About Greed

ABOUT GREED, Part 1

 

Have you ever slipped into a puddle of greed?

I have. I don’t know when or how it happened, I just know that all of a sudden — or in a period of time that I perceived as such — I found myself miserable, frustrated, discontent, and greedy. Life didn’t feel right any more; I began to want all the things I didn’t have, and soon enough I began to think that I needed all that I wanted; I buried myself in obsessive workout and in obsessive online shopping; the latter even worsened my thumb arthritis. “Maybe God is doing for you what you can’t do for yourself,” my hand doctor said. Dr. Shayfer had genuinely smiled, and he had then placed a splint on my right hand.  

In the weeks that followed, I grew increasingly isolated and I didn’t wear the splint as prescribed. For greed and isolation are much more intertwined than I had thought.

“Unless you make do with what you have, you will never be able to be happy,” my mom used to caution me when I was younger. “Non riuscirai mai ad essere felice se non impari ad accontentarti,” she’d say.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I know that she couldn’t understand the suffering I was in — hurt that, even then, had taken one of the many shapes of greed. Back in those days, I didn’t know why I felt that way; I didn’t know when I had began to feel that way, greedy for more but unable to locate and recognize what was, that I truly missed. I wasn’t raised with much, and I wasn’t raised in a greedy social environment. I would almost say that I wasn’t raised in modern society, because the early 1980s in my small hometown resembled an old-fashioned way of life, without cellphones, Internet, or designer clothing. Growing up, I didn’t know about high fashion, expensive cars, or jewelry; that’s not what I wanted. And yet, at a point in my life, nothing seemed to make me happy. It was that point in life when I thought that something external would be the source of my happiness. My mother didn’t know what it was, where it had originated, and how much it was shaping me for the years to come. I didn’t know either. But today I understand her careful choice of words: she never said that I would never be happy; she said I would never be able too.

“When was the last time you were not greedy?” Cei, one of my two therapists, asked me during our last session. It was December 6th; it was raining in Los Angeles, and I was cold, dressed all in black, tired, but happy to be talking to her and Diane, my other therapist in Beverly Hills, on Skype.

“I think it was when I lived by myself on Beachwood,” I said. From a rational point of view, my answer didn’t make sense; I didn’t have much in those days, and I wasn’t particularly successful either. 

In my essays, I have extensively talked about the years when I lived on Beachwood Dr., between 2012 and 2014, in a quaint and frugally furnished one-bedroom apartment on the south side of the street, before the STOP sign, and from which I could see the Hollywood sign in the distance. I keep talking about that time in my life because, even though I couldn’t see it back then, those years turned out to be profoundly formative for me, both as a woman and as a writer. 

The walls of my apartment were all painted white but for the one that separated the kitchenette from the living room; the previous tenant had coated it in forest green. I didn’t like it at first, but after a while I grew so fond of it that I chose it as background for my Podcast (Coffee with Alice), against which I took selfies with my guests.

“What were you doing differently?” Cei asked. 

“I was much more of service,” was the first difference that came to mind. “I had much less, I went to AA meetings, I worked a lot, I was self-sufficient, and I really treasured the little free time I had for writing.” 

I drank some tea and paused; it had stopped raining.

“Okay, what I’m about to say is going to sound ridiculous,” I said, “but even time felt more abundant when I didn’t have it.” Words just came out,without much thinking. “In those years, I used to blow-dry my hair every time I washed it, because it was frizzy. And it took forever.” I hated doing it, because it took an hour, and by the time I was done I was so sweaty that I could have taken another shower. 

“But after the pregnancy my hair changed. It’s naturally wavy and I love it; I haven’t blown-dried it in months. It’s a silly example, I know, but I have much more time today, so why do I feel as if I am always running out of it?” 

On Beachwood, I didn’t have anyone helping me taking care of my apartment; I worked three jobs, and yet found time to enjoy grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s on Selma Avenue, and to work out at the YMCA not far from it. Today, I have an amazing housekeeper and a nanny helping me with Catherine, I don’t have a 9 to 5 job, and yet I struggle to find the time to take basic care of my self. When I lived on Beachwood, I had $500 in my bank account and I felt financially safe, today I am blessed with bounty,but obsess over money like I never did before. 

