milk at the same time!
These are things I do not wish for. I don’t want 90acres to care about, I don’t want goats and most of all I don’t want city visitors, but I can’t help myself. My addiction must be fed.
Right now I am spending a year with a woman whose rich invisible husband has no qualms as his wife meditates herself around the globe, and somehow makes her mother’s Alzheimer’s about her. We are finding calm together, apparently. One side of my brain is yelling “Oh for God’s sake you self-indulgent, whinging, whimp” while the other side of my brain is loving every word (particularly the rich invisible husband). I can’t help myself.
After that I will be spending a year by the sea, swimming the wild waves and collecting sea glass as a metaphor for my existence until I find my inner self (once again, where it was all the time, but now released by a fat book deal arranged by friends I meet on a sand dune one winter’s noon).
Addicted? Main lining, baby. Jealous? You bet your little La Sportiva Nepal EVO GTX® hiking shoes. I guess that some are there those but to do and write, and others are left to read and wonder how far she can get on $3.85 and a long weekend.
All I can think to say is, “right on.” Eat Pray Love was fun to read…in fact, when husband and I used to read out loud to each other, we read it together. But puleez…. But I, too, am addicted to the drama of the memoir. Want to write my own, sans the book deal before starting out on a year-long trek to find myself. I did that taking care of mom. Ha ha.
Got to get the book deal – makes finding bliss much easier I am sure!
Someday I will write a memoir about how I found myself on the sandy shores of my own Hawaiian island, while my husband stood behind me with a pina colada and a dry beach towel on the ready, and it is comforting to know that FD will read it.
But until then, I must prod along in my miserable existence, while the true me goes into her shell, waiting for discovery.
I shall expect a dedication inside the book and a signed copy!
Snap out of it Sister!!!!!!!! Remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz telling the folks back home about her dream and “If you can’t find what you’re missing in your own back yard, well, it was never missing to begin with” or some such faddle. Isn’t it interesting that Julia Roberts was in Eat, Love, Pray and Pretty Woman. Ridiculous fairy tales.
As for the farm. . . . . This summer I was on a Navajo reservation taking a weaving class. One of the students was a gentleman that suffered from Post Polio Paralysis. He contracted it when he was 2 or so while his British father and American mother had been living in India. Anyway, he is now in his late 50′s or so, wheelchair bound and his partner, a woman near the same age, who lives plugged into an insulin pump were there to learn how to live more self-sufficiently. Apparently, she wanted to learn to raise sheep. Both the instructor ( a Navajo woman) and I said “Good for you” as we rolled our eyes and thought, “It’d take a miracle”. How does this couple who are so reliant on others for their daily living think they can become self-sufficient??? I’m all for learning new skills, but I don’t kid myself about my abilities either.
Sorry. Just had to rant. It’s like the commercial for a cosmetics line that had a woman begging us not to hate her because she was beautiful. Okay, honey, I’ll hate you cause you’re a self centered bitch.
Dear FD, I think you hit a nerve. It reminds me of the conversation I had with one of my kids. She wants a huge mausoleum when she dies. Italian marble and the like. I don’t want anything. No head stone, nothing. I think that not one of us matters in the long run. Not me, not my kids, not the Pope, not the anti-Pope, the Dalai Lama, Idi Amin, no one will care in another 50 years. So live life like there’s no tomorrow, because there IS no tomorrow. Just today.
I agree with you on every point. I am a bit over Dorothy at the moment as our students are performing it as a musical later this week and all we get is the music over the speaker system to “excite” us – not.
Dreams have to not be a burden to other people and I do think raising sheep would be unfair to the sheep for a start! A little like MIL always wanting SIL to give up her life to care for her… as if MIL would have ever done such a thing.
I know next to nothing about my paternal grandparents and my father’s family and we lived in the same small town (they never fell out, they just never bothered with each other) – I think that is how fast people forget. Most cemeteries in Australia don’t allow big monuments anymore as they become hazards when old and neglected. Another target for graffiti and disaffected youth. I would rather be planted under a tree to help it grow.
I went on a staff meal last week. The conversation turned to holidays and travel. Everyone around the table was very young with the exception of the manager who is thirty and has a 13 year old daughter and me. She takes teen with her to some Fab places and was going on about them. The kiddies all joined in with wish lists of faraway places, gap years, missionary jobs and the like. It all seemed a bit surreal as the closest we get to a holiday is a hired caravan home in North Wales every other year. The simple fact, which I did not share with the bright young things, is that for a long time, unless you’ve a few quid in the bank, Life Just Happens. I was hugely jealous of their plans and hope they get to fulfil them before life kicks in.
Maybe I could go on a journey of self discovery when baby Cerys has left the nest ….. in 2030 … when I’m 67.
I so understand what you mean. We were a single income family for many years and what money we did have we put towards educating our children. The last few years have been shaky financially as I retrained etc. and now Mr FD is 62 (I told you he was older than me, right, yes) and money needs to be put away for retirement as the GFC shrank what we did have. Thank heavens for bug screen TV and the National Geographic and History channels, that is all I can say!
I’d like 90 acres and some goats. However I’m realistic. I know I’d be shit at it, the first time the electricity went out while I was straightening my hair I’d have a tantrum. When I discovered that Ye Olde Village Shoppe doesn’t stock Clinique and I’d have to do a 400 mile round trip to get more toner I would be cross. When I got the Mini bogged in a pothole the size of Newcastle and had to be towed out by a crusty farmer who laughed at me and smelled of cowshit I would struggle to deal with it with grace and aplomb. So maybe I’m best off just accepting that life running a farm isn’t quite what Hollywood makes it out to be and sticking with what I know. That said, one day when I earn more I may get a horse.
Don’t you go interrupting my “Under The Tuscan Sun” fantasy of picking up a little chateau in Tuscany where, despite all the things wrong with it, Life is wonderful and I’m surrounded by cleaver people who bring insight and joy to my life – especially once the house miraculously transforms into a beauty despite me being broke and having no income. C’mooonnnnnn!
And lo, I also enjoy reading stories of women who broke the shackles and followed their own dreams. I’ve borrowed several volumes from the library over the years containing short stories of women’s adventures. Perhaps it pleases you as much as it does me that our own daughters are following their respective dreams.