Well, I’ve asked Metal Ox to do my finances for me. I am awful at it. Left on my own I am constantly in the hole. It makes no difference the relative amount of money I’m making, I just don’t seem to manage it.
Metal Ox is doing a wonderful job. He is a wizard. And, it’s not easy. It takes time and energy. And talking to me about money, which is a little bit like trying to talk to an engineer about poetry (which I’ve tried severally, and sad).
At any rate, last night we were driving home from my mom’s and discussing. I had found a pair of $325 Italian brown suede boots, with a nice heal, but comfortable for walking (come on!) on sale for $52, counting tax. It wasn’t that he thought I shouldn’t have bought them (during this, my financial recovery period), it was that he was trying to get through some idea about making choices between things. Like boots and sending my daughter abroad as a graduation present. Apparently I can’t afford both. Nor, it seems, can I afford even a monthly fine dining experience and sending Daughter abroad. I can’t? Wow. I know that he’s not fooling, but it’s just that, well, it’s hard to explain my feeling: a world wherein I can’t have even a monthly fabulous dinner out? Really? I mean, I gladly forewent such when my children were young and sacrifices were necessary in order to stay home with them and blah blah blah. That was fine. But now? I work all day! In clothes! I mean, not in pajamas, like I did when I was being an adjunct professor and mostly working at home. OK, yes, we’re just talking about the short term future during which I need to save up for Daughter’s trip. But still! As I tried to explain this feeling to him, the importance of the monthly fine dining, boots, and daughters, he finally sprang out, “You just have to kill That Princess!! That Princess has to die!”
“She can be trained!”
“No.” He was skeptical?
I thought of the shadow, the Jungian one. How Former Therapist had said to me many years ago the thing about having the shadow in for tea. How one doesn’t kill the shadow, because the shadow is part of one's self. One brings the shadow in and makes friends with it.
I don’t think of my princess self as shadow, though I suppose she has aspects of that, for her intention isn’t always to forward my well-being. She is a bit selfish, easily distracted by shiny objects -- or more accurately, usually, enticing aromas. She gets me into all sorts of trouble with her ugly sense of entitlement. She is, I suppose, I mean maybe she is? something of a saboteur.
But she’s improved herself over the years. Really. She recognizes the futility and masturbatory silliness of existential despair, and won’t let herself fall into it when persons don’t respond to her needs the way she’d like. She now realizes that persons are autonomous, and may be ignoring her because they’re busy, not because they wish her to suffer, or are indifferent to her suffering. This is a lot for a princess. Especially for That Princess.
Gads. How can I kill her off now? How would I do it? Guillotine? Chopping block? Poison? Anyway, I am opposed to capital punishment on ethical grounds. Any exception is corruption, and must be resisted. Integration is everything. And anyhow, I don’t know that M.O. would love me quite the same without her. I’m pretty sure I see responses of endearment at some of her, well, non-monetary manifestations. So, my task is to let her live, but she can't cause trouble. She has to do what Marie Antoinette never did. She has to be more like Elizabeth I. Or even II. She must be a Practical Princess. She must schedule state dinners only when the coffers can support them. And M.O.? He will come to trust her over time. Hmmm... maybe it's time for her to grow into a Queen?
So, Princess, Metal Ox; Metal Ox, Princess. A bow. A curtsy. Her hand. His kiss. Work it out.
*I am not referring to the Princess of the previous post (who will henceforth be refered to as Stormierbones, her blog name). I am referring to the princess that lives inside me.
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