liminal space (L-Space)

She started out attracting broken women, as most coaching empires do. She was a survivor of patriarchy, you know the type: had her heart broken by multiple men while in search of marriage & motherhood and realised, eventually, that men just aren't a viable solution to anything really, stopped trying to get one to pick her forever, and made peace with being child-free while navigating her family's disappointment.

She then built a career and a life solo, and eventually started a coaching business that attracted women equally unenamoured of men.

You know how these things start. A free workbook to build the list, a paid offer or two, low-ticket. Come learn how to build a real life without a man from someone who's done it. Can't hate, we all teach what we know.

I became less of a fan when the calls to sign up for coaching began to sound strident, but that may be a me thing: I see capitalism and patriarchy as two sides of the same oppressor coin, so I'm never thrilled when women are encouraged to embrace capitalism but not warned that it's all one system, and we should be divesting from it all. I know, I'm a big, big dreamer.

Anyway.

That writer-turned-coach stayed on my feeds, and I was surprised when I clicked through the other day to find that her origin story has changed.

She is no longer a woman who got burnt by men like the rest of us. She no longer talks about letting a man live off her for years and performing for a ring before realising she was a labour mule and opting out.

Oh, no.

Now she's a super-insightful super-woman who always knew men weren't all that, who never married because she has always known marriage is a scam targeting women.

Now she doesn't coach on getting your life together after heartbreak and finding happiness while single. Now she's a solo living, career & business-building expert who charges four figures per individual for group coaching.

How to survive this anti-woman world: Do business like a man. Climb the corporate ladder like a man. Pay me $5,000 to show you how.

While I don't love seeing a messy history polished into inevitable insight, and love even less the pandering to capitalism since that's not the system-bucking move it's billed as...

Gotta love the hustle.

There are actually two women I've watched make this switch from life coaching to capitalism coaching in exactly the same way, and I get it.

Money IS power.

I guess I'm just jealous because while I've got life experience enough for two coaching lifetimes, I just can't get rid of that pesky anti-capitalism streak long enough to profit off leading women even deeper into the system.

Naïve, I know.

I write for women who see the world as it is and haven't given up despite the at time crippling despair.

I write for women who aren't lambasting men online while yearning to find “the right one” offline.

I write for women who are truthful in all things, about desire and pleasure and pain and loss, and about the cost of being a thinking woman in a world that runs on human foolishness.

I write for women who haven't given up despite the at times crippling despair.

💔

No one cares WHY I wasn't productive nor should they if I'm just another cog in the wheel.

Photo from @free-my-mindd

That's not Joburg but it's how Joburg feels to me. It stopped being "home" and became a prison. I felt like I couldn't see the sun, couldn't think, couldn't breathe. I lay in bed for days on end and called it depression. Then despair. Then, when I found myself toying with the idea of 'transcending realms,' I called it the executive function of AuDHD (self-diagnosed).

I stopped writing, stopped eating - I'd already stopped fucking a decade before and thought I knew why. I barely ate, and only because the dizzy spells from low blood-sugar were rather unpleasant. I looked like I wasn't eating. Someone actually asked if I was starving myself, jolting me awake to the realisation that I really, really wasn't eating. In my mind, I just wasnt hungry. I love food! I wasn't fucking because the city was slowly killing me, I wasn't eating for the same reason, but I didn't realise any of that until the words left and even then, it's taken months to make the connection.

My life has become a dessicated imitation of what it should be.

Not that it matters. Your penchant for the unavailable is holding strong, it seems. You're safe from poor decision-making, made secure by the fact that crush or not, he is now and for the foreseeable future, extremely unavailable for what you want.

Does that stop your mind from going "there"?

No. No it does not.

He doesn’t know that sometimes I touch myself (how can I not) thinking about certain moments we've shared. Watching him drive (my god), his very specific compliments (jesus christ), his hand sometimes (not often enough) on the small of my back for a (short-lived) hug, his voice curling around "I want to kiss you" and "I like your tits" (sweet mother mary). Him pretending he didn’t say it. Me pretending I did not hear it.

A lot.

Like, a lot.

I even wrote an erotic scene just to try and stop ruminating on the maybes swirling around in my thoughts.

It's not ok.

Get out of my head, or come fetch me and show me taste & feel.

Someone Important was speaking. Secretary K quickly whispered, “I’ll see you at tea time,” before slipping away.

I smiled at the two gentlemen seated on either side of me. They briefly introduced themselves, nodding politely when I gave my name. As I pulled out my pen, notebook, and glasses, they returned their attention to the Someone Important at the microphone, who was saying something about excellence in quality reports.

That was when I saw him.

He sat at the other end of the room, directly in my line of vision.

I drooled. I dripped.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of white-hot images and sounds.

His hand twirling a pen. His voice as he asked Someone Important a question — a clever question that made me want to climb into his world as much as his lap. In my mind, he would hold me close and shift his hips just enough to make me feel him there, pull me tighter with those strong, broad hands and murmur, Good girl. He would lay me on my back and move with unbearable patience while telling me his dreams for me, for us, for the world he imagined we could build together.

The throbbing between my legs, the heat pooling there — I was certain it showed on my face. I could not stop looking at him, and my fantasies would not release him.

I stared. I dripped.

There was a videographer in that room. I doubt he kept his lens trained on the speaker. I am sure he panned over the audience multiple times. Somewhere, there is footage of me wanting. Of me yearning. And not only has HE seen it, so have other people.

He was my principal. The sole reason I was in that room was to work. For him. When teatime came, I left the room before he could approach me. We both expected to touch base but... I needed time to pull myself together — and wipe up — before facing him.