Today, Chantal decided, would be the start of her aesthetic stage, a period of developing her self-discovery and preference for beauty. She believed that when life becomes mundane, we naturally seek new delights. She was already three months into taking adult ballet classes with Laura at Crown Theater School on 6th Avenue, across from the Library, you know, that one that looks like a castle; apparently, it was formally a women's prison; anyway, Naomi, the ballet professor, mentioned just last week that Chantal's split was getting better. So that is something, Chantal reassured herself.
Chantal often found it difficult to summon the energy for mundane tasks when she was in the lull of her menstrual stage, a period of her cycle when estrogen and progesterone were at their lowest, which caused her to have decreased energy, sleep disturbance, and increased appetite.
She felt the certainty of the consumerist stage approaching. Eight dresses in the mud room desperately needed to be returned. Right now, living for Chantal felt trivial and ultimately dull. She wondered, Is this all there is? She felt an intense need bubbling [below her heart;] was it in the gut: this growing awareness of nothingness, which would need to be satisfied somehow? She whispered I must get inside the machine. Move from consumption to creation. It could be where more profound experience lies.
The ethical stage: What does that mean, she wondered? Leaping into marriage certainly did not feel like a spectacular option, not after all the trauma of Laurence, her romantique, the person with a substance use disorder who was nowadays lost to drugs, an underworld of delightful delusions. He was the Eurydice to her Orpheus, and she allowed him to dive straight into Hades while she watched, paralyzed and unfazed. The judge had said that if she could not save him, no one could. She nodded in gratitude at the platitude yet felt desperately ashamed at the state of things.
Then, there is the religious stage, where Chantal currently resides. It was the most comfortable place for her, a phase of spiritual connection and introspection. It was easy for her to associate herself with a transcendent purpose: She was dedicated to her meditation practice and proud of that, even if she knew it was an escape. Her ideal romantic tone is to be vanishing, vanishing in perpetuity while being spectacularly envied. "Lazy yet Ambitious" was the title of her first novel. Nevertheless, how could it be that she was already in the final, most exalted stage of life in her thirties? What more could there be to wonder?