No One Tells You This

Every woman I knew seemed to think she was failing in some way, had been raised to believe she was lacking, and was certain someone else was doing it better. Had been told never to trust her own instincts. Taught to think of life as a solution when "done right", when in reality we existed in a kaleidoscope made of shades of gray, able to be very happy and very sad all at the same time.

I had grown up thinking of life as a series of linear decisions that if made properly would land me on some distant safe shore where I would finally enjoy the fruits of my labor. Now that I was getting a glimpse of that shore I was struck by the inanity of such an equation. My mother was never going to get another chance to do anything else. She did not have the capacity for regrets, nor was she even able to enjoy the comfort of nostalgia or fond memories--her mind had leaked away too imperceptibly to allow for the clarity to look back on her life and wish she had done things differently. As I continued to worry over what sort of future I was setting myself up for, she seemed a painful cautionary tale that life was not a savings plan, accrued now for enjoyment later. I was alive now. My responsibility was to live now as fully as possible.

This is why people have babies...because it's exhausting not to know what you're supposed to do next. A baby is basically a nonnegotiable map for the next two decades.

We're the first generation that can make enough of our own money to live the way we want. I feel like we have a responsibility to figure out what this means.

Instead, sitting in the dark and quiet, something quite unexpected occurred. My life, precisely as it was—the product of good and bad decisions—began to come into focus for me. Sitting there, I could see it for the first time as something I’d chosen. Something I’d built intentionally, and not simply a makeshift thing I’d constructed as a for-the-time-being existence until something came along that would make me a whole person in the eyes of the world. Once I began to see it as such, it dawned on me that I had no wish to escape from it. On the contrary: I wanted it. I was choosing my life. I was willing to risk it.

What I wanted was for there to exist some way for me to say "I'm happy and sad and not jealous" all at the same time, and also "This is a loss and is still beautiful." Maybe that was the wedding toast. "We are really the ones giving you away. And it's hard. And I will miss our life. And I am still so happy for your happiness. And so proud of you.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that by age forty I was supposed to have a certain kind of life, one that, whatever else it might involve, included a partner and babies. Having acquired neither of these, it was nearly impossible, no matter how smart, educated, or lucky I was, not to conclude that I had officially become the wrong answer to the question of what made a woman's life worth living. If this story wasn't going to end with a marriage or a child, what then? Could it even be called a story?

I had never wanted to leave my life entirely, I realized. I'd only wanted to know that I had the ability to step out of it and into something new. Now I knew. And I could do it again and again, whenever I wanted. The knowledge I possessed that freedom made me feel more powerful than I could remember feeling for a very long time.

When you are your own emergency contact, you learn how not to get into an emergency if at all possible.

It was hard work to root yourself so deeply in life that you could still love people and rely on them, knowing at any point they could make decisions that would leave you scrambling to find solid ground again.

That was really the question. Would I be okay without a child? Each night I sat with [my infant nephew] Connor and forced myself to go down the path of imaginary motherhood, suspicious of myself that this would be something that I would be willing to reject. Every night I expected to have a change of heart and come up with a different, more recognizable answer. But it never happened. Instead, sitting in the dark and quiet, something quite unexpected occurred. My life, precisely as it was--the product of good and bad decisions--began to come into focus for me. Sitting there, I could see it for the first time as something I'd chosen. Something I'd built intentionally, and not simply a makeshift thing I'd constructed as a for-the-time-being existence until something came along that would make me a whole person in the eyes of the world. Once I began to see it as such, it dawned on me that I had no wish to escape from it. On the contrary: I wanted it. I was choosing my life. I was willing to risk it.

I made myself say it out love: I might always be alone. It sounded less overwhelming against the noise of the breaking waves. I laughed. Fuck off, I thought, I am done feeling bad. And then aloud: I can do whatever I want. Just then I remembered seeing Patti Smith, two summers before, reading an old poem at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, the city aflame behind her in the setting summer sun. I am gonna get out of here, she said, as if she were once again that young girl who'd written those lines decades ago. She was going to get on that train and go to New York City. She was never going to return, no never. She was going to travel light. How I loved that. Oh, watch me now, she'd said. As if she was about to perform the world's greatest magic trip. Oh, watch me now, I thought.

Men, it occurred to me, perhaps for the first time in my life, did not need to be a goal.

And I knew the simple act of reading would give my mind a certain sort of peace nothing else could.

It was the singular blessing of an otherwise relentlessly cruel disease, but all I was able to think of as I watched the gleeful look on her face was what a waste of time all the good behavior had been. Her whole life stretched behind me now, and from this vantage point it seemed so short. And these concerns about other people’s opinions, which had dominated my mother’s thinking, seemed so fruitless and unworthy. I was overwhelmed with sadness for her.

But it seemed to me that going through life making decisions on what I might possibly feel in a future that may or may not come about was a bad way to live.

I have never been more relieved than on the morning of my fortieth birthday...it felt like I'd been released.

We're always drawn to the clearest articulation of what we think we lack.

We’re always drawn to the clearest articulation of what we think we lack.

I knew better than to allow myself to be thrown into a mental temper tantrum over Instagram. It just took effort. I had to lean on my knowledge of the real lives of the people in the photos, which were just as complicated and flawed as my own.

There were times I worried my overdeveloped talent for self-sufficiency might be cutting me off from other equally valuable gifts, like the ability to tell others what I needed.

The problem was the encroaching sense that I had somehow stepped outside of ritual and was always going to be a guest star, forever celebrating the milestones of others without ever starring in my own. What cultural markers were there for women other than weddings and babies? How else do women mark the progression of their lives?

It was clear to me, even in the imaginary stories I was telling to myself, that after today I would be a person who would forever be measured by what I didn’t have.

So often in the last year there had been no way to take any pictures of the life I was leading -- the divide between the messy, painful reality and the screen had been so huge I'd felt unable to bridge it. I was never certain whether we were all trying to sell our lives to others or use others to sell our lives back to us.

I’ve noticed it’s almost always people who are living the exact opposite lives than you, and facing none of the risks, who are most encouraging.

A wrong turn was never a wrong turn, it was simply a different route I had chosen.

Being alone sometimes felt like being a solitary tree atop a very windy hill; there was nothing between the world and me to break its impact.