You know what they say about best laid plans….

So I posted on Facebook the other day about “what if you woke up one day and realized that you lived your whole life wrong?” I had a lot of well-meaning responses, like “you’re where you’re supposed to be” and “you have an amazing life and have done amazing things” and “yeah, been there and then I realize what a great life I have”. All nice responses and, I think, what we would tell someone who just blurts out something like that without any context. We assume they’re having a bad day or they’re feeling stressed or that they’re having a mid-life crisis. But for me this really runs deeper. This has been a journey for me. I even said when I first started this blog about my mother’s diary that I hoped it helped me gain insights into myself. And it has. I’ve felt unsettled for a while and as I explored this year in my mother’s life, it opened up a lot of a-ha moments for me.

So it isn’t just having a bad day or feeling stressed or just wanting something to change, it’s been kind of an evolution. It’s owning the fact that the life I’ve lived has been the one that other people wanted me to live. That I have spent the vast majority of my life trying to be someone else and not being me. I’ve really tried to dive in to some of the reasons for that, which led to the feeling that I have lived the wrong life. And worse, that in living the wrong life, I’ve lost the opportunity to live the one I should have lived. For those who said “go for it!” or words to that effect, I only wish I could. Because it’s not enough to just walk away. I could do that tomorrow (as long as I could sell my house). What I can’t recapture is what I wish I had done with my life. Those things are for a younger person to do. I’ve missed that boat. Which makes everything going forward feel like too little, too late.

It’s hard to realize that I have missed the chance to run away in the middle of the night and chase a dream. To live an unfettered life, to just experience everything and have every day be different. I’ve spent a large part of my life writing stories. Sometimes just re-imagining something already there, sometimes my own take on “what’s next” and sometimes something all new. But the thread running through all of them was not being tied to the life I’ve ended up with. It was to run away and experience life in a whole different way. Whether that was chasing a band or writing stories or living life off the grid. It’s hard to convey that in a sentence or two. The yearning that I pushed down because it didn’t fit someone else’s plan for my life.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mother had everything pretty planned out for her life. She went to college, became a teacher, got married and had a family. Things went pretty much according to plan. I’m sure there were situations that were unexpected and obstacles to overcome, but she had a pretty simple plan and executed it pretty perfectly.

I had no such plan, surprisingly. I think the only thing I did according to plan was go to college and graduate on time, without having to go to summer school or take longer than 4 years. But that wasn’t necessarily my plan, that was Mother and Daddy’s plan. I definitely didn’t sit down at any point and plot out my career moves. Occasionally on the fly I would make a decision to find a particular kind of job or go to work for a bigger company, but I never had an end in mind.

Growing up, I think I made a lot of assumptions about how my life would go. In very broad brush terms, I assumed I’d have a good job. I assumed I’d make good money. I assumed I would get married. But I didn’t really plan. I just let life happen to me. Albeit in the way that someone else determined was the correct life to have.

I saw a movie recently called “The Company You Keep” and I found myself thinking about my dreams from years ago. The movie was about a group of Weathermen who had gone underground after a robbery gone wrong and had remade themselves into different people. And then one of them decided she couldn’t keep up the lie anymore and confessed. And then all hell broke loose. The 60’s were a fascinating time to me. And this movie took me back there.

I was too young to experience everything that happened all those years ago, but I remember wanting to be in San Francisco, in Haight-Ashbury, living the free love life. I wanted to wear long skirts and have flowers in my hair, living with people who had a purpose, even if that purpose was nothing more than just laying around in a park or chanting while incense was burning. I wanted to go to Woodstock and experience a life with no boundaries. The causes of the day spoke to me and resonated with me and I remember being angry that I couldn’t participate. I wished I’d been old enough to run away and join up with people that I thought would accept me and bring me in.

I’ve also been watching the TV show “Nashville” and it reminds me of the years that I used to yearn to be on the road, like those entertainers are, living an unconventional life that didn’t involve getting up every day and putting on a suit and going in to an office. Living a life that’s raw and real, feeling everything deeply, both the highs and the lows.

I do realize that the reality of all those things that I have fantasized about is likely not as nicely choreographed or as beautifully edited as what I saw on the screen. But I also know that the life I do have, with a nice house and nice things and a good job, feels pedestrian.

I found myself wondering what my life might have been like if I had woken up one day and just run away. If not to Haight-Ashbury, then to someplace else. What if I had just chucked it all and gone in search of a dream, looked for a life that was raw and real.

I went to a party school and I was a party girl, even after I graduated. I’ve come to realize that what I loved about college was the parties and the football games and the occasional spontaneous moments. I studied so that I could maintain my grades in order to satisfy those needs. There were times when I wanted to be on the seamier side of life, where things were unpredictable and life would be something other than the day-to-day humdrum of life. Or gone off to “find myself” on a spiritual journey to just experience life and find my soul. But it had been drilled into me my whole life that I had to be responsible, that I had to have a “good job”, that I had to be predictable.

I remember when I moved to Ft. Lauderdale. It was the height of the “Miami Vice”/”Scarface” period. Steamy, decadent South Florida. I remember actually writing down in a journal that I was hoping to explore that dark side. It was hot, sultry, bright white with sunlight, pastel and terracotta in color. It was, as it turned out, a very interesting time in my life. Drama makes me weary, but messy is intriguing, and that time of my life was very definitely messy. When I moved away, I was ready to go, but not necessarily ready to leave, if that makes sense. It was more than just a place to live, it was a way of life and it did touch some of what I was looking for.

I’ve written before about how “Eat, Pray, Love” spoke to me on a very powerful level. It still does. But I would want more than a year; I’d want a lifetime.

I wonder if that’s why I have ended up where I am. Without a plan, not feeling fulfilled, feeling at cross purposes. There’s been a little bit here and a little bit there, but not the whole thing. I have a hard time staying in one place because it always feels like there’s somewhere else to go, something else to experience, someone else to be. I can’t articulate anymore what it is that I actually want. I only know that it isn’t what I have. I’ve lived life feeling like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, never quite fitting in the places I was always told I needed to fit.

I wish I had the freedom to just go and see where life takes me. But, because of what was drilled into me as I was growing up, I would find it difficult to just walk away. Too many responsibilities, too much of what’s expected of me. It used to be that when I got bored with something – a job, a house – I just left and found another. But that’s much harder now. I don’t like the same thing every day – I need something new, something different, a fresh start. It’s almost like a drug. And it frustrates me when I can’t make that change, like right now. It leaves me feeling like I’m faking my way through every day.

I wonder what life would have been like, if I had been old enough to run away to Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. What if I had run off to chase a band or a singer? What if I had disappeared into the steamy, sultry side? What would my life have been like? Where would I be today? What experiences would I have had? It sucks to be too old to just run away. It sucks to be too scared.