Fear and Money

Last night I lay awake for a long time again. I’ve felt so worn down recently that, in desperation, I gave in and ordered a weighted blanket. For weeks now, my Facebook feed has been touting it as the solution to my sleep problems—probably as a result of me googling “insomnia” too many times. And so, last night, I finally admitted defeat and clicked the “buy” button, in the hope that this blanket will grant me more peaceful nights and spare me the torturous hours spent tossing and turning on my mattress. It just arrived. I carefully take it out of the packaging—it smells strangely synthetic, and the cover feels scratchy and uncomfortable. I decide to put a fresh duvet cover on it, and to lay it over my legs and torso, up to my neck. I chose a light blanket, just six kilos, to match my weight, but the pressure on my body feels far heavier. The blanket positively buries me, preventing any movement; I feel totally immobilized, as if I were strapped down to an operating table. How this blanket, of all things, is supposed to soothe anxiety and promote sleep is a mystery to me. Its weight forces the body into rigor mortis, which I instinctively react to by kicking it away from me. As a result, I’m now wide awake and in a state of high alert—despite this being the time when I should actually be sleeping. I decide to calm down by meditating for a while. A few weeks ago, I began trying out various guided meditations aimed at improving sleep. I got hung up on watching the videos of a “guide” named Peter, whose deep, sonorous voice promised calming effects. Since Peter has the habit of bizarrely drawing out each individual word, however, his meditations take some getting used to, and I often find myself unable to stifle a laugh while listening to him. Peter offers a range of different meditation videos, depending on whether you’re looking to find peace, reduce stress, or banish your fears. In dealing with rising feelings of anxiety, for example, he advises against trying to fight or “get rid” of these feelings, arguing that it’s better to consciously perceive them and, with this, create an inner distance from them. While I attempt to adopt this observational perspective on my own anxieties, I also ask myself how I’m supposed to take an “outside” view of a feeling that fills me up so entirely. It rises in my chest, dominating my entire self-image. Freud was right when he declared the ego to be “the actual seat of anxiety”—as a site, that is, where this anxiety not only resides but is also generated. And it’s this “ego”—the operating system of anxiety, according to Freud—that I’m now supposed to escape through meditation? Peter seems to see fear as something that can be separated from the ego and brought under control through observation, yet my fear is so deeply rooted in my body and my spirit that I’m unable to distance myself from it in this way. I mentally reject Peter’s meditation instructions, my body now feeling more irritated than ever under the horribly heavy therapy blanket. I’m unable to guide my attention to my breathing, as Peter suggests; instead, I lie frozen under this monstrosity of a blanket, which, far from easing my fears and relaxing me as promised, makes me absolutely frantic. I have to rid myself of this blanket and return it.

I experienced something similar during an MRI scan yesterday, which I was forced to endure after suffering from months of intense pain in my lower back. I was locked inside a tube that narrowly surrounded my body during the scan, stretched out flat as if practicing corpse pose. I felt a particular sense of foreboding the moment I slowly glided into the tube on my “stretcher,” like a dead body being shoved into a refrigerator at a morgue. The only things connecting me to life outside this tubular tomb were the earsplitting techno noises made by the machine, which I tried to focus on as I lay there with my eyes closed. But even the loud pounding was unable to distract me from the fact that I was actually in wild panic, with my heart racing and a cramp in my chest. I desperately clung on to the alarm button they had given me in case I felt unable to bear it anymore, well aware that pressing it would only draw out the torturous process longer than necessary. Time passed at a snail’s pace, stretching out toward infinity in my panic. I was rigid with fear; my whole being seemed to be made of fear, as Kafka put it in one of his letters to Milena. This was made worse by the fact that during an MRI scan—unlike during angst-filled sleepless nights—it isn’t possible to simply stand up and leave the “bed.” You’re stuck there in the tube. I now find myself in a similar situation thanks to the wretched therapy blanket: It pushes me down into the bed and deprives me of my mobility, attempting to force me into peace and relaxation while actually producing the opposite effect, namely, resistance. Resolving to free myself of this monster blanket, I heave it off and walk into the kitchen to make myself a cup of sleep-promoting herbal tea.

Thanks to the tea, I did fall asleep at some point, only to be jolted awake again—it’s now 3 a.m., the middle of the night.

