"Why do you want to live THERE?"--answered

Okay. So I seem to have diverged slightly from my original plan here. But in some ways, I haven't diverged at all; this is all, exactly, about what I'm doing and most of all WHY.



But reading back I appear to have begged the question--what AM I doing? And further--why?



The first part is such a multi-layered question that I could ramble on for days and never adequately answer it; the second part is almost unanswerable. And the shorthand answer that JP and I always used for the unanswerable "why?" in this case is, although adequate, not necessarily productive: "because I can." It's true, in some ways, that's why I'm doing all of this; but that answer smacks of lack of forethought, insolence, randomness. And none of what I'm doing is ill-planned, insolent, or random in the slightest. (Though I'm thinking maybe I'll have difficulty convincing my neighbors about the "insolent" part--I'm fairly sure that at least one or two of them will take my mere presence, especially when taken in conjunction with LJ, as a very serious and deliberate insult.)



The house is one piece of the puzzle. If I agree with CR about one thing, it's this: I need a place to stand and fight. "But why THERE?" they ask.



1. Because I'm happy there--an answer with its own built-in "why?". I'll get there.

2. Because it's in the city, right in the center of the city, with a view of downtown.

3. Because it's a good investment, despite the current conditions in the neighborhood. I don't think I WANT it to gentrify, but if it's going to happen, I'd rather be there to reap the benefits if it does. If it DOESN'T gentrify, then I have a house in a neighborhood which suits ME, at least.

4. Because I'm not happy in suburbia and I don't want a condo; because I have no problem with being the only white person on the block; because the house itself has a ton of potential.



"Okay--why are you happy THERE?"



Somewhere in the past 15 years, I lost the ability to accept the status quo as desirable. When I was with Dave I thought I would be one of those suburban women with the house and the husband and the kids and the dog; I would believe what my husband believed and not make any waves. And that was one side of me. The other side was the side that ran the city with Mary Lee and Kelly and Darius and Gino, the one who explored as close to the edge as I could possibly get at that time. Looking back I don't think I was any different than most, except that I managed to get both halves of my life to peacefully coexist for so long. I mean, flirting with Gino and Darius, trying on different ideas and personalities...basic teenager shit, maybe toned down a little because I never drank or smoked or did any of that. It was typical late-80's geeky-teenager development, I guess...but then through college the thing with Darius took on more importance and intensity, and by the time Dave and I got engaged, I knew I was in love with Darius but I thought I could make myself NOT be. Dave was my REAL life, I told myself, and Darius was part of my unsustainable little fantasy world, a frivolity I didn't need and should forget. And then Darius introduced me to JP, and it was like...



It was like JP looked into my frivolous little fantasy-world and took out all the thoughts I kept there, the secret ideas and beliefs I kept out of my "real" life with Dave, and JP just held them to the light and instead of scoffing at them, or being shocked as I expected, it was like he examined them and said "Yeah? And? What's so unusual about THAT?"



I can't begin to explain how validating that was--to have it be NOTHING, just the usual to him, just the same stuff he'd been thinking forever. And suddenly that unsustainable little dream-world seemed.... sustainable....but only if he was a part of it. Suddenly it was okay to believe all the secret things I couldn't talk about to Dave. And I DON'T mean the sexual stuff (even _I_ didn't know the sexual side of it yet); I mean the politics, the sociology, the literature, all of it. But once it was out in the light it made perfect sense; like there was a click in my schema, and suddenly my secret life was my REAL life, and there was no room for my "real" life at all.



I realize that JP is gone and the plans we had are never going to come to bear; but to submerge myself into a life I don't believe in just because JP's not here, just to avoid conflict and not draw attention to myself, would be worse than never having known JP at all, worse than never having realized that there WAS another choice. I will never again be the girl I was at 20, and to try to pretend that the intervening 13 years never happened would be a total betrayal of myself, of JP, of everything. I can't pretend to be someone I'm not. I'm NOT corporate; I'm NOT suburban; I'm NOT attracted to corporate suburban white guys. I'm most comfortable in neighborhoods which have character; unfortunately, the only way for a neighborhood to have character anymore is to be sufficiently squalid or poor enough not to attract a lot of chain stores or Starbucks or whatever...and again, unfortunately, the only neighborhoods that fill those criteria are generally non-white.



I guess this is the question I get so tired of answering--that "Why would YOU want to live THERE?" As though I'm unaware of the neighborhood, or completely naive about what might happen to me there if I'm not careful. I'm well aware of all the drawbacks; it's just that I'm more willing to accept those drawbacks than I am to accept life in a neighborhood where everything I see is in opposition to everything I believe.



I wish I could just point people at this site and let them read the answers for themselves. But then again--everybody who needs to know has already got the answer; anyone who doesn't know yet wouldn't understand even if they DID read it.