Trying To Dream Again.

This is something I haven't done in a while. That is to write from the heart. Perhaps I am writing it for me more than I am writing it for the blog. But in the same breath, I believe that somehow, the same way I used to find understanding for my loneliness in Kid Cudi’s songs, I am writing this, hoping someone will understand what they are going through. A reminder that they are not alone.

You know, life hasn’t been smooth sailing lately. It has been tough. A few days ago, I realised that I do not have dreams anymore. As I write this, I am in my childhood bedroom. Across me are pictures of cars that I had thought I would own by now. A McLaren F1 and a Lamborghini Aventador. There was a time that I thought I would own these cars with a beautiful house in Clifton, Cape Town, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

It is safe to say I do not own a beach house in Clifton, nor do I own these cars I dreamt about. Somewhere along the years, these dreams were robbed from me. I say robbed very intentionally. I never woke up one day and gave up on my dreams. But I did wake up one day, and suddenly, these dreams were unattainable for some reason.

Employment robbed my dreams. But I don’t want to focus so much on that, as there is more I want to write about. I am a 32-year-old man who is living with his parents. Yes, it is by choice that I am living with my parents, as I had a stable, reliable, permanent career as a lecturer. By all rights, if I had remained in the job, I would have had my own apartment and not been living with my parents.

But again, I chose to leave my career path. I left it to pursue these dreams. More accurately, to retrieve from the clutches of employment. But it hasn’t been easy. The most obvious aspect of this is that after leaving my job, my income diminished. Greatly. To the point where I find myself not being able to enjoy the little luxuries that I took for granted.

I look at my skin. It is a mess. You could grate cheese off it. I used to be able to purchase the products that made it smooth. The only thing that would remain would be the fine lines of age. If there was an item I saw on Takealot, I knew that if I saved, in a month or two, it would be in my possession. My car was on a service plan. As it is, it needs to be serviced now, I realise that I don’t have two coins to rub together to service it.

The most challenging of these all aspects that I am facing now is the fact that it is impossible to be in a relationship when you have no money. There was a time I had a massive fallout with my girlfriend. For that moment, my old ways crept back in. I switched off my feelings for her. I wanted to revert to the cheating mentality that kept me detached from falling in love with a woman. Then I realised something.

It is hard to find a woman when you are broke. Indeed, you might find a girl who couldn't care less if you have money. But you see, how are you going to take her out when you are strapped for cash? You don’t have the money to buy the good skin products to make you look presentable. You don’t have the money to travel to see her. You don’t have the money to buy that scent that will linger in her memory to think about you. You meet a girl who really likes you, really wants to be with you, but you don’t have the money to be with her. You realise that your game is still intact, you can still seduce women. But you don’t have the money to follow through with your game.

After the fallout, I eventually came back to my senses. A new problem emerged. You realise that your woman has no respect for you anymore. She places a hidden pressure on you to spend money, whether in ways she sees or in unseen ways. You realise that she no longer sees you worthy of her. She does not take you seriously. She gets annoyed by you. She takes you as a weak man for not having enough money to spend on her, in ways that she can see it or not.

And boy, under this pressure, you begin to make amateur mistakes. You begin to overstretch yourself. You try to send her money in the name of helping her. Maybe she has an issue that she is facing that needs money. And you send this money so that she maybe sees that you can still provide.

But you see, this is what she expects from you. She does not see your struggle. To you, you are doing what you are supposed to do as a man. She expresses no gratitude, nor does she express concern. Instead, she slowly, very slowly pulls herself away from you, hoping to see an escape from you. Or, she remains but does so in a “nigga you ain’t shit” attitude that her presence isn’t felt. Like a shadow in the night, you know it’s there, but you also know it isn’t.

I could never take a handout from a woman. But I sure do envy the men whose woman helps them out financially. I have not seen my girlfriend for close to two years. In those two years, she has never, not even once, suggested seeing me. Even propose the idea to see me. Not once. It has always been me who would come up with ways, and it has always been me to find ways to finance these ways.

