Confessions of a Princess, from the “Love in the Time of Corona” a Corona Diaries series of Morning Pages entries.

I hear you in my head sometimes. “Princess,” you like to call me. I want to pretend it’s not true… but it is.

Listen to Cat read this essay on Spotify

It’s 6am and I’m cleaning.

My boyfriend is off to work. We’re lucky he still has work. Yesterday I looked at myself in my hiking boots and cut-offs driving around his truck. How quickly I can change.

I hear you in my head sometimes. “Princess,” you like to call me. I want to pretend it’s not true… but it is.

We can’t help what we’re born into. I was born into a contrast of everything, like most of us, I believe, if we get honest. As Natalie Goldberg once said, “To be a writer you must be comfortable in ambiguity.” And to me to be truthful, we have to know there isn’t one thing we can lay down, life is squiggling and morphing and multi-dimensional and parallel and not just one color, it’s everything.

I can be comfortable in everything.

Watching the world stop, seeing what’s necessary and what doesn’t matter, for me I consider how most of our spirits had been caught in consumerism. I’ve always been uncomfortable with hierarchy. My family wasn’t rich but we became rich when I was born. For a short while we lived on a golf course and another place we had a large pool with a fountain, a tennis court, and a house with seven bathrooms. When money became tight and we couldn’t afford a cleaner, it sucked to have to vacuum as a punishment.

As a princess, I’m comfortable with a lot of money, with luxury, and I’m comfortable with not much.

I know how to work hard. When I left my fiancé I had just enough money to leave the state and not much more. I paid rent on a room in a house that was going to get torn down, we were illegally living there, as many of us stuffed in there as we could, including the basement and attic, and I didn’t have enough money for a bed. But I was happy.

Now I’m in a cabin. We have water which is important. I’m counting my money. I’m seeing how I can improvise and how before having extra money would make me waste money. The world pausing is helping me think – what’s actually essential?

When we went bankrupt when I was 16-

I remember I came downstairs to see my dad. I didn’t know we were bankrupt, I didn’t know we lost everything, I didn’t know we were moving. My parents did what parents do – how can we shield our children? I was angry for years for how much they didn’t tell us but now that I’m closer to their age – how do you know what’s important to reveal? They did their best.

I sat down and complained to my dad about money. About the stupid society our money made us be in. Where being white – though no one talked about it – was a thing; where were the other people? In my hometown I was put into a school where white seemingly wasn’t king – where every color was represented. My best friend was from China, my other friend was from Taiwan, my other friend was from the Dominican Republic, and my boyfriend (I was 7) was from El Salvador.

Of course there are so many more layers to this – that at some point I will write about – but for now – this is what I’m saying.

I hated our money, I hated how people just saw us as rich, I hated how no one saw us underneath. And it wasn’t a real rich – there was no security -this was ripped away so quickly. But I always knew, the heart is what matters.

I told my dad I wanted to leave this place and that was how he told me, “Great! We’re moving in a few days!” And that was how I found out we lost our money.

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Is it weird for me to say that I was relieved?

No longer did I have to worry that my friends were my friends because of our status. I knew who stayed around were the ones who mattered.

We weren’t so poor that we were homeless. We were really lucky. Somehow we got another house – albeit with less bathrooms – and we even had enough money for me to have a car. I forced them to let me learn manual and I’m so grateful for that now – as I can jump on any car or motorbike now and I know how to drive. Me yesterday in the truck. Our power is how adaptable we are.

Even now we have money, after all I am a princess.

My boyfriend and I. Yes I’m worried when it gets cold because our walls are canvas but we have a stove to make a fire. I have my own way to create my own inner fire. I joke with myself that I’ve always wanted to be a snow yogi and create so much heat that I could meditate in my underwear in winter. Or now modern day Wim Hof -style. I’m in the circulation of all of us where we don’t know what’s going to happen. I have many thoughts on this and I have my own fears. But coronavirus or not, lockdown or not, I’ve always had my own fears about losing everything and the ways I trap myself as a result.

We have so much food now I’m grateful. And a bed. And trees and kangaroos that now are coming a little too close to me these days, and that’s okay. Maybe I’m part kanga. They are sensitive and know how to pause – and they are fierce and know how to leap forward. This is the time for cosmic leaps.

January 1^st this year my friend Dewa died.

The same day my brother died eight years earlier. Dewa called me “Princess.” He was my Balinese priest friend, somewhat of a brother, somewhat of a lover. Again, that place where ambiguity bleeds over everything. I mourn for him secretly because no one can understand what he meant for me, maybe I’m still figuring it out. We could fly together in the astral planes – he was one of the few who understood my powers – and yet we had some cultural barriers that prevented us to connect in other ways. We never had time to consider what we really were to one another. I, like most people, figured his death was far off. And his sudden departure made me realize that I can’t count on anything.

Death is our sacred portal and I stopped being scared of it long ago.

But I want to have my own space to die, I don’t want to have been so caught up in the superficial that when death slams into me I’m left scrabbling. I don’t know what to expect. Some cultures think happiness is what matters but you and I both know that’s fleeting. Our own ability to create meaning, our search for truth and depth, is what satisfies me. That’s why I write. My own way to put flimsy scratches to this morphing universe that leaves me in surprise.

Despite being called a princess, I don’t believe in bad endings even though every ending must end in death.

This world pausing is causing us all to slam into every wall we thought we could postpone. It’s a relief for once that I don’t have to have an answer. My only answer is to wake up and be with what matters. Now it’s 6.30am and the birds are warbling. Yesterday I was angry and frightened, today I am calm. The trees look more crisp, I feel like I have new eyes, and I’m relieved I can’t think so far beyond right now. Just me and the pink clouds, the drips of rain, the air a light golden. I am here.

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Curious how “Princess” Cat is handling her own self quarantine, stuck together with her boyfriend, hiding out in their closet?

Read more corona diaries morning pages entries in “Love in the Time of Corona”
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