When I was a young girl, I had this idealistic dream that by twenty, I would be married, by twenty-five I’d be a college graduate with a great office job and some writing projects under my belt with two kids at my hip. I thought I’d have the white picket fence with the beautiful wrap around porch and two story house in a suburb with animals and a small garden in the spacious backyard.
I thought my family and I would take vacations around the world, do the annoying touristy things in popular places, and come back badly tanned with a relieved smile for being back home again. I thought I’d have my immediate family over, barbecues on the weekend, siblings getting along with each other and their significant others — kids playing with cousins.
So many glorified dreams my young childlike mind would come up with that died along with youth.
In reality, I graduated high school, went straight to work in customer service, and waited until twenty-five to take my first semester of college — then dropped out until my early thirties where I went another two years, only to drop out mid-semester, leaving me in a financial hole and bind.
I’m thirty-five now — ten years passed since that first semester of college, twenty years passed since I dreamed of being a working wife and mother — thirty years passed since I dreamed of that wrap around porch and white picket fence.
Now I’m at a cross-roads, at a job that is lovely, but doesn’t pay much and is filled with soap-opera induced drama, still living with my parents with no prospect of moving out, childless, husband-less, and most of all, in so much financial debt, I can’t even find the light at the end of the tunnel.
The more steps I take towards the narrow road I was on to my current, bigger dreams, the more the forest ensnares me with its thorny vice-grip.
The forest seems to be thinning in some regard and hope seems possible, but with all that has happened since I was fifteen (because of terrible personal decisions and trying to ‘save’ people) what little hope I manage to acquire, it runs out of my hands like water.
Some dreams are still there, boarded up with hope that seep out every now and again. Some dreams changed, some dreams died a horrible death of crushing disappointment.
The only thing that keeps me going are the few dreams that have managed to stay. Writing has always been highly therapeutic, has been my go-to stress reliever, and has always been the one constant thing (aside from God and Jesus)that kept me walking.
I may not be that fifteen year old with a head full of idealistic dreams, but at least I can still have dreams twenty-years later as a middle aged woman. Who knows, maybe I’ll get half of my idealistic dreams of having a white picket fenced house with a wrap around porch with animals and a small garden.
A simple life is all I really dream of now.
Maybe one day it’ll happen, right? One can only dream.