​If Given the Opportunity

This wasn’t the life I wanted to live. But if I think back to the people I knew, I don’t think anyone was living the life they wanted. All I ever saw were failed aspirations and the slumped disposition of settled lives. I thank the man at the desk of fate, grab my life’s work, and go take my seat.

I walk slowly, looking at all these people who were, and are, just like me: told as kids, and even teens, that we can be “whoever we want to be,” and we believe it too. We shoot for the stars and imagine that we’ll see our face on a TV screen, a magazine, or followed by a Ph.D., because we haven’t really experienced reality. We haven’t been hit with rent, with taxes, with the uphill climb it takes to achieve who we want to be.

Some of us never even had a chance at that opportunity. Some of us knew and didn’t even try; they changed directions and went another way in life. They aren’t here today: they’re off probably still on their adventures, wandering and following their changed dreams.

Some of us, we are naive. We wanted to believe. Believe that we could be. So we began to only see the vision that we molded of who the world needed. Some of us would be doctors, firefighters, bankers, or actors. I see them all as I keep walking by, mingled together, side by side. No one cares who anyone is now or wanted to be then; we’re all here huddled together, all just a nobody again.

I try to think who could be someone like me, someone whose dream was simply to be free. To be free of the expectations, the stress, the unnecessary responsibilities. Just the ability to breathe deeply and let the world be. I still went to university; I studied the words of those much smarter than me, so I could learn how to describe Mother Earth more eloquently when I traveled her corners carefully. I worked and saved up money, but along the way, things got a bit muddy. My path got washed away and I was led astray, ending up much farther away. So now here I am today.

Holding in my hand documentation of the life I’ve lived anyways, so they can review it for judgment day, and let me know if it’s good enough anyways. I did my best with the cards I found along the way, even though I was always sad. I masked it well, at least I think I did. I married rich, had a few kids. Carried the weight of everyone’s worries, and did it all with a smile. I was kind, careful, and patient. I even tried to be happy for a while. I was in love, I really was. My kids were my everything; they still are.

But I know deep down in my heart, I am still the same as everyone here. Kids or not, rich or poor, successful or washed up, whatever our lives were, we never were what we wanted to be, and that part always nagged at me. It always held a piece of my heart, even as I aged. I wasn’t meant to live the life I did. I knew… I know that. I wanted to be free, to travel the world, to experience as much as I could, and then, and THEN, I would come back and be Little Miss Perfect.

I spent my whole childhood never getting to be the kid. I raised myself and I raised my brothers, so when I was asked what I wanted to be, I just wanted to be free from responsibility. So please don’t judge me or others like me too harshly when you see our hearts are chipped and worn. When even our most beautiful and precious memories seem a little melancholy and solemn, we loved life, we did. It’s just we miss what we would’ve been, if given the opportunity.

I finally reach my seat, I hold my breath, and I clutch my papers tight as I await the judgment gates.