opulentdelights

[opulentdelights]

Change I’m Unworthy Of or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Live with Aplomb

A friend imparted a piece of wisdom to me in my early 20s that, at the time, seemed enlightening. However, as I edge closer to my 30s, its significance has taken on a more ominous tone. 

At the time, my friend and I had recently made the acquaintance of a rather perplexing young man I knew from college whom we both noted to be the slightest bit odd. He was at the tail end of his adolescence so I was only marginally older than him. But being in my early 20s had afforded me a range of new life experiences. Subsequently, I had aged just enough to feel a certain distance from this recent high school graduate. Still, there was another peculiarity about this individual. I didn’t quite understand what it was about his demeanour I found so strange. It soon fell into place when my friend shared this insight with me: “If you ever find someone a little bit weird like something is off about them but you don’t know what… most of the time they’re probably just… rich.” 

There it was, the unmistakable truth of the matter. The boy was sheltered. His family’s wealth had cocooned him from a myriad of life’s challenges. Insulated by affluence, his demeanour carried a palpable air of detachment. I could define what was so distinct about his nature now that it was no longer so elusive to my understanding: it all came down to money. While my extra years had provided me with more life to experience; paradoxically, his higher income bracket had resulted in him experiencing less of it. However, the moment my friend pointed this out to me, an emotion rose in me that still felt strange and rather unclear. Stark wealth inequality was not new to me then–quite the contrary. I had long known the feelings of shame and inferiority brought about by status anxiety. 

Having faced my first eviction at eight years old following the foreclosure of my family home a year prior, I knew what it meant to live in the absence of economic security. The house I’d spent my early childhood in was not just taken away, you see; it was auctioned on my birthday. This detail about my voyage around the sun serves more purpose than simply evoking a poignant impression of my childhood. (Seriously though, imagine my years of waiting to turn seven on the seventh. To finally reach the day in 2002 and be met with strangers walking through the only home I’d ever known nonchalantly discussing which walls they’d tear down should they purchase the place? Distressing to say the least). 

I paint this rather sombre tableau to better illustrate that eviction entails so much more than the day one loses one’s home. It is also more than the grief one is left with in the wake of such a destabilising life event. For me, it was the slow and agonizing battle my family engaged in as we desperately tried to fight it. Eventually, it became the helplessness that enveloped us when we realised we couldn’t. That kind of relentless anxiety in the face of impending loss tends to suffocate any semblance of childhood innocence. Some events are so grave they eclipse every moment of joy till nothing can be saved, not even the excitement of a child’s crown birthday.

In the years that followed, I moved a lot. Sometimes I’d stay somewhere just long enough to feel settled, only to be tasked with packing everything up again. When you’re renting, nothing ever truly feels like “home”. Your lease will end at some point or the annual rental increase will be too much for your single, unemployed mother to handle. Mine only survived on my father’s child maintenance payments after all. 

An unease of knowing I existed in a different economic bracket from my primary school peers coloured much of my childhood. The disparities were always evident; their houses, their cars, even their school lunches from Woolworths. My circumstances and the knowledge I simply couldn’t measure up left me intimately familiar with the feelings of shame and inferiority. For these reasons, I was well acquainted with the experience of status anxiety by the time I reached my early 20s. But the feeling with which I was confronted upon realising why the young man seemed distant was different. This stage of my life was marked by less financial hardship than my childhood and I knew it wasn’t inferiority that I was feeling at this moment in college. That left one emotion I’d always associated with status anxiety still unexplored… Shame.

Shame, as perineal and thematic in my life as it was, had always been directed inward. I knew inadequacy. I knew self-disgust. Self-condemnation was deeply ingrained into the fabric of my being but up against this young man, I didn’t feel unworthy. I wasn’t embarrassed to know I existed in a class below him but I was feeling something adjacent to humiliation. This sensation, it turned out, was shame after all. But it wasn’t self-directed. I was feeling shame directed at him. I pitied the boy for his nescience and the chasm it would create between himself and others. There was a realm of life to which he’d always be indefensively dense. The hardships he’d managed to bypass would catch up to him eventually and when misfortune finally befell him, he’d be left without the skills necessary to cope. Though I knew his privilege would one day be his demise, until that day came, he would remain blissfully out of touch. “How shameful,” I thought, “to live so unaware.”

So imagine, if you will, what it means to have once felt that such oblivion was a crime; to have experienced those who are sheltered as so contemptible, and then to suddenly find yourself located in and lavished by the comforts of The One Percent? Well, this is the predicament in which I find myself. 

Perhaps “suddenly” is a misleading description of my ascent into the upper class. I didn’t win the lottery, and I certainly wasn’t bequeathed a large fortune. Rather, I fell deeply in love with a man whose diligence and ambition are unparalleled. His astute mind and incredible business acumen catapulted him further into his field than most men his age. His career trajectory took a sharp upward turn, and so did his socioeconomic class. His success opened doors and opportunities for both of us. Thus, my lifestyle was elevated alongside his achievements. 

I now find myself living in one of the country’s most affluent suburbs and getting my groceries exclusively from Woolworths. Though my four-bedroom, marble-floored home might be the most ostentatious indicator that I’ve “made it”, shopping at the same store that predominately filled the lunchboxes of children whose lives once left me envious is what truly signifies my arrival. As I reflect on how the ultimate sign of status traces its routes to my childhood schemas about the wealthy, I feel further compelled to explore the worldviews that similarly informed my reaction to the young man back when I was in college. Because now, as someone who meets many of the criteria of the stereotypical “Constantia Housewife”, I worry that the significance I attributed to my friend’s insight all those years ago was portending the distance I now recognise is growing between myself and others. 

My husband is my shield from the world. While I place more value on the love, emotional attunement, and ample understanding he offers me, the crux of this blog post lies in the fact he also provides me with one hell of a luxurious life. I’ll tell it like it is: I am spoiled. I live relatively carefree because my husband puts considerable effort into safeguarding me from much of the horrors responsible adults are forced to face. Consequentially, I’m becoming estranged from the common man. I am becoming… that boy from college. Here’s why I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.  I was incorrect in my assumption that those within a higher income bracket experience less life. Wealth affords one opportunity; it opens up possibilities. With money, one experiences more life, but fewer problems. Before I found myself in such fortunate circumstances, I measured life by suffering, something of which I always seemed to have an abundance. I no longer quantify life through hardship when there is simply so much joy I’d rather consider. I know many are not so blessed. With so many friends encumbered by their economic woes, I need a space to share my indulgence in my many opulent delights. With this platform, I need not brandish my prosperity in the face of those who do not wish to hear it. I have come to realise to do otherwise would be tone-deaf. 

So join me as I not only embrace a lifestyle I’d never imagined but also come to terms with the fact none of it feels earned. How will I justify living in the lap of luxury through no hard work of my own? Delusion; I’m different and I deserve it.