Who do I want to be when I grow up?

Maybe my Gen X is showing, but I didn’t grow up knowing what I wanted to be. I remember having a chat with two other classmates in the 8th grade, as we were all learning which high schools we’d be going to, and they were talking about majors. I didn’t really have much to contribute to the conversation because I thought “majors” were things you chose in college, and that seemed like forever away, and I’d be happy with just getting a list of classes that didn’t completely suck. They both knew exactly what they wanted to be – a math teacher and a doctor. (Side note, I wonder if either of them actually grew up to be that?) I just wanted to be happy. Other than that, I really didn’t have any “wants” at all.

I didn’t want to be a particular thing, for a career. Maybe an actress, but that was because being an actress would let me be a lot of things without having to settle on one thing. Even then, I didn’t want to be an actress so I’d be famous, I wanted to be an actress so I wouldn’t have to decide on being one thing. Acting would let me be a hundred things. It seemed like the easiest, happiest decision.

But this isn’t about what I wanted to be, as much as who I wanted to be.

I didn’t want to grow up to be a wife, but if I got married and I was happy, that’d be cool. But then if I grew up and was single, and happy, that’d be cool, too. “Happy” was the key.

I didn’t want to have kids, as I didn’t think being a responsible parent who also somehow managed to NOT fuck up their children would make me happy (not fucking them up would be great; being a responsible parent sounded stressful). But if it did happen, I’d try to make the best of it, and be happy.

I wanted to be able to pursue my own dreams and hobbies. To encourage others to pursue what set their hearts on fire. To have many animals. To lift other voices, to protect and give, to feel safe in my home, to not be afraid of not knowing where the next meal was going to come from, to share what little I have with others. All of those things would make me happy.

The last few years of my marriage, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t able to fix the problems, I wasn’t able to work through the problems, it was getting more and more difficult to work around the problems, and I wasn’t even able to get my partner to even acknowledge that my unhappiness and feelings of dismissal were even real. Then he died, and let me tell you, that was not happier.

I spent the first year trying to cling to some semblance of normalcy, which was hard because nothing was normal. I was suddenly not a wife, not someone with a life partner, someone with a visible injury for those that looked for Tim in my life and didn’t see him. I was someone with a job, although I sure wasn’t doing it very well. I was someone with friends, even though I maybe leaned on some of them too much, and some of them not enough. I wasn’t happy.

I spent the second year trying to claw back to what was normal for me the last time I was single. Doing what I wanted, when I wanted, or not doing what I didn’t want to do. I tried to learn to take better care of my physical and emotional health, both of which I could feel slipping through the sieve that was my grasping fingers. I tried to remember what coping skills I had in life before… all of this. I tried to find a new routine out of the ashes of my old routine…. maybe I should have just wiped the slate and tried something completely new….? Because through all of that, all of trying to recover, dig out, dust off, repair who I used to be… didn’t make me happy.

So this year, changes. No, not changes. Discoveries.

One of those discoveries is taking the international travel I’ve always wanted to take.

And one of the things I focused on, thought about, pondered, questioned while I was just traveling is… who do I want to be now? Not just “do I want to be single” or “do I want to be someone who keeps a rock solid routine” but… what kind of person am I? What will I stand for? What will I no longer lend energy to? How will I treat myself and other people?

Here’s what I discovered while I was traveling: I was scared almost every minute I was alone, and I did it anyway. I was scared of doing things wrong, I was scared of getting lost, I was scared of saying the wrong thing and accidentally being insulting. I was scared because I was alone, and who am I if I am not measured by my proximity to someone else? But I did things, and if it turned out I did things wrong, I approached whoever was close with a smile and a “hey I don’t mean to bother you but I’m new at this and I think I’m doing this wrong, do you have a moment to steer me in the right direction?” I did get lost, but I noticed that almost everyone on the street was walking with a phone in their hand instead of having it stuffed in their pockets, so I pulled out my phone and called up Google Maps and, yeah, sure, I STILL got lost but I got LESS lost and eventually I got where I wanted to be. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t insult anyone while I was there. As a matter of fact, I deliberately didn’t do some things I saw tourists doing, and some locals thought I was local and started making fun of the tourists with me.

I had many a conversation with many an older lady and they all told me how brave I was. I would say I didn’t feel brave, I felt petrified, and each one of them, and my friends to whom I said the same, replied with a variation of “but you’re still doing it. That’s what bravery is.”

So I am someone who is… brave? That still feels a little unreal. Bravery is going into battle… not… getting out of bed and walking around a city you don’t know.

I discovered that if I do something, and I really, really did not like it (taking a bus and transferring to a train with very little helpful information and two bags and not knowing where everything – anything – is) and I start to panic about having to do it again, with more transfers….? I am someone who will say “you know what? I don’t have to do that. There are other ways, now, with the pandemic completely reinventing what people do for their livings.” And I’ll hire a driver instead, who understands I don’t know the rules and the area and will take care of me and tell me the history and trivia of where we’re going… and I won’t feel one iota of guilt about the privilege and the spending of the money because I am worth taking care of and I deserve to not be so stressed out that I’m crying in a train station. If I had a friend who was crying about having to take a certain mode of complicated transportation in a place they were unfamiliar with, and I had the means to help them have an easier time of it, wouldn’t I do that? So I should do that for myself, first. Because if I would treat a friend that way, I am absolutely worth treating myself that way.

I discovered that I am someone that doesn’t have to ask permission. If there’s something I said I would do, something I even planned out, and I don’t really want to do it, for any reason large or small, I can… I can change my plans. Let’s say I was going to stay in a room with two other people. If I feel like I would be more comfortable, and they would be more comfortable, without all three of us in the same room? I can …. just get another room, and stay by myself. I don’t have to apologize for needing a quiet space for myself and I don’t have to choose between making my friends comfortable and making myself comfortable. I can do both. Especially if it’s making myself comfortable. I don’t need permission from someone else to be comfortable. And I can share that, extend that comfort, to people I love.

I discovered that I like to be able to suddenly change my mind about what my plans are for the day. I can say “this is an amazing library I planned to go to today and everyone I know would like to go there, but I just don’t feel like going so I’m going to do something else” and I can do that, without asking permission or explaining to someone why I want to do something else and without compromising on the time I want to spend. I don’t have to ask someone else to be able to do something. I can just do it. No one else is the boss of me. I wouldn’t say that I’m the master of my own fate, because I do believe that shit happens, and shit’s gonna go wrong in an unplanned way that time. But I am someone who can make a plan, be comfortable in changing that plan, or can even decide to just strike out and see where the day takes me. And again, I don’t need permission from someone else to do that.

So… I am someone who is brave, someone who is self-possessed and confident in her wants and willing and able to meet her own needs and take care of herself. To care for herself. And I don’t have to ask anyone if it’s OK for me to do that.

It’s been a long road, the last couple of years, and there may be some who still see me as the poor distraught widow incapable of doing things. To those people I say… I feel sorry for you, that you are locked in that vision. Because I am so, so much more than that. While I have been that, and I will always carry that in me, it’s not the only thing I am. I contain multitudes. And I am looking forward to discovering what else I am capable of.