Do I Bet on Myself When I've Lost Every Hand Since 2015?

Hey, kids! A glimmer of light enters the chat!!!

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-blue-tank-top-smiling-3807762/

Years ago, when I was a woman unconcerned about careening toward her best-by date, I was living in an apartment owned by a famous journalist. The famous journalist was an asshole (as one would expect from someone who interviewed celebrities) and the apartment was the kind of joint that never gets clean no matter how much you bleach, scour, and scrub. But it was $1600 a month (unheard of for a one-bedroom in Brooklyn) and I’d decided to quit my publishing job right before the 2008 recession because who could anticipate the economy falling spectacularly to pieces? So why dare move when my landlord was sometimes okay with the rent rolling in a few days (read: weeks) late?

Anyway, a year later I scored a job at a fancy New York agency, which would inevitably be my psychological ruin (depending on how you looked at it), but I had a consistent paycheck. The kind of paycheck where I no longer had to swelter in an apartment without air conditioning at the ripe old age of 32. (Kidding)

A few months into the job, when I was confident I wouldn’t be ceremoniously tossed out into the street, I considered an apartment upgrade. I wanted a place with air conditioning. I wanted a place where my tuxedo cat, Sophie (R.I.P., 2013) could run without abandon. I found such a space in a Brooklyn brownstone, which was quite literally the best apartment I’d ever lived in…in my life. I had become accustomed to vermin and uneven floorboards. Half-naked men canoodling with crack pipes. I grew up in Brooklyn at a time (1970s-80s) when White Castle was the height of sophistication, and we bought chicken legs from the bodega before long-term white tourists made bodegas quaint. Back then, it was normal for me to step over junk-sick bodies sprawled out in the park. Needles still smack in their veins. Eight-ball hemorrhages and like that.

But I digress.

The apartment was $2100, I think. Criminal. This was student loan payment money, but, by god, it had a 300 square foot deck and my cat would remain in attack mode 24/7 with all the birds building nests, staking claim, hovering. Finally, I would live in an apartment where club kids wouldn’t be fucking in time to Britney Spears, “Baby, One More Time.” (Yes, this has happened)

I remember sitting on the floor of my shitty apartment talking to my friend, Kate. Kate was a fancy book agent who already owned an apartment on 5th so poverty wasn’t something she’d been accustomed to. But she was sharp, pragmatic, and brutally honest. She was the kind of friend who would say, you’re being ridiculous and let me tell you why and I still love you. She would tell you to buck up, baby when you were content in wallowing in self-pity, and I loved her for it. When talking about the new apartment, I kept saying, I don’t know, Kate, to which she responded, what don’t you know?

Homegirl actually pulled out a calculator and started doing income projections. I mean, she was running a P&L while I lay on the tile floor in the midst of a panic attack.

You can get the apartment, but don’t be stupid about it, she said. You’ve never invested in yourself—isn’t it about time you did? Are you still on the fucking floor? GET UP, FELICIA.

I got the apartment and she was right. I ended up being able to afford it and I kept betting on myself. Yet, over time, I played bum hands. I wasn’t holding all the aces, and I did what Kate warned me not to do—don’t be stupid about it. Don’t spend way beyond your means. Don’t be reckless with money. Don’t keeping consuming to fill a vacant, bottomless void.

After I declared bankruptcy in 2017, I veered into the opposite direction. I was too cautious, too conservative, frightened of spending anything lest I feel more humiliated than I had been. When you’ve reached zero, the threat of inching toward a negative integer was deep, real, and true. So, I lived in shitty apartments in questionable neighborhoods because why bother when the house always wins?

Recently, I had the great privilege of house-sitting for a friend. Her home is beautiful. Like, it’s a house. I’d never lived in a house because I grew up poor in New York where an apartment was the best you were going to get.

My friend is a real adult, smart with her money. Incapable of stepping on the landmines I so gleefully fell face-first into. And I watched my chubby tabby cat Felix race through her home and wage war on the birds in the backyard and no longer did I want to live in a one-room studio where barely any light could squeak through. This may sound bizarre, but I wanted something better for him more than I wanted it for me. And it may sound ridiculous because maybe you have children and you can’t imagine a motherless woman holding something other herself sacrosanct. Or maybe you’re a heathen who doesn’t believe that animals, in the absence of family, can be family too. Or maybe I’m just a weirdo cat lady who loves a ball of fat and fur a little too much.

Getting work has been tough because I don’t have the verve to pitch like I used to. I know my value and worth and how truly smart I am but I’m tired of convincing others of it. I’m tired of waving my arms in the air and saying, hey, I’m not stupid. No, really. So, I’ve receded, which is a probably a terrible thing depending on how you look at it. All I have is this clothing resale business, which makes some decent money but is, like freelance work, unstable. Reliant on the whims of people and dependent on the ever-devolving economy.

This is the only hand I’ve got to play. So, I keep on playing.

While looking for a new place to live, I kept closing tabs. You can’t get that because you’ll be homeless in four months if you don’t make any money. Don’t be stupid. Take as little as you can get. But then I saw a home. A real one. It was a 1940s kind of affair that had stairs. Stairs that one could pad up and down in socked feet. Stairs that took you to another level. Stairs and a kitchen and a stove and a rug that looked like a home rather than a place where mail would be forwarded. It’s in Bakersfield, 90 minutes from Los Angeles, but a place with some solid thrifting. A home centered in downtown where I can walk to most places.

Ah, but the price. Far more than I was willing to pay but reasonable considering the home I’d get.

I became Kate all those years ago, running numbers. Maybe I could make it work if I sold X amount of trousers and maxi dresses a month? Maybe I wouldn’t, but wouldn’t it be nice to live in a home with stairs even for a little while?

I don’t know what’s going to happen and that frightens me as someone who likes to control things, but I got this place because I wanted something nice for myself and my cat for a change. I’m tired of punishing myself for all the financial mistakes I made in the past, and possibly this is another mistake but, by god, self-flagellation can be a little…much.

I’m venturing to this new home in May after a brief stint in Inglewood. I can’t wait to continue working on the new book. After all these years I’m betting on myself again and I hope I can keep on playing…

Warmest, f.

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Oh, and hey! If you want to buy clothes from me: here’s my eBay and Poshmark shops. Look at all the five-star reviews! LOL.