I quickly calculate the time in New York, where my boyfriend, Antoine, lives. Nine p.m.—the start of his social program for the evening, which I’m unable to participate in from here in Berlin. For me to call him now might be interpreted as an attempt to control him. But I also know from experience that only his reassuring words can ease the fear of loss I already feel rising within me. I need his reassurance, since without it, I’m damned to spend the entire night imagining the pleasures and infidelities he might be enjoying without me. Sleep is out of the question in this state. Instead, I mentally revisit parties we attended together in New York, where I couldn’t escape the impression that some of the heterosexual women present were merely waiting for me to fly back to Berlin and disappear from his life again. They would practically fall over him, signaling their readiness to step in at any time, should he ever want to replace me with a more “convenient” girlfriend; one who lives near him, that is, and who doesn’t require him to be in a long-distance relationship. Reflecting on these experiences, I convince myself that there might actually be objective reasons for my fear of him leaving me, and that I’m therefore entitled to the reassurance of a phone call. Having thus granted myself the license to call him, I reach for my phone and dial his number. As so often, I only reach his voicemail. The rest of the night promises to be torture. In a few minutes I’ll try again, then repeatedly call him in ever-decreasing intervals. I’ll ask myself why he’s not hearing his phone, and if he might be deliberately ignoring me. And the more worked up I get at the idea of him enjoying himself without me, the more urgent my need for his words of reassurance will become. I’ll slide into a panic attack without an “I love you” from him. Why won’t he take pity on me and call me back? After at least twenty attempts, I decide to retaliate by making myself unavailable. I deposit my phone at the other end of my apartment, so I won’t hear it ringing or vibrating; then I return to bed. Lying there, I do my best to feel that I’m self-sufficient, and to find the inner peace that some of my friends astonishingly manage to possess. They’re enough for themselves and don’t get thrown into a panic by unanswered phone calls. How did I slip into this destructive dependency on an absent man? It would be laughable if I couldn’t fall asleep without his reassuring words. My obsessive fixation on him is beneath me, and I have to overcome it as soon as possible. And yet the longer I lie in bed trying to cope with this anxiety on my own, the more other worries force their way into my consciousness—in addition to my fear of losing my boyfriend, I’m now also occupied by my financial problems.

First to arrive in my thoughts is my terrible landlord, who’s currently plaguing me with excessive demands. He claims that the heating costs for my apartment have tripled due to a new provider, and that he therefore has to charge me €400 more each month up front for utility costs in the future. Such a large increase would strain me financially. I just don’t know where I’m supposed to find this money. It’s notoriously hard to earn anything significant writing books, unless you produce a bestseller—somewhat unlikely in my case, given my chosen subject matter and writing style. Other potential sources of income, such as jobs in the auction sphere, are hard to find and would require me to reposition myself professionally. Any such activities would also put my symbolic capital as an independent critic in jeopardy. Saving’s not an option either; I don’t want to be constantly keeping track of what I spend. Unfortunately, my love of extravagant gestures means I often disregard my actual income level and eventually end up in financial trouble. I’ve been living beyond my means for a long time now. In addition, high levels of inflation mean my bank balance is currently losing value every day, and so I still get poorer even when I spend nothing at all. Sleepless, sweaty, and agitated, I go through strategies that might free me from my financial precarity. Perhaps I should enter the art market and earn money that way? Then again, it’s not as if the collectors of the world are simply waiting for me to bless them with an interesting offer. Beyond this, the artistic positions that interest me carry little weight in the current art economy—the market gets on very well without them. Out of all the careers, why did I choose one that brings me such financial anxiety? In my younger years, I optimistically assumed that money would find its way to me one day; arrogant as I was, I felt I somehow deserved it. Having grown older, however, I now realize that the opposite might just as well be the case—that, as an older woman, I have lost any power I once had to attract money, which simply no longer finds its way to me. I feel this crunch in all areas of my professional life; even museums now refuse to pay the fees I demand for giving lectures. The deeper I sink into my money worries, the more problems emerge, and so I go from one crisis to the next. I decide to distract myself and calm down by reading for a while. My notorious insomnia means I’ve worked my way through an unfathomable syllabus of readings in recent years, and biographies have proven particularly effective in soothing my existential fears about my future. Entering into the lives of others relativizes my own problems. I reach for a biography of George Sand.

