Chapter 77
Aida
The final interview plays over the bacchanalian footage of the Masked Ball and that walk with Cal down the Alchemy corridor.
SIMONE: When you look back at this journey, would you say you’ve done what you set out to do and actually found paradise?
ME: Definitely.
SIMONE: And what does that look like for you?
ME: I’d say it looks like choosing myself and what I actually want over what I think I should want. We complain that society has expectations of us and makes us a prisoner of those expectations, but, really, I feel like we make ourselves the prisoner—often without realising it.
As we record this, Cal and I are in a relationship. That absolutely wasn’t my intention, and I’m conscious that it might be more impactful if I say I’ve signed up to Alchemy and I’m so liberated now that I’m with a different guy every night.
And that would absolutely have been my prerogative, and it might also have made for a far better headline, but the fact that I’ve chosen my own happiness over any responsibility I might feel to deliver a message feels pretty meta to me. Meta, and also really fascinating, when I think about it.
I dreamed up this show because I knew it would be an incredible personal journey for me, and I expected it to be transformative for how I move through life.
But I did not expect it to bring me a great, staggering love like the love I’ve found with Cal—I never, for one second, expected that.
So, to think I might have let myself miss out on that love because my being a mouthpiece for a generation of women was more important to me? That is actually insane.
Ladies, go find your paradise. It might be monogamy, or adventure, or so-called promiscuity, or a really good look at your own sexual wellbeing, or even being happy on your own—it doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is that you look inside of yourself, and you don’t let society tell you what you should want.
Ask yourself what you want, and then give yourself permission to go and fucking find it.