All Or Nothing : I Wanted The Rain

I used to want freckles.

Not like full-body freckles, where you can't ever tell exactly what color the person's skin tone is and any exposure to the sun results in large blobbish patches where the freckles all run together. No offense - more power to you heavily freckled people - but that's not what I wanted. What I wanted was sparsely scattered freckles. Freckles that looked like a magical wind blew pixie dust across my face while I was outside playing with unicorns and left me with an innocent tomboyish grin.

I always thought the freckles would give me character, and emit the aura of "tough but feminine". I would sit in front of the mirror, not allowing myself to see my reflection, picturing exactly what I would look like with the perfect smattering of freckles. Then I would look up, coyly - you know, the way EVERY girl looks in a mirror - and hope for the best. Despite these efforts, I never ended up with many freckles at all, tomboyish or otherwise.

I used to want to live in Europe.

Sometimes it was Rome, sometimes London, or Barcelona or Paris. I imagined myself renting a glamorous loft, above a tiny cafe in some downtown square. I thought how romantic it would be, if I could speak another language, if I could have the experiences I always dreamed were abundant in these foreign cities, if I could life a life of change and interest and be DIFFERENT.

I traveled to Europe, right before I graduated from college. I slept on the night trains as I skipped from country to country, seeking that feeling, that experience, that would tell me I had found what I always dreamed of. Instead, I found a lot of fat, snoring men in the bunks above me, a bunch of rowdy Australians on a hostel tour, and a taxi driver who stole about half my food budget for the entire trip.

I used to want to go to law school.

I met people who were going. I met people who wanted to go. I heard all about how hard the LSAT was, how hard the first year was, how difficult the bar exam was. I wanted the challenge. I wanted to do it, and I wanted to do it better than everyone else. I wanted to be responsible, I wanted to be impressive. I wanted to do something concrete, something that I could say, see, here it is, I DID this.

I took my LSAT. I scored high. I applied to schools. I got accepted to many, and I accepted one. I decided, upon advice, to work in a law firm for a year before starting classes. I was told, more times than I can count, that I didn't seem like the lawyer type. That I didn't have the lawyer personality. That I was more....colorful. I knew they meant more scattered, more disorganized. I got engaged. I opened my boutique. I didn't go to law school.

I wanted to be like my best friend. I wanted people to believe in me, to know that if I said I would do something, that I would do it. I wanted to be the responsible one, the sensible one, the one who had life planned out and then everything went according to that plan. I wanted to be respected, and to make smart decisions, and to follow through.

But I wanted to be free. I wanted never to be tied down by anyone or anything. I wanted to be wild. I wanted to be mysterious, to be wanted, to be desired, to be everything all the music I listened to was about. And I was the perfect counterpart to my best friend; the yin to her yang, the silly, messed up child to her intelligent, steady big sister.

I thought I wanted a lot of things.

I still want. I see a woman who looks like she has 0% body fat and she tells me all I'll have to do is run 10 miles a day, work out for two hours after the run, eat no sugar whatsoever, and go to bed at 9pm, and I can look like her, too! I think that I want this, until dinner.
I visit friends who live places other than where I currently reside, and want to move. I go out with them, to fun places, places with no children, places that actually stay open past 10pm, and I wonder what I'm doing, wasting my youth, living in such a boring place. I think that I want this, until I walk through the door and feel really, truly home.
I see girls with their tiny little lap dogs and think that I would want one. I watch TV shows about the filthy rich and think that I, too, would like a large mansion and an Audi A4. I listen to Damien Rice and think that I want all sorts of things I know I can't have.

What I never wanted, though, is to be driving one day in the rain, driving to visit her, driving to the house with the half-finished nursery, driving to the house where plans had been made and were now in shambles, driving to say I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

I know that I never wanted that.