Was the Future Ever Boundless?

At thirty-seven, I hesitate to refer to myself as aging, but I am. I’ve reached an age where I can recall an event that feels fresh to me — say, attending Burning Man, or being dropped on my ass in front of my friend’s entire wedding reception when an enthusiastic groomsman thought he could scoop all six feet of me into his arms — and realize I’m discussing an event that took place a full decade ago. I’m at an age where my own children describe the formative rom-coms of my early adulthood — Runaway Bride, The Object of My Affection — as vintage rom-coms. Vintage! I’d assumed I was going through my midlife crisis at age thirty-one, which was the halfway point of my own father’s life span, but I think that year of accepting and obsessing over my own mortality was just a normal byproduct of grief. What I’m experiencing now is not about death at all but the rapid passing of life itself, illustrated with frequent and jarring realizations that what has been will never be again. Julia Roberts will not hold the same cultural significance for my own children as she did for me, and my daughter will in no way understand the sexual appeal of Richard Gere.

It is ageism to believe that we are running out a clock, that once our youth is behind us, so are the best years of our lives. My youth was personally unremarkable, and I spent a great deal of it stuck in my own sad head. And it is also realistic to accept that our future possibilities are limited, not just by the passing of time but by the decisions and commitments we’ve made through time. I will not be a person who builds an expansive country home to summer in with her young children, because my children are already pretty big, and we don’t have “summer as a verb” kind of money. Even if we did, I just don’t think I have it in me to care about two different houses at once! Just as I will not be skipping off to Paris for three weeks of unencumbered writing time, because my husband is great but not that great, and again, the whole money thing. Nor will I own a closet of cream and earth-tone classics that can be mixed and matched to create a wardrobe that makes people wonder, “Has she just never spilled a cup of coffee while trying to carry all of her belongings from the house to the car in one trip?”

The future ahead of me is not boundless, and never was. Every choice I made eliminated other versions of myself. I wonder often when, specifically, these possible futures evaporated. Was it the moment I placed my hands on either side of a tapped keg, kicking into an assisted handstand while a guy named Brett or maybe Brad placed the nozzle in my mouth and released a stream of Natural Light while a crowd of drunken teenagers counted the seconds (thirty-seven — not to brag!). Maybe she disappeared when I was just fifteen years old, lying on a sanitized recliner in a tattoo shop as a gruff man with a face tattoo shoved a needle through the top of my navel so I could have the same belly jewelry as Britney Spears, a hot-pink gem sitting at the center of my perfectly tanned midriff. Or perhaps it is far less interesting; not a choice at all but the result of my own DNA and upbringing, a combination of nature and nurture that had predetermined who I would be and revealed her year by year, shedding facades like a Russian nesting doll until all that was left was a small nugget of my essential self. An essential self who showers at most every other day and tells her children that toast that falls to the ground butter side up is still perfectly edible even though she cannot remember ever washing the kitchen floor.

Was the Future Ever Boundless?

Don’t Overthink (or Overpay!) For Face Moisturizer

I Went to a Concert Alone to Find My Pre-Mom Self