I secretly envy the men whose women would actually go the extra mile for them. I secretly envy the men who would say that their girl is unemployed but found ways to travel across provinces to see them. I have been fortunate to date such girls before who, regardless of their situations, would go that extra mile to see me. A girl I once dated decided to travel from KZN to Bloem to see me immediately when travel was allowed again during COVID. She was unemployed. Her only income was from doing make-up. Mind you, this was during COVID, so her business wasn’t doing so well. But she found a way to get on a bus to see me.

So I know that women like this exist. How I long to be with such a woman once more. Society tends to create this narrative that men aren’t supposed to be loved. That in a relationship, everything has to be done by the men. Especially in this social media era, where sugar babies are making it the norm to have a man with money. This era where girls as young as 21 proudly tell fellow women that a man must earn a minimum of 30k to be taken seriously. There are so many viral videos about this that it deserves its own discussion. The danger is that it distorts reality. But again, perhaps a discussion for another day.

In this distortion, however, if a woman spends money on her man, it is taboo. That a woman needs to spend her money only when she sees fit. If she spends on you as a man, consider that as winning the lotto. Like, if she buys you something or spends on an experience for you, this should be treated as a momentous achievement! Like, wow, what a gesture.

Yet, when you look at relationships or marriages where individuals were together for a really, really, really long time, you get to realise that women spend considerably on their men. Whether financially or not, they contribute immensely to the success of that relationship. More accurately, to their man. It is not a one-sided affair.

When it is a one-sided affair, the pain you experience in that relationship hits different. It is a different kind of pain to experience being unloved by a woman who loved you when you had money. It is a different kind of pain to experience this unloving by this woman when you do not have a coin to your name.

I’d argue that the pain you feel when your girl cheats on you is better than this one. If she cheats on you, it will be painful, but you can find solace in the fact that the better man just won. You can find solace in the fact that you tried your best, or you made a massive blunder that drove her away.

However, when a girl leaves you because your pockets are running dry, that’s a different kind of pain. I have heard stories of men whose wives left them after they got into an accident and they got disfigured. One story that is imprinted on my mind is of this man who, when he got diagnosed with cancer, her wife shortly filed for divorce and left him with nothing. His medical expenses had to be covered by his family. Suddenly, he never made it.

I find myself in a similar story. My previous place of employment worked a serious number on my mental health. If I don’t get a night’s sleep, for instance, I will wake up with intense aggression mixed with feelings of suicide. I calm my mind with nicotine, as working out alone no longer helps me. I can say I am at my rock’s bottom right now. When I need to feel loved the most, the woman I am with makes me want to chisel further below into this bottom.

And yes, I have told her this many times. I stopped when she called me weak and said that it would have been better if I were a fuckboy or a man from the mountain. If I had the aura of having something killed in me, and I was stoic, emotionless. Such words from a person you love will always hurt. Far worse than if she just cheated on me.

Moments like these, I understand why the man who lives in the streets ends up addicted to something. They have no money. With no money, they have no woman nor the ability to attract a woman who will love them. Without a woman or the ability to attract a woman, as a man, you lose purpose.

These men have lost all meaning in life. At the end of the day, everything a man does is for a woman, or women. Because, as a man, biologically, you want to preserve your genes. That’s how we become immortal. That’s the true meaning of marriage for a man. That’s why we find blessers in the world. Everything we do as men, directly or indirectly, is to preserve our genes. And can only do this by being with a woman or women. And you need money to do this. No two ands or ifs about it.

I am blessed that I have a home, inasmuch as it is my parents’ home. I am blessed that I have a business; it keeps me afloat to at least have those two coins to rub together for a book or two. Regarding love, currently, I do not know.

My inner self wants to shut off completely. I have before, and I never experienced the emotional turmoil of being in a relationship. My game might be rusty, but I still have it. But in the same breath, I am too old to chase women with no endgame. Even so, I miss feeling pure love from a woman. The type of love that will love me for me and not the love that I need to continually prove myself for.

At the end of the day, this is the life I chose. I sacrificed the comfort of a good career in order to dream again. I am not yet able to do so, but I believe that one day I will be able to again. And on that day, hopefully, the dream will be a reality.