Thoughts on Dream Chasing

Lately, I have taken to keeping company with women—some newly acquired and others my constant companions. They are all whom I would like to be: successful, goal-oriented, career-driven, loved and loving. I often float up from the conversation, as if dangling from a string attached to a wrist, catching things left unsaid. I discover that at the heart of the matter, lays a sense discontent, indebtedness, hunger, and restlessness that matches my own. What happened to us? Surely this isn’t what our mothers dreamed for us as we lay in slumber protected by their wombs, a generation of women fighting to keep our heads afloat.

Ten years ago, on the precipice of my adult life, this is certainly not what I envisioned. Whilst lying awake surrounded by the midnight darkness of my teenage bedroom, visions of great romances and wild success danced in front of my eyes. Instead, I am staring down my thirties in a cloud of confusion—how do I want to spend the rest of my life, with whom, how do I get out of debt. These are the thoughts that now preoccupy my mind as the sun peeks over the horizon, dancing across the dewy pavement outside my window. My shallow breath fogs up the glass as my hand unconsciously caresses the cat. In my dreamiest moments, the answers are clear. But the new day shines a sobering spotlight on the reality of it all, highlighting. The dreams have stayed the same; the path to travel has grown exponentially in inverse relation to the time at hand.

What happened and where it all went wrong haunts me. Fleeting moments of my past, missed opportunities, missteps taken rotate overhead like a crazed mobile, taunting. I once again find myself on the ledge to nowhere. Wind rushes by, lashing at my shoulders, cheeks, hair. I alternate between gripping with everything I can muster, and leaning out, experimenting with the sensation of freefall. My voice is at once choked silent in my lungs and escaping in powerful bouts—the ebb and flow of the daily panic.

You’re lucky, they tell me. My days are seemingly free, dictated by my own whims and fancies. I catch the envy as it slips faintly across their faces. They don’t see the hard work, the hours of practicing smiles and the perfect pitch of positive notes, the careful camouflage of the bruises on my ego, the miles run chasing. It’s altogether exhausting.