Oh, how one craves the romance of a miserable life!
I have always been a little jealous of the tortured souls in literature. The poet coughing in a cold attic, writing verses by candlelight. The heroine at a rain-streaked window, staring at the horizon with tragic longing. The genius who suffers so beautifully that the suffering turns into art.
Now look at me. I am at the kitchen counter, holding a lunchbox that came back with the sandwich exactly as I packed it, and asking myself whether it really counts as lunch if nobody eats it.
This is not what I signed up for.
My life is not miserable. It’s busy. Those are very different things, and nobody ever wrote a sonnet about busy.
Misery comes with a soundtrack - violins, slow piano, maybe a cello in the distance. Busy comes with a microwave beeping, a work notification at 9:47 p.m., and a child asking where their other shoe is. The other shoe is always under the couch. It has always been under the couch. Nobody looks under the couch!!!!
I have tried to romanticize it. Truly, I have. I made myself a cup of chai, sat by the window and waited for a deep, melancholic thought to arrive. A heavy one, about the futility of existence.
Instead I thought: 'Did I reply to that email?'
I had not replied to that email.
Before I could get back to the laptop and reply to that email, someone needed help with homework. Then someone else needed a snack, the chai went cold, and my brooding session was cancelled for lack of quorum.
The tortured artist never seems to have a school pickup at 3:15. Or after-school classes to dash off to right after work. Or ever have to plan for 5 meals in a day!
Here is what I have come to suspect. The romance of misery depends on time. To suffer beautifully, you need long, empty afternoons. You need the leisure to stare into the distance and feel things very deeply, preferably in a scarf.
I don’t have long, empty afternoons. I have three children under nine, a full-time career and a Ph.D. that keeps sending me reading lists. My afternoons are packed so tightly that a feeling has to book an appointment.
“Hello, I would like to schedule an existential crisis.”
“The next available slot is Thursday, 11:20 p.m., right after you finish submitting your paper and before you fall asleep mid-sentence.”
“Thank you. I will take it.”
By Thursday at 11:19 p.m., I am asleep mid-sentence.
The irony isn’t lost on me. I started treating sadness as more meaningful than happiness. As if melancholy were the more intellectual emotion, and contentment were for people who don’t read enough.
A miserable life sounds deep. A happy life sounds… suspicious. A little naive, like you haven’t really thought about it.
But I have thought about it, usually at 2 a.m. while a small person kicks me in the ribs in their sleep. What I have found is that the ordinary moments in my unremarkable, non-tragic life hold more poetry than I give them credit for.
The way my youngest says a word wrong with complete confidence, and I never correct it, because one day the right pronunciation will arrive and I will miss the wrong one.
The quiet five minutes in the car before I walk into the house, when nobody needs anything from me yet.
The late night when a research idea finally clicks and I sit alone at my desk grinning like a fool.
Nobody will set any of these to violins. They are too small and too ordinary to look tragic in a film. They are also, I am realizing, the whole point.
So no, my life isn’t as miserable as I would like it to be. There is no attic and no candlelight, unless you count the birthday candles I relit three times because someone wanted to make another wish.
I am still waiting for my rain-streaked window moment. I am sure it will come one day, and it will be gorgeous and melancholic. Until then I will be here, looking under the couch for the other shoe, and trying to accept that this busy, noisy, wonderfully un-miserable life might be the most romantic thing about me.
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