Coming out of the granny closet

Today I had a powerful flashback to the single most awful, humiliating moment in the entire awful, humiliating process that was the implosion of my life after I was retrenched from my job in Sydney in November 2008.

It was at a dinner party more than a year ago. We were about to pile into dessert and the hostess, well-lubricated with red wine, wanted to know how I was doing. Was I still living with my grandmother? she asked. Spoons clinked expectantly in glass bowls. Yes, I admitted. When was I going to move out? she demanded. I don’t know, I said. I can’t really afford to. Yes you can, she insisted. No I can’t. Yes you can. No, I wanted to say, and explain why – but all of the other guests, bar one, were strangers I had only met that evening, and I didn’t want to have to talk about my financial situation, about things that were none of their business.

Oh, if I could have negotiated with the gods, I’d have arranged for the floor to open up and swallow me into blessed eternal obscurity. Ears burning with shame, I wanted, desperately, for her to stop, and she wouldn’t. I should have stood up then and there and walked out, but I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I stayed rooted to my chair, hating myself and everyone else in that room.

The past few years have provided me with a large and colourful collection of bad memories. So why does the recall of that one in particular still have the power to reduce me to a snivelling wreck? Why does the memory of an incident that, on analysis, is really rather insignificant – after all, another friend who was there with me at the table and witnessed it all couldn’t understand what I was so upset about – why does that one hurt more than any of the others?

I think it’s because the exposure was so public (it would have been different had it been a conversation between just the two of us) and because the admission that you live with family is so very embarrassing. Think of the trope of the 40-year-old man who lives with his mother: is there anything creepier? Anything more redolent of loserdom? In Western-orientated culture, it is expected that one should live alone, especially when you’re in your 30s and have your own credit cards. The only time when it is acceptable to live with others is when you’re young and in digs, or shacking up with a partner and/or your children. The extended family setup which dominates living arrangements in other cultures is inconceivable.

Which is stupid, because it’s horribly wasteful. Of all the trends driving the rise in unsustainable lifestyles – McMansions, urban sprawl – the increase in single-person households is the most insidious. The ghastly, soulless Summercon complexes that blanket vast stretches beyond the Shooter Curtain have been fuelled by the need for little boxes for single people to inhabit. In the UK, energy consumption has risen sharply over the past 40 years, a trend driven largely by the increase in single-person households. If we were serious about living sustainably, we’d wean ourselves off our culturally sanctioned addiction to living alone and move in with mom (or have her move in with us).

It’s ironic that over the past decade economic realities have made single-person households unaffordable for many. Higher property prices drove the Kippers trend (Kids in Parents Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings), with children living with their parents into their 30s because of the impossibility of buying a home of their own. Then the recession forced family members back together as people lost their homes. Newspapers began to report on a new development: divorced couples, unable to live in separate households, continued to live under the same roof.

(Divorce has always been, and always will be, a major factor in forcing independent adults to move in with family. That’s why I moved in with my grandmother in the first place. After I moved out of the rented townhouse I shared with my ex-husband — we had sold our place in Parkhurst several months before — there was nowhere else for me to go. I had to get out quickly, and she had a spare bedroom.)

There are of course good reasons for people to want to live alone. Escaping family politics for one thing, or parental control. If you don’t get on with people, it’s hard to live with them, especially if you’re effectively a bywoner under somebody else’s roof. Living on your own is a rite of passage as significant as circumcision or scarification in some other cultures. And living with family means you’re always being monitored in ways you might not necessarily enjoy. (My grandmother is an unwitting but remarkably effective chastity belt – though that’s probably a good thing.)

In a perfect world, I probably would choose to live alone. So why, more than eighteen months down the line, am I still living chez grandmère? I know it’s shameful, and I know that my friend the dinner party hostess wouldn’t approve, but it works for me. It’s round the corner from the office (my commute is six minutes if I’m unlucky with the robots). I have the pleasure of a big garden filled with ducks and hamerkops: when I look out of my bedroom window I see green, not concrete. Quite frankly, in my current situation, I’d rather put the money I’d otherwise be spending on rent into paying off debt. Besides which, the events of the past few years left me in a state where it wasn’t a good idea for me to be on my own, and I’m very grateful for the love and support of my family. I’d have found it much harder to cope had I rented a two bed, one bath apartment with one parking and pool in complex.

I know people who feel like losers because they live with family. They shouldn’t. It’s a practical solution for a particular set of circumstances and anyone who chooses to sit in judgment of that – well, they’re more than welcome to take a pleasant evening stroll along the nearest short pier. I hope that by writing about this, I’ll exorcise the memory of that awful dinner party — and remind those of you in similar situations that you’re only a loser if you allow others to make you feel like one.

Weird as it might seem to some, living with family happens to work for me right now. I’m coming out of the granny closet, and it feels great.