There's Ants in the Play House
Do you ever feel as if you’re just playing house? Like this is all just some cute little game, your domestic existence some clever little trick of fantasy you’ve sucked yourself into?
Perhaps “playing house” isn’t the proper term exactly, as the term precisely means “a form of make believe where players take on roles of a nuclear family”. Say what you will of my tendency delusions and domestic daydreams; not fucking once have I slipped into serenity imagining myself with a partner and 2.5 kids.
I don’t think the term “playing at being an adult” is the proper one either, mostly because I hate it. This perhaps comes from being too online at the wrong time (the “height of millennial cringe”, if you will), because nothing makes my eyes roll back in my head faster than someone past 21 or so lamenting, “Am I adult? I don’t feel like an adult. I can’t be an adult!” I’m weary of infantilizing. It makes me want to gag.
I find the term imposter syndrome to be meaningless now. Clueless is too weak, too innocent, all at the same time.
Maybe it will help if I tell you about the ants.
A few months ago, I noticed a neat little line of marching ants creeping out from the little gap between the dishwasher and the sink. I had made some cocktail with a good bit of simple syrup and citrus, I hadn’t wiped up the counter afterwards, and of course the ants had brought themselves out to feast. I was a little frantic, a little disgusted, but things did not yet seem catastrophic. “If you just keep things clean, this won’t happen again,” I said. So I did. I kept things clean, aside from one forgotten glass of half drunk lemonade, one bowl with the remnants of a sweet soy sauce dressing. And mostly the ants stayed at bay.
Then they found the pantry cabinet.
I discovered them late in the evening, when I reached inside for the garlic. An infestation had not yet happened, but the ants were definitely beginning to investigate. I acted quickly, pulled everything out and wiped down the entire inside of the cabinet, then every bottle and jar. “If only I had some peppermint oil, maybe that would help,” I muttered. “Maybe I dump a little vinegar on the rag. The smell wouldn’t be great, but at least I maybe wouldn’t have ants.”
I made my way to the top of the pantry cabinet, where I keep four vintage French dry goods containers, labeled accordingly for sugar, flour, tea and coffee (I never have tea. I used to, but not recently. People keep asking for it when they come over and I keep meaning to buy it but I just keep forgetting). I checked all of them. All clean and safe, except for one or two ants on the outside of the sugar container. So I decided to be cautious. I dumped it, disinfected the container, waited a day or so, then filled it back up with the sugar I had left in the original bag. I cleaned the top of the pantry again, just to be sure.
I woke up the next morning with just enough time to get clean and get to work. I went into the kitchen to feed Barry and glanced at the pantry. I saw a line of ants, so I opened the sugar container.
It was absolutely infested. All that work, all that effort, all that caution. All for nothing, and now I have no sugar.
You know what would absolutely solve this problem? I’m sure many of you answered “exterminator”, and maybe you’re right, but in actuality, occasional bugs are just sort of a given when you’re living in old rental housing. Especially in the summer. Especially in the south. So maybe I’ll call the landlord when I get around to it. But maybe I won’t, because what would be the point?
I know that I am prone to catastrophic thinking. I am very aware that I am prone to catastrophic thinking actually, although if you tell me that in a moment of catastrophic thinking I’ll probably take your head clean off. But I don’t think this is catastrophic thinking. Perhaps it’s defeatist thinking, but not catastrophic.
I come home from work. I make dinner, I make some attempt to clean. Sometimes I go grocery shopping. A problem arises that I make a sincere attempt to solve, but it doesn’t really get solved. Maybe it’s through a fault of my own, maybe it’s because I just don’t have the resources or the time to tackle it more aggressively. So then I ignore it. And you cycle through that over and over and over and over.
I think this is what I mean when I say I worry about playing house, that I’m just cycling through my day to day tasks every day, not making any progress and tackling problems with futility. It reminds me of so many relationships I could feel cracking at the seams, glossed over with the mundane tasks of maintenance. You let the mundane wax over the fissures like dried out Gorilla glue. You sink into the mundane over and over because you have to, because if you zoom out, things feel so impossible to tackle you’ll sink past the mundane and into an actual black hole. I’ve been in the black hole. I would like to stay out of it for a good while.
I should say that I’m not unhappy. Maybe that sounds like indignant protest, but I’m not. I feel pretty good. Just tired. Just frustrated. Just like I’m on a hamster wheel. And some days, you feel it more than other days. Some days, it’s just impossible to feel like you’ll ever get anywhere, not in a hopeless way, but in a way that’s much less exciting. Some days, it’s hard not to feel like the walls you’re living in are all cardboard, but you just keep painting them pink.