Lately, I’ve been coveting a dining table.
I first saw it in coffee table form on a friend’s Instagram account, all smooth curves in a soft birch wood. Naturally I tapped the tag she had included in her post, and I found myself on the Wiggle Room Instagram account, where I found an image of the aforementioned dining table. I saved a photo of the dining room table to the aspirational Home album I have, also on Instagram, naturally, reserved to mindlessly pine over another day.
In the marketing photo, it looked so clean and crisp, just the right amount of funky. I imagined the kind of person who would own such a table and decided that she could be me. Once I had the table, I would set it with the pastel-colored wine glasses that I’ve been dreaming about from Estelle Colored Glass. (All handblown, of course.) I would buy a bouquet of fresh ranunculus and place them in a bud vase handmade by a terrazzo artisan in London I found on another friend’s Instagram account. How beautiful my imaginary room would be then. How beautiful my imaginary life might be.
The truth is, I do not need this table — nor could I even fit it properly in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. But that doesn’t stop the wanting, a feeling that has defined much of the last year for me. In the absence of a constant flurry of experiences, a gnawing desire to fill the gulf with things cropped up.
And thus a cycle began: Melancholy. Online shop. Anticipation. Dopamine hit. Repeat.
I bought so many physical things this year — and dreamed of many more — in an attempt to paper over all of the intangible things I couldn’t have. Coffee tables that are easier to move out of the way when I need to use my living room as a gym. Ergonomic cushions in lieu of a fancy desk chair. A little milk frother. Cozy knitwear to drape over my increasingly soft body. Nap dresses that made the empty time feel like leisure time. Glasses that make me feel like Gloria Steinem in the ‘70s. A cardigan that makes me feel like a teen in the ‘90s. Bins for my shelves. Bins for under my bed. Bins for my shoes. Tiny trays to hold my sponges and candles and matches and bows and scrunchies. Succulents and dried bouquets. Books that my friends wrote — presumably, while I was buying all the things and organizing them.
Now that we’re finally able to imagine a world where the experiences we’ve been missing promise to happen again, I don’t know what to do about the wanting. I’ve gotten both of my Pfizer shots, and passed the two-week waiting period, but the gnawing feeling remains. I dream of wiggly dining tables and ditsy floral dresses and beautiful ceramic mugs. I open tabs and put Loeffler Randall totes and Great Jones tea towels into carts I’ll never check out from.
I think a lot of us imagined there would be some moment of collective relief from the relentless darkness of the last year and a half. We have a new president and new vaccines. It feels like something should change in a Big Momentous Way. I should wake up one day and feel free from the confines of my apartment and stop wanting to fill it with things that make it a more palatable place to be trapped. But I just keep wanting things and I’m not quite sure why.
“I fear I’ll miss the instant when this is over — that one day I’ll look around and find the moment of catharsis never happened because life isn’t a movie and it just chugs along with its assortment of thrills and sorrows and longueurs,” wrote Lydia Kiesling in a recent piece for The Cut. “What if the pandemic ends and I’m just my same little garbage self? What if I’m no better than I was?”
What if I’m not just my garbage self, but this whole country is still its garbage self? As things open up, I’m increasingly reminded of how bad things are — even beyond the uneven, discriminatory ways that COVID ravaged communities. Mass shootings are back with startling regularity and the police keep murdering Black and brown kids. We don’t have to pay for life-saving vaccinations, but we still can’t get our shit together to provide universal health care.
In my experience, a great way to distract from your garbage self and the garbage country you live in is buying a new dining chair. She’s black and cane, which says, “I’m effortlessly fancy yet still low-key.” She’s just trendy enough, but she also has staying power. Plus, she was a steal. I imagine she’ll be great to work in. The writing will come when the chair is aesthetically-pleasing enough, right?
Or maybe you need sateen sheets to cure your shitty, melatonin-dependent sleep schedule. You’ll be the type of woman who always makes her bed, never snoozes and optimizes her mornings. That woman would never lay in bed scrolling on her phone indefinitely, frittering precious hours away.
Sometimes the trick of a shiny new thing almost seems to work. The clothes do fit better and make you feel excited to leave your apartment. The new table makes a much better desk, the glasses aren’t scratched like the old ones, and those ergonomic cushions really do prevent back pain. It would be easier to ditch the habit if the hit didn’t feel quite so satisfying.
Every time I open a new tab, I imagine that this thing will be the one to quench my desire. The final touch on my space, the last new outfit of the season. The thing that will complete the picture and let me be my best un-garbage self. Until then, I’ll be thinking about that dining table.
Call to action…
In light of the decision in the Derek Chauvin trial (reminder: accountability is not justice) and the police killing of Columbus teenager Ma'Khia Bryant, I want to re-up our call to educate yourself about the historical links between American policing and white supremacy, and encourage everyone to push for local legislation that would take away funding from police departments and redirect it to social welfare programs.