someone else is going to buy the house i am supposed to live in and i am very upset about it
on zillow and longing and lady bird
Sometimes, at night, when I’ve had that glass of wine that tastes like nostalgia, when I feel like giving up and getting off the hamster wheel I have kept myself on for the past decade, when I feel poor (by New York real estate standards) or like I’m living in a children’s plastic playhouse (by everywhere outside of New York real estate standards), I browse the Zillow listings for my hometown. I do not always do it when I’m sad; from time to time, if I’m feeling a little too confident with the state of my finances, I look under the delusional pretense that I am actually realistically in the position to think seriously about home ownership. (On those occasions, it is a good reality check.) Browsing Zillow becomes a game, a currency exchange, a mathematical equation of transference. How much home could I have in a suburb in central Pennsylvania for what I pay in rent in Manhattan?
It’s nice to imagine a life in which I move as an adult back to the place where I grew up, a woman who is glamorous and worldly and successful, done with her thrilling adventures and ready to settle down for a less complicated and slower life. In the story I weave off little more than an image of an exterior, I never get much further than the arrival part; in my fantasy, I never ask myself what it is I am returning to, never allow myself to think past the first week of the fictional premise. I ignore reality’s nagging questions: What would I do for work? What about the life I built in New York? What is there for me, a single and childless adult, with no community left in a community I don’t actually really want to live in? I ignore the facts: I would have to own insurance. I would have to mow a lawn, trim trees, clean the gutters. I would have to buy a car, and actually drive it. No, I stay on the storybook surface of the sister life; in the fantasy, I am the person I would be if I lived in someone else’s house, not the person I am who never will. I have always been good, maybe too good, at looking at someone else’s home, peering inside the windows when the lights come on in the winter, before the blinds are drawn, and weaving a story from the street, inventing an entirely new life for myself off stolen glances of someone else’s.
Lady Bird and her best friend Julie are walking home from school, through the nice neighborhood of Sacramento, admiring the homes, the understated elegance, the movie-like feel of it all. They pause in front of a stately blue colonial—the kind that screams old money, Northern California Reagan-era Republican—and stare longingly at it. They take turns sharing the kind of people they’d be if they lived there: “I would definitely have my wedding in the backyard,” Julie says. “I’d have friends over all the time to study and eat snacks,” Lady Bird says. “I’d be like, ‘Mom, we’re taking the snacks upstairs to the TV room!’”
The pair of teenagers exist on the fringes of their private Catholic high school, not just because neither fits the stereotypical pretty, popular girl mold. They’re both scholarship students, distinctly working class, accustomed to gossiping about the haves of their wealthy peers and using humor to deflect from their own have-nots. The house in which Lady Bird lives is nothing like that blue Fabulous Forties abode; it’s on “the wrong side of tracks,” a small ranch house where everyone is fighting for time in the single bathroom and her brother and his girlfriend sleep on a pull-out couch in the living room with wood paneling on the walls. It’s not that it isn’t a loving, warm house, or that it isn’t perfectly nice, even if dated; it’s just that it’s not really the kind of house anyone stands outside longing to get in. It’s the one where you can’t imagine a mother and daughter not getting into a screaming match about something as small as taking snacks out of the kitchen. It’s the one where, if you live there, you can’t imagine much more than one day getting out.
I knew, within the first three minutes of Greta Gerwig’s 2017 directorial debut—as soon as Lady Bird and her mother Marion bicker in the car, each line ringing more and more terrifyingly lifted from my own teenage years—that I loved it. Nearly every scene and plot point continued to double down on the self-own; I had never seen my adolescent experience reflected on screen with so many precise details. The act of longing for someone else’s house was just one of them.
