Fantasy

Less intentional, more delusional

The Very Short Golden Years (2022) by Julio Larraz

As I put my brain to this page and attempt to type something worthwhile, I quickly realize why nothing comes out. Firstly, it’s dead week. Nothing productive happens during this week, it's the law. I am so wonderfully bored that lately I’ve been letting my fantasies get the best of me. So, let’s revel in them. Let’s use this week as a reminder that nothing matters and nothing is real. For dead week, I want to put on a different hat. I want to get weird. I want to express more of my layered and varied self so that it sticks through the new year. Let’s be intentional about the opportunities that lie ahead. I’ll tell you my goals, the way I want to live in 2023. It’s simple and to the point: I want to be (more) delusional. 

This week is certainly not the time to do any kind of reflection. I know people that do a lot of reflection and it never does them any good because we are creatures of habit and we are bound to our hamster wheel of patterns (myself included). When the universe is trying to tell you something that you should change, just ignore it. Let’s lean into our flaws and make it all a little less complicated. Let’s slip into something more comfortable, our deep subconscious selves!

When I think about where I want to be in life, I imagine myself immersing into a mixture of luxury and lethargy. Like a cross between a butterfly and a lapdog. I am fantasizing myself as someone undergoing a magnificent transformation into a well groomed woman who just lies around, occasionally snoring on a velvet chaise lounge that I didn’t pay for. I want my husband to feed me fancy, expensive treats like Beluga caviar on an entertainment cracker. I want him to brush my hair with an antique comb found on 1st dibs. I want him to draw the blinds so that I can rest my eyes. Occasionally I’ll have him undress himself and present his dick to me in a fancily wrapped box with a big red bow. My daily routine will consist of this, while my kids are off somewhere in clean clothes, getting along, using their soft voices, and picking up after themselves.

I haven’t worked in over a year. I promise if I were to find myself suddenly employed I’d be subject to firing almost immediately. The likelihood of me making it through a full day of work is slim. I imagine the narrative of my firing would be something like this:

Security: *slowly approaches me with much discernment and judgment* Ma’am your state of delusion gives us no choice but to ask you to pack up your things so I can escort you out of the building immediately.

Me: Oh no! This sounds absolutely terrible. Did I not do things good?

Security: No, ma’am. Not only did you not do things good, you haven’t done a thing at all. Since you got here all you’ve done is doom scroll on your phone and seamless your kids chicken nuggets. We also noticed you stole a bunch of packing tape from the supply room.

Me: Something tells me this is all very bad. The packing tape is for my kids. We are building a new fort out of Amazon boxes and we desperately need more tape! 

Security: *groans and exhales, begins to wonder if he will actually have to escort me out* Ma’am, you can’t steal packing tape so you can build a fort out of Amazon boxes with your kids. You have ten minutes to pack up your things and exit the premises. 

Me: Bummer. Okay. Makes sense, I guess. Can I at least say bye to my boss and see if they’ll have a drink with me later?

Security: No ma’am. You have been fired. Your boss and the whole team are very upset that you have so transparently not done any work since you started working here 7 hours ago.

When Kim said no one likes to work anymore she was right. I can agree because I am now delusional, like her. Now I am merely a jester to my children. I feed them and perform silly charades and sing baby shark on a loop for their amusement. My brain has been rewired. But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s to be called ‘Ma’am.’ When someone calls me ‘Ma’am’ I am immediately brought to FIGHT MODE. The term ‘Ma’am’ gives geriatric, it’s giving Mama didn’t take her dementia pills, it’s giving Get this woman to bed and give her a PB & J sandwich so she can talk a little less. Ooh it makes me so mad. 

How do I live? Simple - delusionally! Beyond that? I have no clue. My best girlfriend and I had a candle-lit dinner in the city a few weeks ago and I spent most of the meal talking to her about my debacle of whether or not I should laser off my pubic hair or let my Eve-in-the-Garden-of-Eden-au-naturale look emerge. When my best friend and I go out, it’s a fanciful affair of letting the server flirt with us so he can send us fancy drinks from the bartender across the way. This is our sneaky attempt of convincing him to let us have our table for more than the two hours permitted so we can revel in our delusional conversations. We will never itemize a check. In fact, the first time we saw someone scan a check we were in subtle, internalized shock. We are classy, delusional, attractive women. And even though we don’t have much (if anything) to our name, you will never catch us itemizing a bill.

