“Hey, kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?” A question posed to us from the day we can speak until the moment we find ourselves as working adults. “What do you want to be?”, not “What would you like to do as a job” or “what are you interested in?”. The goal is the job, and the job defines the life.

There are many things I have wanted to be. I wanted to be The Spice Girls. I wanted to be a vet, an actress, a marine biologist, a lawyer (cue Elle Woods). I wanted to be older, to be shorter, to be fatter, to be thinner, to be younger, to be stronger. I wanted to be an artist, to be David Bowie, to be a photographer, to be a writer, to be loved, to be in love, to be a poet, to be good. Some of these were fleeting dreams which faded with the fashions. Some of them have tapered and returned. Some still remain strong. But there, underneath each and every dream, the one thing I always have desperately wanted to be is a mother.

This is a desire I used to be wary of vocalizing. Despite it being my ultimate dream, for as long as I can remember, it somehow felt inadequate to offer up as the main goal. It was never hidden from my close friends, but I was particularly apprehensive about sharing this part of myself with both potential new lovers and any professional superiors.

Pop culture told you the man will be scared off if you come on too strong. It’s more embarrassing to express the desire for serious commitment than it is for a grown adult to run from it. They also told you that there are two types of women: those who pursue careers (who don’t have enough time or love for children) or those who are stay-at-home-Mums and, therefore, without ambition. Want both? Good luck. It can be done, but if you want to retain a decent level of comfort and happiness, you will require uber wealth or career success. And this is where my battle begins. I want both. Not only do I want both, but in my world, each appears unable to exist without the other.

I am a thirty-two-year-old woman. My egg count is similar to my level of financial stability: on the low side. I chose the life of the struggling artist. Not because I craved the struggle but because I didn’t anticipate it. I believed and still believe in the dream, in my potential, and in chance. Success has perpetually lingered just around the corner my entire working life. Always feeling in possible reach (albeit with a muscle tearing stretch) but never fully materializing. The chase of professional success has been driven by my creative passions, but especially by the dream of motherhood. The need to eat and pay rent has, in turn, been chasing and dropping little booby traps and obstacles along the way.

The fantasy looks a bit like this: The work I do as a writer, actor, and poet starts gaining momentum, bringing an exuberance of wealth and recognition. I settle with a (hot and tall) partner with who I deeply love and share similar ideals and goals. We buy or establish ourselves in a pretty little home with a garden and a nice view. I quickly get pregnant, keep working on a few scaled-back projects before and after the baby is born, preferably from home, but primarily focus on mumming. Baby grows older; I take on a bit more work if I feel like it (I’m thinking: writing my second novel from a beautiful home office at this point). Husband has the same kind of professional freedom allowing him to parent and be present. Second baby. Repeat all of the above. Throw in some chickens and a pool. Kids go to school. Creativity is peaking, and the world is our oyster.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? In my persistent little optimistic mind, it doesn’t sound out of the question either. Quite simple and achievable, to be honest. So why then, is there also this naughty little energy-sucking voice in there telling me, not only will I never have it all, but because I have strived for it all, I might never have any of it?

For as long as I have dreamed of being a mother, I have been terrified of not achieving it. To imagine experiencing all of the little things that entails; finding out you have conceived, feeling a human grow inside your body, giving birth, breastfeeding, watching your child become their own person; it has always seemed unfathomably too good to be true for me. On the other hand, finding professional success in something that fulfills me sounds like a beautiful pipe dream. Yet here I am, riddled with fear but still on the quest.

I ask myself if I might be very stupid or very brave as I write this very sentence. The answer is likely a concoction, with a few other ingredients like zeal, procrastination, and lack of financial motivation thrown in there. As much as I’ve always liked the idea of having a lot of money and have known I need more, I’ve never been significantly driven by it, often turning down an opportunity to make some in favor of having a unique experience. It’s also played a part in why I’ve had multiple changes in occupation and goal and never one solid career that has been able to grow.

I began as a fashion model, doing pretty well in terms of “cool stuff”: walking in fashion weeks worldwide for designers like Marc Jacobs and Armani, being the face of Vivienne Westwood, in Vogue magazine, shot by some of the industry’s most prominent photographers. Success in all of the things that don’t pay a lot of money, to be frank. Lots of fun, lots of friends, lots of challenges — never lots of regular money. I got tired of not being allowed an opinion and being spoken down to, so I tried being an artist, a musician, a photographer. I had little bits of success with each of them, but none felt clear and secure enough to throw all of my energy into. I studied theatre at Stella Adler in New York. Played the lead in a feature film. Wrote and acted in a few shorts. Got disheartened. Fell back into my failsafe: poetry. And here I am today. I’ve made it through Covid, with a roof over my head, and it’s quite a nice roof, in fact. The view is grand if you climb upon it, and you can jump off into the little backyard pool. I’m writing essays for Medium.com, hoping to win $50k, auditioning daily for commercials, finalizing a poetry book, tucking my dog into bed at night, menstruating, and to top it off: I’m single-ish!

It’s easy to sit in wonder at what might have been having I focused on only one thing for the last 15 years. There’s a good chance I would be richer, further ahead, with a stable career but, I also might be much less experienced and emotionally evolved. All of these pursuits I have undertaken have brought with them lessons and knowledge, memories, and friendships. A turning point is on the horizon, though, even if it does feel slightly like its enforcing its presence there without welcome: If I am to become a mother (which I would be okay with waiting a bit longer for if my body allowed, but also, would be totally okay with being now), I have to hurry up and figure out how to make it happen. The partner/marriage problem is definitely part of the equation. Still, one that I can visualize a route to manifesting (I’ve got options, baby! *wink*). The work part, however, feels much less within my control. This is likely the reverse of how the challenge of “the dream” is often presented. The truth is that, had I felt capable of financially supporting myself and a child, I might have done it much sooner than this with a previous partner. I’m glad I didn’t because those relationships all ended up not working out for reasons I now understand very well, but for me and my dreams, it is work that has always gotten in the way, and my other dreams have always gotten in the way of work.

At some point, very soon (probably next week or next month kind of soon, to be bleak, but let’s say next year for the sake of me getting to sleep tonight), I must come to a decision. I will have to decide whether to keep floating on, dreaming big and believing in fate, or begin choosing what to start letting go of and finding a job that I can rely on. It’s that, or I marry someone wealthy and generous, which just sounds much less romantic to me. Just kidding, I’m sure there could be lots of romance in that too but, after making it this far counting only on myself and my own successes and failures, it would be sort of dishonoring the story if I didn’t suffer it out to the end, wouldn’t it?