versión española acá

A few weeks ago, I read a blog post about Swiss psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz’s idea of ‘the provisional life.’ It’s this belief that the current life you’re living obviously isn’t the real one. I mean, how could it be? It’s so messed up. No, you believe you are owed a better life where all the problems have been solved, all the kinks ironed out. The present tense is only provisional. A stand-in for a perfect future that’s still very much on the way.

I recognised the sentiment immediately, painfully. In everything that has gone wrong with my health these past five years and the ensuing struggle to make money, I’ve caught myself thinking that my real life must be in the post. The package got lost. I’ve felt sorry for myself for having to work and train and wait for it, and I’ve been increasingly jealous of the people who already have it (you know, adults who actually own the house they live in, and who catch long-haul flights on the regular, and they’re so healthy they could advertise greek yoghurt).

That night, after I’d been to the gym for my daily physio, and once I was finished with my Spanish homework, and I’d done the three separate Anki decks I’m always fighting off, I sat on the couch in my provisional body. I told my boyfriend about this blog post I couldn’t stop thinking about and he looked across the room like I’d only just learnt how to write my own name, because he already knew this about me. I mean, I knew it too. But now that there was language to describe it, I could extract the thorn and hold it up to the light.

Last month, he made a list of everything we need to do to make this house nicer, but also safer. He left it on my desk and I immediately lost the piece of paper. I realise now, like, of course it got lost. I don’t believe this house we rent is the place we really live. I do the bare minimum to keep it running but I don’t go out of my way to care for it. In the provisional life I lead, this is only my provisional home; and in the buy-to-let mortgage, I’m only making the house more real for the landlord.

I am thinking about this stuff when I get the train down to London and stay with Zarina. Her boyfriend has bought a percentage of a flat through shared ownership, so they pay a mortgage and they pay rent; and yet, this still feels like something to celebrate.

I like the flat. Mid-century millennial with a red dining table, wooden coffee table, soft border of plants, and a rug like someone has rolled an abstract painting across the floor. Zarina built huge shelves from scratch and now the living room looks like an indie bookshop. They only had to put the heating on four or five times in winter, because it’s a new build. We don’t have insulation so the heating was on as late as last week. I wake up in London so relaxed I forget it’s a work trip and think, if I was always travelling, I would never have to decide whether things felt real or not. I would never have to commit.

The next morning, we decide to go to the Museum of the Home on a whim. Free, in Hoxton, there are old hoovers, adverts for iconic couches, and interviews with Londoners in their homes about flour sifters and kitchen gods. I really liked Mark Cowper’s work photographing 32 living rooms in a tower block in Battersea, because you know when it’s late and someone hasn’t closed the curtains yet, here you’re allowed to stop and stare. And we did, laughing and picking which one we’d have.

The museum goes further, recreating rooms from the 1600s to present day England. Fully furnished like historical IKEA displays, we walked past tidy middle-class parlours with chess boards and watercolour sets, all the way to a flat in 2005 where some girl in a house share has left her bleach-stained towel drying off the edge of a curtain pole. Zarina came up behind me and pointed out the towel I’d already noticed and I was glad, because that one detail was like saying, ’doesn’t that person in the oil painting look like you, and like all our friends who just have to make do while we try not to sink into the ground.’

Back in Zarina’s, I was looking out the windows. She’s living just above the tree line, and as the trees swayed level with our feet, it felt like a kind of tide.

I would have preferred more modern and contemporary spaces in the museum so we could think about what it means to live in this country now. I wonder what homes are worth recreating in a museum; I think I wanna see the homes that are not. More bleach-stained towels. I look around the room I’m writing in today and see dust tacky along the skirting board and picture rail; a small galaxy of mould above my head; the ladder that won’t seem to fit anywhere else; and the wallpaper I started to peel away behind my computer but never finished — and that lost to-do list begins to rewrite itself.

I live thinking that any day, the landlord could send us a text saying we’ve got to move out, so I’ve basically kept my suitcase packed just in case. I wait nervously for disability to shatter my body once again, so I think about my health like it’s my job (and I learn things constantly, because at least I own myself).

But then I’m back home and looking out at an empty yard and I decide to order a picnic table. It takes an hour to build. One cat jumps on top, the other hides below. The table feels like the first decision I’ve made in a long time. We eat dinner outside and I get so happy. Arms out across brand new wood that has been warmed under the sun, I want to look after the self that is always with me in the present. I have to trick myself out of a provisional life.