Apparently, I did fall asleep at some point. It’s now 9 a.m., and far from being refreshed, I feel exhausted by the restless night. I forbid myself from going into the hallway to get my phone, delaying the moment when I see whether Antoine has tried to reach me or not, but I soon give in and grab it in resignation. There’s only a single, icy text message, in which he wishes me “Good night.” It’s almost as if he were fulfilling a burdensome duty by writing these words—as if he were merely trying to get rid of me so he could carry on enjoying himself unencumbered. I tell myself that this kind of speculation will get me nowhere. I have to stop getting caught up in thinking about his life as a way of avoiding the reality of my everyday existence in Berlin—there’s so much to be done, after all! But I have no energy or drive, in part as a result of my lack of sleep. I’m simply too shattered to valiantly jump under the shower and start the day, and so I lie down on the bed with my phone and begin scrolling through Instagram and Facebook. I’ve repeatedly resolved to break this bad habit, but I reflexively take my phone into bed with me each morning, nonetheless. While this is tantamount to the behavior of an addict, I rationalize it with the idea that it connects me to others—the great promise of social media. Except that unlike physical meetings with my friends, I draw no strength from reading their status updates; on the contrary, this bleak online culture of self-marketing (which I myself admittedly engage in on occasion) just depresses me and makes it even harder to find the motivation to face the day. Once I’ve finally managed to tear myself away from my phone, I shower and sit down at my desk, where I force myself to banish any thoughts of my faithless boyfriend, and where I’m magically able to transform myself into an efficient workhorse capable of blocking out its heartache. I work through my to-do list at rapid speed, writing emails, correcting passages of text, and organizing meetings in a hyperactive rush. On closer inspection, this intensive way of working can also be traced back to anxiety: the anxiety of what might happen if I stop. I recently read Fritz Riemann’s Grundformen der Angst (Anxiety: Using Depth Psychology to Find a Balance in Your Life) and found myself identifying with his description of the “compulsive character,” who obsessively plans out their life in an attempt to bring it under control. I begin each year with a list of “work goals,” for example, and I take great satisfaction in gradually ticking off my achievements. According to Riemann, it’s the deep-rooted fear of death within each of us that compulsive characters like myself are attempting to ward off with our zealous planning, perpetual activism, and craving for control. In his view, however, the compulsive character pays a high price for being constantly busy and leaving nothing to chance, since life with all its contingencies passes them by as a result. Anyone who compulsively plans out their days misses out on numerous opportunities in life, Riemann claims. By cramming as much as I can into my daily schedule, sitting at my desk each morning before dutifully fulfilling my exercise quota in the evening, I close myself off to whatever might come my way from outside: I no longer even perceive the unexpected, and so life passes me by. According to Riemann, this mania for activity and control conceals a deep-seated “fear of death,” which the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein declared to be the origin of fear in general. For Klein, a life without fear is unimaginable, in part because our unconscious is itself defined by our “fear of annihilation.” Since the unconscious cannot be governed, however, this fear of our own destruction is as uncontrollable as it is threatening. I know exactly what Klein means by this—I, too, experience my fears as entirely overwhelming, since they all stem from this primal fear of annihilation and destruction.

I instinctively think of Peter, my meditation guide, who makes the opposite claim in his videos. He tries to convince his listeners that they don’t need to be afraid; that they’re not actually in danger but safe. I’m immune to such rationalizing attempts at pacification, however, which might be due to the fact that the border between “objective” and “neurotic” fear is fluid, as Klein also writes. According to her, it’s impossible to draw a clear distinction between neurotic fears and dangerous situations that legitimately trigger fear, meaning there’s always an objective aspect to my ostensibly neurotic fears, while those that are objectively justified are informed, in turn, by elements of my neurosis. I only need to read about the rapidly rising gas prices or the impact of inflation on the value of money, for example, and my inner fears are unleashed anew. But the fact that I’m so sensitive to these external triggers in particular is partly due to my neurotic, anxious disposition. Specific fear-triggering events in the outside world resonate with my own character and experiences. In the depths of my being, for instance, I harbor the fear that I might suffer the same fate as my father, who lost everything he had in his early sixties; the fear of ending up in poverty in old age is thus my constant companion. I read an interview with the writer Martin Walser somewhere in which he argues that money is the cure for anxiety, and that anyone who has it is immunized against fear. This is untrue, of course—in my experience wealthy people are often extremely scared by the idea that their money might be taken away from them, or that they could end up in financial difficulties. But this is hardly the case with me: Like Walser, I find my anxiety significantly reduced by having money. If a well-paid commission means a larger sum does reach my account for once, instead of just the usual endless debits leaving it, then I clearly sense how this calms me inside. Should I earn less, however, then every thought of my disappearing bank balance triggers feelings of panic. I consciously avoid reading my balance if I’m forced to make a bank transfer in such a situation, since the strain of acknowledging it would be too much and set off an anxiety attack. My heart pounding, I ignore my current “takings” and hurry through the transfer, getting it out of the way as quickly as possible. Every time before I log in, I also worry that my money might have been debited by someone, or that it has simply vanished into the digital ether. In part, it is because of these fears—as irrational as they admittedly are—that I put off doing my banking duties for as long as possible. I recently went five weeks without logging into my account at all, not daring to look at my balance until my anxiety had been sufficiently brought under control.