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I decided the house that I am supposed to live in was the house I am supposed to live in at least fifteen years ago, probably more. Sitting across the street from my best friend’s home, the three- story traditional built in the 1930s was always there in the rearview mirror while I waited in her driveway, a crane of the neck when I walked down the street. There were other homes that were bigger, homes that were prettier, homes that were perhaps more conveniently located or more freshly renovated or more extravagant in their amenities. But there was something about that house, the understated coastal grandmother exterior with a barn star and flag out front, that felt lifted straight from a movie and placed right there, just a few short blocks from the house I lived in—not quite on the wrong side of the tracks of my own hometown but certainly not in the most desirable part—and hated. If I lived there, I thought, my life would be perfect. If I lived in that house, nothing bad could happen to me. I would curl up on a window seat in my room to read to the sound of the patter of rain on a dreary day. I would have my own bathroom, and my own phone line, too. I would invite my friends over on summer evenings, and we would spend hours sitting and talking about everything and nothing on the front porch, and we would never be met with polite but impatient warnings to wrap it up. Every night, I would go to sleep in my dream room, serene and self assured. I’d never worry about my grades, or that I was invisible at best and repulsive at worst to all the boys I liked, or that I may never be able to move away and escape to the city to become the person I wanted to be. My parents would never scream; I would never get grounded, or threatened to be kicked out for something as small as talking back; my sisters and I would never fight, and I wouldn’t have to stay home with them after school. I wouldn’t have as many chores, but I would be good at the ones I did have; I would never forget to take the chicken out of the freezer to thaw for my mother until I heard the sound of the garage door open. I don’t say this to sound like I had a bad life, because I didn’t, but: If I lived in that house, I would never sit in my closet and cry over wanting a different one.
Lady Bird waits on the front lawn for a ride home from a terrible night with a terrible boy, the kind of boy we like because he seems smart and a little bit dangerous, the kind of boy who lives in the kind of house we wish we lived in and lives the kind of life we wish we could live with the kind of family we wish we had, the kind of boy we like partly because we want his life more than we want him, even if we don’t know it at the time. He’s the kind of boy who’s all facade, no depth; his life isn’t as great as Lady Bird thought it was, and the one she wishes for herself will not be found through him. Lady Bird’s mother picks her up in her old car, and when her daughter begins to cry, she offers her comfort in the only way she knows how: by taking her to open houses.
Mother and daughter both walk through a series of strangers’ homes, commenting on things they like, proposing decor changes, imagining what could be instead of what is. The things that could be. The people they could be. Maybe, in another house, in another life, they would know how to speak to each other in the same language. Maybe Marion wouldn’t be so stressed; maybe Lady Bird would be more considerate. Maybe they’d both be kinder, warmer, more like the mothers and daughters they watch on the WB and not the mother and daughter they actually are.
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Someone else is going to live in the house I was supposed to live in. I know this because there it was, a new pending listing on Zillow during one of those sorry for myself evening browsings, an encounter I never expected. Houses go on sale all the time—people die, people get divorced, people retire—I know this. But I never actually thought this one would. The house I was supposed to live in never existed as anything that seemed like a remote possibility; it seemed destined to be its current someone else’s house for eternity, a forever imagined and unattainable projection that would always be right there but out of reach.
And the funniest thing about the house I was supposed to live in is that, inside, it looks nothing at all like I had imagined, and certainly not like any house I would ever long to live in. It isn’t my dream house, after all, far from it; it is a home that is surely and absolutely haunted. Maybe not with anything evil or sinister, but certainly with the spirit of white suburban American boomer of a certain voting demographic (okay, that can be pretty evil and sinister). The people who live in this house have a candle warmer heating a 22 ounce French Vanilla Yankee jar in every room. The husband and wife are collectors; porcelain figurines for her, baseball memorabilia for him. They tailgate at alumni college football games. They will tell you, unsolicited, that they “have several gay friends” but “don’t understand kids today with their ‘they/them’ nonsense.” She volunteers at the local library once a week (she scolds you if you so much as whisper) and he coaches rec level boy’s baseball (he screams). Casseroles are a big thing in their house. They refer to public restrooms as “the little girls room” or “little boys room” when excusing themselves in company to pee. They think 15% is a good tip. They wish their grandkids visited more.
Despite the cheugy hell of the decor, though, the bones are good. Dare I say it in House Hunters terminology, but the house I was supposed to live in is, to me, turn-key and move-in ready. Do I love the themed wallpaper and matching borders and wall to wall carpeting? Of course not. But a house like that is one you refresh, not redo. It doesn’t seem in need of any massive renovations that couldn’t be lived with as each room is revamped one by one. The wheels began to turn; I thought seriously about how I could possibly figure out a way to scrimp and scheme my way into owning it, how I could destroy my life and empty my bank account and enter into a mortgage with an absurd interest rate simply for the sake of an illusion, an idea of a person I could be instead of the person I currently am.
