Pelgris

Supposedly we are supposed to seek out 3rd spaces. Places that aren’t home and aren’t work where we can just be. The idea being that these serve as social gatherings where we can just be rather than be something. Rather than the system administrator or the boyfriend, the brother, the sister, or the wife. Somewhere we can throw off the obligations of being and just be.

But our choices…our choices in the USA, all come with price tags. The closest we come. Is the neighborhood bar, but what if you don’t drink? All of these places we might suggest all feel like liminal spaces to me.

Somehow not one thing or another but just this endless maybe which exists to draw us out.
And once we are there, we are what? Forced into socializing? Why? Because we don’t have time to just sit back and read a book and drink coffee. We have maybe 4 hours before we turn back into a pumpkin.

But, I don’t want that. I don’t want to change back into anything. I just want to be myself without the obligation of being what others need me to be. I want to be free.

But, here, we are never free. We need that money. We mortgage our lives for the possibility of retirement. To enjoy our life at the tail end. When it no longer matters. When what’s mostly possible is done.

I wish I had done things differently.
But I’m just as trapped as anyone. Because that’s what they don’t teach. That if you want to be free, you gave to carve out your own spaces.

Because, America was never meant for that. It has always been the place where money was the only currency. And we spill our blood on the wheel. One more revolution. One more failure. One last glittering lie.