I've been having vivid dreams lately -- the kind where you have your senses completely about you, where the world is finely rendered and feels so, so real. These kinds of dreams have almost nothing in common with the typical murky, shifting dream experience -- the kind that goes like this: "We were in our old apartment, only it was more like my best friend's house. And you were there, except it wasn't really you." No, the dreams I've been having - lucid dreams, they call them -- are detailed and visceral, like regular life. You just wake up at the end.
A few nights ago it was a dream about my old office in Boston. I haven't been there for years now, and I don't work at that job anymore. But when I did I went into the office about once a week. It was a routine: long drive, Starbucks on the Mass Pike, park the car in downtown crossing, and walk to the office from there. And that's what the dream was -- that walk to the office. All the details were there -- the things you wouldn't be able to put your finger on in a memory, but are present in real life. The clacking sound of my heels on the sidewalk, the plume of smoke from the guy with the cotton candy vape pen who always hung out on the corner, the teal color of the coastal sky in the late morning. I could feel the air blowing my skirt slightly to press against my tights, and my flat-ironed hair bouncing as I walked. I know you can't smell things in dreams, but somehow I knew I was wearing my favorite perfume, the one that's supposed to smell like figs and sea salt. As I approached the office I saw my reflection in the tinted glass doors and smoothed my skirt out. I looked how I always looked for these Boston days. Even as a mostly remote worker, I dressed up regularly back then. I was used to it from years of working office jobs. It was also fun - an excuse to enjoy my collection of vintage dresses and jewelry.
I haven't looked like that in a while.
My former Boston wardrobe is stored in boxes for now. Before the pandemic, my everyday shoes were a pair of oxford heels that I kept neatly polished -- my favorite of all the vintage shoes I'd bought over the years. I wore them to work, to cafes, to restaurants -- all the places connected by cars, sidewalks and pavement. Now I wear bogs and ice cleats to trudge through the snow, and buffalo plaid slipper socks while I'm working. I probably ride in a car once every few weeks.
It's tempting to divide these two periods in my life into distinct identities, the person I was before and the person I am now. The fair haired one in Boston, and the brunette in the cabin. Well, mostly brunette. My once in a lifetime platinum blonde dye job still shows its legacy on the very ends. It will take another few months to grow it all the way out.
I suppose to some people it seems like I have changed a lot in these last couple of years. It's understandable; When I was very young and getting to know new people I often thought of them as a list of their attributes. There was a girl in my fourth grade class who always had a perfect French braid. That detail was a symbol of a kind of girl I always found curious and alien -- the kind who was in girl scouts or brownies, had baby doll toys… wore lace trimmed socks. A specific kind of person, an identity.
It's human to assemble patterns together that you observe, to try and categorize the things around you.
In those terms I saw myself as fundamentally very different from the French-braid-lace-sock girls. By the time I was in junior high school I identified firmly as a specific type, an "alternative girl" like Janeane Garofolo or Daria Morgendorffer. It was a fixed identity that defined how people saw me, like a piece of clothing you could never take off.
Identity is something I've thought about a lot in the context of change lately. For 36 years I knew I never wanted children -- I was as sure of that as anything. And in many ways that identity -- of the kind of person who has chosen not to have children, a childless-by-choice person -- was how most people saw me, in that unchanging way you perceive others. Like the girl with the perfect French braid, and how I could never imagine her with knotty hair, or unmatched socks.
Now I am hoping to become a mother, and I am sure of that too. Did I change? It's a question I asked myself initially. But embedded in that question is an assumption: that identity is immutable, the very essence of who you are, and that change must be seen as a transformation. But is that true?
I can remember and understand all the reasons I had for not wanting children. In many ways those reasons I had remain -- an understanding that it requires sacrifice, that it must become the main focus of your life, that it is important, and that it could be a bad mistake for someone who doesn't want that life. I still think all of that is true.
I suppose that's the distinction. Things have changed in the sense that my desires have, but I don't really think that "I" have. I was there - whatever "I" am - in both periods of this life. When I think about the impact identity has had in my life over the years, it feels limiting. Like an artificial layer on top of who you are, as opposed to who you are.
I think back to high school, when identity was paramount. Teenagers have an eagle-eye for those categorizable details: how you look, how you dress, what "type" that means you must be. Where that means you should sit in the cafeteria. All these rules float around in the air, but nowhere are they more solid and rigid than in your own mind.
It reminds me of listening to a good friend of mine wax poetic on her time in marching band as a high school student. We became friends as adults, and I've often thought about how much I would've appreciated her friendship as a teenager. Her warmth, kindness, uniqueness.
She talked with fondness about how a crisp, fall morning still reminded her of marching band practice. The smell of the field. The joy of performance, of playing her clarinet in a huge group.
It was an anecdote said to me in passing many years ago, but I've always remembered it and how deeply I could feel her affection for those times. Looking back now, I think I would've loved that hobby just as she did: I was a musician. I loved being outside. I loved playing with other people, but rarely had the opportunity as a classical pianist. Maybe I would've picked up the snare drum. I'm sure I could've learned it, I play a little bit of drums now.
But I never knew the smell of a cool morning out on a field with my bandmates because, without realizing it, the concept of identity had placed invisible bounds around all the things I expected to like or do. Cynical, artistic types don't join marching band, and marching band types don't want them there anyway. Or so I believed. I never asked myself if I -- as an individual -- would've enjoyed the activity for my own reasons. My world was smaller than it needed to be, and by my own choice.
I think some very small part of this played a role in not realizing I wanted kids sooner. Once I put on that childless identity (or perhaps others put it on me) it became harder and harder to assess my own interests -- everything got filtered through that vision of who I thought I must be. Perhaps I might've felt that interest change a bit earlier, if I was more open to it.
So I've decided to discard the concept of identity, in general, in my own life. I've replaced it with facts: There are people, the things they do, the beliefs they have. That is not to say there aren't core, important values you might carry with you forever. But there are seasons to life -- times where you want to do one thing or another. I float between creative pursuits every few years: art, music, writing -- all things associated with deep identity. For years this was a source of guilt, but now I recognize that leaving something aside for a time does not mean abandonment, or denying who you are. Who you are is simply the sum total of the things you do, over time -- and should be expected to be as complex, varied, and ever-changing as life itself.
Wow. This resonates so much. Especially the last paragraph - learning to release the weird guilt of not having a concrete, never-changing, lifelong passion. Thank you for articulating that feeling for me and affirming that it doesn't have to hold us back or box us in. Your writing always fills me up and makes me think. Thank you for sharing it.