If I lived in that house now, I would be a person who drinks tea, and by this I mean drinks tea regularly, not has a tea kettle and buys tea every now and then when in a tea-drinking phase and thinks Tea is so good! I should drink tea more regularly! but quickly falls out of the phase and then forgets for a very long time that she has tea in her home and enjoys drinking it until one day she thinks Tea would be so very nice right now again. I would own a sewing machine, and be a whiz at tailoring my own clothes (or, at least, hemming my pants). I would have big floor-to-ceiling built-in walls of shelves to hold all the books I refrain from buying now due to lack of space. I would have dinner parties where I served the most delicious roasted chicken that I made myself, because if I lived in that house I would not be afraid to touch raw chicken. I would have a guest room always made up, the bed fitted with the softest, worn-in linen sheets and heaps of blankets, ready and waiting for any friend who wanted to fall into it at the end of a long trip to visit, or even just a late night when they didn’t feel like driving home. Mine would be the house everyone came to on holidays; all the kids’ strongest memories of the season would be made there. I would never need to use a SAD lamp. It would smell like a big pot of garlicky soup was always on the stove in the cold weather, and cotton and gardenias when it got warm. I would wake up before dawn like I used to before the pandemic, but not because I have to hit the ground running but because I enjoy the simple pleasure of the stillness and quiet of morning as I watch the walls of my room fill with orange sherbet light. I would have a group of friends from a pilates class that I’d have lunch with after class every Saturday. I would have perfect skin without having to even work for it.
“Someone else is going to buy my house,” I texted my sister. “Someone else is going to buy my house, and tear out that character-filled kitchen, and replace it with some late capitalist, millennial flipper, all-white and grey-floored, personality-less kitchen from hell, and I’m going to be so mad I could kill them.”
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Lady Bird is a coming of age movie, which means that Lady Bird does not just long to live in someone else’s house so she can become a version of herself she likes more, but so she can become a version of herself more liked by her peers, too. When she finally thinks she’s elbowed her way into a maybe-friendship with the popular crowd, she realizes it could all go away in a second if they knew who she really was. If they saw where she really lived. When one of her new friends asks where she lives, she lies, tells her about the house that is not hers, not really thinking that she’d be found out, that a time would come when that friend would one day want to pay her an impromptu visit and be met instead with a confused old woman who answers the door.
“Why did you say it was your house,” the girl confronts her. The pair of teenagers are standing in Lady Bird’s real house, in her tiny kitchen, and Lady Bird can barely lift her head to look at her. It’s the second time she’s been shamed for her desire for more; just the day before, her mother screamed at her for her ingratitude: “Whatever we give you, it’s never enough.”
“I wished I lived in that house,” she finally musters.
“I don’t even sort of understand why somebody would lie about that,” the girl responds. It’s the kind of remark that only could come from a rich girl like her, or from a girl who does not understand the acute sense of longing for the life of another. It’s the kind of thing you can only say if you already live in the house that someone else wishes to live in. Wanting to live in someone else’s house isn’t about not being grateful for the house you already have. It’s about being unable to shake the feeling that you’re missing something more. It’s about wanting to be accepted by others, wanting salvation, wanting love. It’s about wanting to be better, as if the simple change of scenery could magically transform you.
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I am never going to live in the house that I was supposed to live in. Not just because I don’t have enough money to, or because I love New York with my entire heart, or because, let’s be real, I left that small town for a reason. But because I cannot think of anything sadder than moving backwards in my life, let alone moving backwards for the false promise of fantasy alone. The point of nostalgia is that you look back; you don’t go back. If you’ve returned to the thing you miss, what is there to miss?
I guess I should stop calling the house I was supposed to live in “the house I was supposed to live in,” but I don’t quite know how to yet. The simple act of replacing the word “am” with “was” seems enough. It was never the house I wanted, not really. There are plenty of “houses” I am supposed to live in, jobs I am supposed to have, boys I am supposed to date, clothes I am supposed to own. They’re all about the same thing, all about wanting a life that isn’t mine, at least, not yet. For now, I am going to continue to live in the apartment I am supposed to live in, the charming and cozy little two-room, pre-war studio that rescued me during a fraught moment in my life. It is not without its faults, but most mornings—still, in my third year here—I find myself waking up and stretching out in my bed and smiling and feeling very lucky and filled with gratitude for the shelter I do have. “I can’t believe I get to live here,” I say to myself. “I can’t believe this is my home!” I will continue to do the long, slow, boring hard work of building a life here, of becoming the person I wish I could be, within these close quarters, without the shortcuts. Someone else is going to buy the house I was supposed to live in, and I will still be a little upset about it, but not as much as I could be.
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okay that's it that's the end thanks sorry love u bye
Loved this one, as usual. 👏