Putting on the skates again
Picking up rollerskating again after a lengthy duration is no joke. Each time I put on skates again when it’s been a while, I’m like a newborn fawn. I can put in a good couple strokes before lurching and halting without warning.
I’m 29 and I’m practicing skating in my mom’s driveway out in (what constitutes in my mind) California’s valley countryside. My right hip aches from chronic pain. My shins get the brunt of the pressure I exert in an effort to control myself and make stops, and they consequently feel tight.
Staying at my mom’s place reminds me to stay humble. I brought packets of salon shampoo and conditioner samples thinking that I might as well use them up instead of holding onto them indefinitely. After a single shower most of their quantity is consumed. I relinquish myself to the bottles of rain-scented shampoo of drugstore variety and some kind of conditioner stored in a water bottle. My scalp can get dry and irritated with cheap shampoos and conditioners, but it seems fine right now.
My mom has a dusty bottle of St. Ives Green Tea face scrub and I think I’m into it. The paste comes out thick and vividly green and smells nice. It’s probably still too drying for my face, as a lot of facial cleansers are, but it doesn’t stop me from liking it.
The washer here washes but does not spin the excess moisture out of clothes. We also don’t have a functioning dryer, so the clothes are hand-wrung and then hung out to dry. The shower drips into a bucket we use to water plants, in more drought conditions, or pour into the toilet for flushing in less severe drought conditions. I tell myself to get used to colder water showers because the shower takes longer to warm up, and it’s hot out here in August anyway. Adjusting to taking colder showers is probably a good thing for my mental health.
My mom is lower energy these days, so she set out buckets that leads moisture into plant patches via fabric scraps (discarded clothes). It’s also mosquito season so if she spots mosquito larvae in the buckets, she’ll dump the water and replace. I’m tasked with catching mosquito fish from the standing water in our pool to place into these buckets, but I have not been more successful than her at this endeavor so far.
Back home in SF I’ve taken to ordering cheap goods for a dopamine kick. I imagine having a cute shower robe so I can walk around the house without dressing in the bathroom will solve one of my problems, and make me happy every time I use it. I order cute hair clips and T-shirts to express my style. Both my sister and my boyfriend chide me for shipping packages of cheap goods from China, for the environmental impact both in the home and at large, and out of moral consideration of providing demand for cheap foreign labor.
I’ve fully bought into the American consumerist fantasy that acquiring more goods will bring you happiness. Not only that, I find the allure of possessing a curated (organized) space, like you might see in a magazine or Apartment Therapy, very compelling.
Clutter had been normalized to me from a young age. I only slowly recognized in college that my and my sister’s hoarding tendencies were not of the norm at-large, comparing our dorm room spaces and possessions to our peers. Now that I’ve been exposed to alternate norms of clean, organized spaces, I find clutter to be distracting and distressing to my nervous system.
Now the fantasy of a (relatively) uncluttered1 space, ideally still accommodating possessions reflecting my identity, hobbies, and aesthetic, shines to me like a beacon of sanity. Possessing such a space of my own would symbolize that I’m on top of things, that I’m in control of my life, and that I’m self-actualized. I feel the instinct to colonize my mom’s home and inflict this compulsion on it. Manifesting this fantasy of mine feels more inaccessible in a shared SF apartment.
Examining my mom’s hoarding tendencies, I question if this was in fact a norm in Hong Kong lower-to-middle class households, or if it was actually a family dysfunction. But I conclude it was and may still be most likely a norm amongst folks of pragmatic means, living in small spaces, not ascribing to impractical aesthetic standards — luxury beyond their means. Or at least something of a blend of dysfunction and the norms of her class and culture.
Maybe today it’s mutated into individual dysfunction and mental illness. My mom’s former tenants left behind a large packet of plastic utensils, e.g. 1000-quantities. If it were me, I would have found some place to donate them or let others use them. Instead she brought it home and is trying to use them liberally, since there are so many. Instead of putting them in recycling after a single use, she tosses them into a cup—licked clean, but not washed2—in case she can find a use for them later (out in the garden?). I admit single-use plastic utensils are wasteful but I still question the viability of this strategy.
I send a recording of birdsong to my boyfriend back in SF. You wouldn’t think hearing birds is such a big deal, but it’s a reminder that at a basic level, we belong in nature. I’ve heard in multiple versions that noise pollution causes a constant background level of stress for individuals. There’s still noise pollution out here at my mom’s house, but this in my opinion is what makes the suburbs feel tangibly different from the city.
I read an article about “lazy girl jobs” on my phone and send it to some people I know.
The girls want to quit their tech jobs.
The girls just want to lie down in their mom’s suburban homes, wake up and listen to birdsong, find an easy 9-5 and live an easy, unencumbered Central Valley lifestyle.3
more precisely, an organized space with a sane (subjective) level of possessions
maybe also a symptom of depression
Learn how to drive, buy a car, make pasta and colonize their mom’s suburban home.