Who I was

My daughter pulled out some photo albums that I haven’t looked at in years.


They house the memories from the time prior to marriage, children and responsibility—exactly the dream vacation I can’t book on Expedia. Flipping through the pictures, I vaguely remember the faces and the places but I vividly remember feeling free. Free to be excited about the future, free to dream, free to spending my time doing what I wanted to do.

This is a very common subject among the women at work—the desire for freedom. We want it so badly that we hope for it in the smallest, most insignificant segments. Being able to go to the bathroom without little fingers wiggling at us from under the door. Drinking our soda before someone else snags it. It’s a far cry from the time when every thought and every action was pulling us toward something we really wanted for ourselves. Which inevitably brings up the question why didn’t I finish school when it didn’t take an act of congress, siphoning money from the grocery budget and guilting my mother into providing free daycare in order to get to class? Why didn’t I travel when I only had to buy one super-saver plane ticket instead of five? Why didn’t I produce something amazing and profound when it would only have taken missing a few episodes of “Friends” in order to find the time?

The truth is that I didn’t know what I wanted. I was too young and too inexperienced to really know. For all the pain it took to get here, I don’t want to go back to being that girl in those photos. I like knowing what I want and I like having to fight to get it. Somehow there’s added power in the fight—it means more to me when I have to produce sweat and tears to get it (I’m a little squeamish about blood). But there is one thing that I’ve forgotten that the girl in the photos knew. She knew how to smile and she was enjoying the ride. I need to do that a little more because, as long as I’m telling myself the truth, I actually like the girl I am now better than the girl I was. Perhaps it’s time I acted like it. Where can I get some of those teeth-whitening strips? I might need some of those.