Lately.

I've had this recurring thought. I'm not sure I'm meant for this life.

This isn't a mid-life crisis or existential crisis or dissatisfaction with what I've got going on. I'm quite satisfied with what I've got going on, more or less. It's not angst-driven.

It's more like thinking that if I didn't have these parents, if I hadn't made these decisions, I would be an entirely different person. I would be a tattooed up baker, in a large city who wore matte red lipstick everyday and had blunt cut bangs. I would be a jeweler at the sea, with long skirts, dirty feet and unwashed, ass-length hair in messy braids. I would be a writer in a garret, thriftstore chic and smoking foreign cigarettes. I would be someone else.

If I had more courage, more conviction, would I be more comfortable in my skin? Happier? Thinking that if I had different parents, made different decisions I would be the therapist with shiny lipgloss, many shoes and many cashmere cardigans?

I don't know. It's like peering into the looking glass, seeing something that was/is possible if not for the decisions made I didn't even know I was making. Possibilities out there that may not be better possibilities that what I have now, but different ones all the same. It's a disconcerting feeling, deep in my belly, that those possibilities are out there and I would be someone else.

I think I would like to know her. She sounds like fun.

(Apologies for the dramatic use of italics. That's how it sounds in my mind.)