This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief
I roast the chicken. I bake the sourdough. I also whisper apologies to the woman I was going to be.
In my 20s, I read A Room of One’s Own and envisioned my future: a solitary studio apartment in Paris, chasing ideas (and handsome men), writing late into the night. I would live above a flower shop in the 6th arrondissement, where I would craft stories, poems, a life.
Before that chapter could be written, though, I fell in love at a Midwest concert, began a teaching career, and became a wife and mother. I traded the lust of many men for the love of a few. I swapped leisurely strolls by the Seine for jogs around my local lake and afternoons in a café with a notebook for weekends staring down stacks of student essays. The coffee and wine remained consistent; the solitary room disappeared.
My role models when I dreamed of that independent existence were feminist icons like Nellie Bly and Virginia Woolf; my anthems were songs by Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos. Their lyrics and life lessons told me I didn’t need a man to live a satisfying life, but in becoming a wife and mom of two sons, I centered my world around three.
In some ways, I fell into a trad-wife existence. I roast a tantalizing chicken (even if it wasn’t raised in my backyard), and my sourdough is top-notch. In the summer, I try new recipes using kale and cucumbers from my garden, and in the winter, I experiment with soups made from homemade bone broth. Virginia Woolf once wrote, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” so I think she might understand. I want my loved ones to thrive, so I feed them.
But that’s not the only version of myself. The others live here, too.
I envy snakes and butterflies. Snakes shed their skin completely. Caterpillars literally liquefy their existence and leave everything behind. These creatures live with only the faint memory of a previous life. That’s not true for me. Deep under my skin, I still carry the middle schooler who dreamed of life on the Broadway stage. She shares space with the college student who wrote “YES! THIS!” in the margins of bell hooks’ essays. The 20-something who dreamed of an independent life in Paris is there, too. The woman I am today would feel like a stranger to them. I wonder whether they would even like me.
That woman makes organized lists for groceries, meal planning, and vacation packing. She schedules appointments and provides emotional regulation. When her family swoons over her chocolate chip bars or she brings in a bouquet of peonies from the backyard, she feels deep satisfaction.
This is mutualism, not parasitism, I tell myself. My husband mows the lawn, washes the car, handles insurance decisions. My young adult sons make me laugh and give the best hugs. Even the dog knows his role: get me out of a funk with a well-placed wet-nosed nudge and a vigorous tail wag. My husband and I still genuinely enjoy being around each other, even when I’m openly resentful of how well he’s aging. And while I’m not in the category of women who were born to be a mom, I have chosen to embrace the role. I only go to bed regretting something I said or did a few times each week.
There’s no time machine that allows me to live out multiple existences in one lifetime, so I’ll never know what that solitary Parisian life would have been like. I won’t get to try out the other lives I might have lived. “What if” is a curse, an invitation to wake up on the wrong side of It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m afraid I’d have my George Bailey moment and realize I’d make the wrong decision.
So I live—and love—the life I chose, now and then feeling a nudge from one of those other women under my skin. I acknowledge her, grieve what might have been, and occasionally apologize. Younger me had a vision of her adult life, but the choices I made led me to an entirely new map.
“I’m sorry!” I whisper to that former self as I scrub the toilets. “This is the life I chose,” I reassure her as I unload the groceries. “I’m still a feminist,” I promise as I carefully place a loaf of sourdough in the oven.
There’s a lyric from Ani DiFranco’s song “As Is” that comes back to me periodically: “When I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. When I look up, I just trip over things.” Maybe there’s no direction to look without missing something.
But I wonder if even butterflies and bohemian writers in Paris think about the life they might have had.