Can you tell the desperation of my tone? I am a mother to two toddlers. What do I have to get by if not delusion and fantasy? 

I am entering a new season of my life where I am learning I am no longer an extension of my children, and they are no longer an extension of me. I don’t consider myself as a vessel that conceived them, incubated them and birthed them. I now consider myself a real person! My kids are not a combination of my husband and me, they are real people, too. We are all our own individual solitary souls, on a trajectory to fulfillment, on a journey to discovering something worthwhile, on our own unique paths. Each one of us is putting our weird little brains to work. What are we all working on? Well, it’s up to our discretion if we want to divulge that information. But I, of course, will tell you what my weird little brain is thinking about: sinking deeper into delusion. 

How have I gotten this far in life? This question can be a little awkward to answer because I almost always feel a sudden loss of words. My husband puts up with me is the best response I can drum up. I have barely scathed by otherwise; I got straight C’s in college and I barely ever showed up to my Ocean Drive Magazine internship because I would stay out until 4am about 5 days a week. My grandmother always had rice and beans and ground beef for us to enjoy. When I was single I used to overline my lips and blowdry my hair before going out because that usually meant I’d get to sit at a table near the DJ with unlimited drinks. Ultimately, I wooed my husband with my big lips, my once perfect pre-baby boobs (may they RIP) and my roasted rosemary chicken and potatoes. 

Speaking of, I want to be nocturnal again. No longer do I wish to be a lavish lapdog but a cunning fox. I am sneakily lingering around the neighborhood in the dead of night while the kids sleep, trying to find my way to a dance floor where I will dance to Bad Bunny and Gloria Gaynor all night. I want to snort something that will pull me in deeper to the rhythm of the music and the way it moves my body around to match the beat. People will still pay me to go out, I will still sit at a table and drink like a fish, because my presence is much needed. Everyone knows I am here to amuse and delight. Everyone knows I am beaming with personality and good looks. Truth be told, I am integral to the party, to the dance floor, to the drunk and profound conversations. I am a service. 

When I was 8 months pregnant with my first child I had an older man tell me that I should quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom. The older man told me that that’s the best thing a mother can do for a child. His tone suggested that whatever I was doing at the time was a very frivolous thing because as a pregnant person, my life would soon no longer be mine to live. Back then I was doing, what I thought anyway, great things for my career. I was traveling with trunks and dressing celebrities and being useful with my good taste and extremely consistent work ethic. I did not utter any of this to the older man. Instead, I said wow, you're right older man! Let me give that idea some deep reflection. Now, as a current stay-at-home mom, I spend a lot of time with my kids but I also do it in my own way. In a way where I understand the importance of a mothers opportunity for self fulfillment outside of her kids. How a mother is also a real person. And how rare it is to be able to be both of those things in today’s society. How it could be deemed “delusional” if you try to be.

You see, for me, in my experience in my womanhood, I am fully allowed to live this way. I want to subject myself to fantasy and devote myself to the needs of my subconscious. Sometimes I have found myself in state of wonder and torment because I’ve been convinced I have to be in order to survive. I know now that’s not true, I’m worthy of fulfillment.

There’s a woman I know that thinks everything is sad. If a woman is childless by her own choice that’s “sad.” If a woman finds fulfillment with her only child and decides not to have anymore that’s “sad.” If a woman decides to freeze her eggs because she can't decide on whether or not she wants children, that's “sad.”  If a woman gets divorced and writes a national bestseller that’s “sad.” If a woman has a social life outside of her child(ren)...I think you know where this is going.

Listen, there are so many people that build strong and fluid personalities around bullying and shaming. These people have been stripped from any sense of self and have been convinced that the world should be as ordinary as they are. As it pertains to your life and your dreams, these people are called ‘non-friends.’ You do not owe these people any explanation for the way you choose to live your life. Women will be judged so harshly anyways. We are, almost always, made out to be criminals! These shamers are so deprived of the butterfly lapdog ways that I have so luckily claimed to embody and pursue. 

Look, I get it, we can’t always be so out of touch. But if we can? Like, what if being so out of touch is the only way to get us closer to what we want to achieve?

Maybe this body of work is a failure. It feels sloppy and like a form of projection. It feels so unbalanced. But I want to give less of a shit, I want to release all of my fear onto the page. I want to talk more about my failures and my wins. My intention for 2023 is….more delusion. More butterfly lapdog behavior. More transformations, more reinventions. What will happen if we stay the same? The worst thing you could ever be is ordinary.