All the Lives I Have Not Lived

An elegy for the life paths I didn’t go down

“All the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”

Virginia Woolf, “To the Lighthouse”

Career

I dreamt of a thousand lives before I graduated elementary school. My first job aspiration was to be Hannah Montana. The duplicitous impossibility of the position escaped me. That is until my parents enlightened me to the fact that I could not sing to save my life, let alone as well as the girl who already held the title. Disheartened, I moved on.

I would be a fashion designer, perched up high in the echelons of Parisian society. Fashion weeks would be my guiding star, propelling me creatively through each season. The garments I crafted in my Bratz notebook spoke to my lofty ambitions. My bookshelves were a blend of Goosebumps, Elle, and Vogue. As the eldest daughter, I made up in managerial skills what I lacked in sewing skills.

When my creative well for designs dried up, I set my sights on becoming a model. From too young of an age, I began watching America’s Next Top Model religiously. Iman, Tyra, and Cindy Crawford were my deities to which I prayed that one day I would walk the same runway as them. My parents’ budget was limited to the clearance rack at Kohl’s, but I did my best to exude their chic off-duty style. Unfortunately, puberty made it clear I would never be svelte like the women on the magazine covers. In a disappointed haste, I left the fashion world.

Yet again influenced by the television I was consuming, middle school me was determined to move to Hoboken, New Jersey to work with the Cake Boss himself, Buddy Valasco. For each birthday, I made large cakes adorned in delicate fondant, which inevitably cracked and had to be covered with strategically placed flowers.

I resented the tedious clean-up of the floured kitchen afterward, but I loved the meditative process of crafting an edible masterpiece. After years of watching the series, however, I came to accept that Buddy’s family might be too hostile of an environment for my introverted self.

When I found success in cross country and track, I shifted my sights to athletics. I’d failed at everything from tee ball to tae kwon do, but I excelled at the mental sport of long-distance running. Out there on the pavement, I could clear my head in a way I couldn’t do elsewhere.

With each blister-inducing step, I clobbered my way towards personal records (PRs) and medals. I was ruthless in my competitiveness, and I knew I wanted to become a professional runner. Coming from the finest, potbellied Midwestern stock, I didn’t know that sophomore year was too late to make up for time. In pushing myself too far, I succumbed to frequent injuries, which grew worse from lack of rest and forced me to quit.

I found respite in the world of academia, which swallowed me up and spit me out as an underemployed English major. Before entering college, I debated becoming a history professor, but given my inability to memorize the dates of specific events, the profession escaped me. Literature appealed to my word-loving senses much more. I envisioned myself traipsing the halls of Trinity Dublin as an English professor with a penchant for tweed jackets and smoking a hearty pipe.

It wasn’t long before my path was altered by a volunteer gig as a TEFL assistant. My destination was shifted to Japan or Spain, one of which I would end up in thanks to my future husband.

My career bingo card lacked a space for “writer,” which is what I ended up becoming. I will not be Hannah Montana, a fashion designer, a model, a pastry chef, a professional runner, or a professor. My words are tools through which I have manifested a career I never dreamt of, and through which the lives I did not live dissipate into thin air.

Love

Love occupied my mind even more frequently than thoughts of my future job throughout my entire adolescence. My affections operated like a Rolodex of every semi-attractive boy in the school. I had no type except someone who would reciprocate my feelings. Sadly, I had nearly two decades to wait before I completed my quest.

Meanwhile, I planned my wedding on Pinterest with the help of Say Yes To the Dress. My gown would be Pnina Tornai, and she would gift me a discounted dress at Kleinfeld’s. The theme and colors changed each year, but I set my sights on age 19 for tying the knot. Growing up in the pious white Christian suburbs of Michigan, this seemed a perfectly reasonable age to wed.

A longtime lover of The Sound of Music, I saw myself having seven children, too. I would be just as gregarious as Maria, hosting elegant soirées in my mansion every week. My family would be pillars of the community, and my husband would possess the handsome stoicism of Georg Von Trapp.

As the years came and went, I reversed my idealizations. I would not be a mother at all. I resigned myself to a life of wandering singledom, where I could travel the globe carefree. My bitterness turned into excitement at the freedom that kind of life offered me.

Funnily enough, I was not yet betrothed at 19, but I did meet the man who would become my husband, who obliterated my plans for the future. At 23, we signed the dotted line in our respective countries so I could immigrate to Japan. To join with him was to throw all previous drafts of my future in the trash, but I like this version the best.

Now more familiar with the reality of childbirth, I doubt I will bring seven children into this world, let alone one or two. I have a great desire to build a family of my own with my husband, but I may end up with companions of the canine variety instead. Perhaps I could even make them playsuits out of some old drapes as an homage to a life I did not live.

Family

My family of origin dictated much of my childhood and the psyche I would bring with me into adulthood. They ostracized me, the multiply-disabled child. I grew up in a house where every action was interrogated rather than supported.

In a different family, perhaps I would have stayed in my home country. Holidays would encourage trips back to my hometown, where we would have a snowman-building contest or some other cozy domestic tradition. Laughter would be exchanged, milestones would be celebrated, and love would be felt.

If I had gone along with my family’s cruelty, I might have lived confined to my hometown. My political views would inflict harm upon others. I would have company always, but I’d never know what they were saying behind my back. My bank account would be far more stable, at the cost of having to give everything back twofold.

Thus, I untethered myself from my family of origin to live a life determined by no one. I spend my days in peace writing and doing puzzles. Loneliness is inevitable, but my chosen family is like a perpetually warm cup of tea for the soul whenever I need a sip of affection and support.

I could never have dreamt up a life so ordinary, but it plopped into my lap one day and never left. Now I am memorializing all the lives I have not lived, and look forward to living the rest of this one, wherever it may take me.

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