“I think that the big difference was that I was the one valuing myself. I was struggling, but I was very proud of myself in those years. I had come a long way.” I had finished my novel, my English kept improving, and I had gotten sober.

Only then, after sharing all that with Cei and Diane, had it occurred to me that when I was a teenager being told my mother that I would never be able to find happiness, I was a younger version of greedy and unhappy Alice as of December 6th. I was craving more to fill the holes I had inside. 

So as we expanded the conversation on greed, we began to discover those holes, how long they had been there, where theywere, and how they felt. “It feels as if a part of my being has been removed with surgical precision,” I said. The holes were made of absence of flesh; in AA they call such holes God-shaped, because they cannot be filled with the material.

I began to think about the years that followed Beachwood, and about all tat I had denied myself. “I like to watch The Holiday Baking Championship on the Food Network,” I said, “and I like clothe, and purses. Ben loves silent movies and French poetry, how can I not feel less than him?” I pictured in my mind a scale with the Food Network and Vogue magazine on one plate, and piles of foreign, ancient books on the other; I felt small, superficial, and shallow. But Ben never made me feel that way; I projected what I felt of myself on him.

I know that there is nothing wrong with baking shows or Vogue magazine, but when I moved in with Ben, and when our lives became intimate, as one, I began to feel ashamed of some of the things I liked. Shame led to discomfort, and discomfort led to hiding those things I felt ashamed of. Hiding contributed to createthat void that did not exist between 2012 and 2014. 

A few nights ago, my friend Christy came over for dinner and said to me: “You really look great, but don’t lose any more weight, or it will be too much.” 

After Catherine was born, a year ago, my goal was to go back to my pre-pregnancy body. But when I reached such goal I secretly became greedy for more. I hadn’t realized it until my friend mentioned the weight. And I had to face the fact that my eating disorder had crawled back into my life. I had let it in so to fill those same holes that had grown increasingly wider and deeper as I had grown increasingly distant from my true self and from the things that really mattered. I felt ashamed for liking the Food Network, so I turned off the television. I felt ashamed for being passionate about style and fashion, so I began to hide the amount of time spent on Nordstrom, Barney’s, etc.

“Going to Barney’s is like eating in public when I was anorexic,” I told Cei and Diane. “Online shopping is like binging, and when I return all the stuff that I have bought is like throwing up.” Weeks later, I would find out more about my obsession with online shopping, the purpose it served, and how it was connected with my phobias of rape and sexual assault, but the finding became material for another story. 

As I said, greed and isolation are more intertwined than I thought. And nothing helps isolation like the online world, whether made of shopping, games, or real estate. Because I began to obsessively research our new house, too. Every time that I would complete a purchase of shoes, toilet cleaner, or a jacket, I would feel lost, guilty, empty, and bored. “Binging” on Zillow would calm me down like a pint of ice cream. 

“Greed is a fluid, sticky, slimy, something I slip into with my right foot and that takes over my entire body with its heaviness and gluey grip.” I told Cei and Diane. Greed takes me away from the uncomfortable moment of realization that something within myself is missing. 

Cei asked me what the inside of me that was missing needed to have happened. 

I told her that it needed to be acknowledged and accepted. 

I think that I became greedy because, unlike when I lived on Beachwood, I stopped being myself, the myself my husband fell in love with, by the way; the less thin myself, the non-perfectly dressed myself, the myself with no money and more dreams, the myself without designer purses or Chanel shoes, simply myself. 

When did thinner-than-before the pregnancy become not enough? How do I need more clothes, an increasingly bigger house, more fans, more success, more love, more attention, more, more, more?

The answer is that I stopped valuing myself, and I stopped being proud of myself. I stopped being self-sufficient, and I never made peace with the blessings and the bounties that Ben shared with me when we started our life together. I still feel guilty for it. 

I was proud of myself in what I will call form now on “the Beachwood years”, and that validation didn’t come from outside. As cliché as it may sound, it was an inside job, one that I find myself having to start from scratch, one more time, and likely not the last.

To be continued.