The Woman I Never Wanted to Be

What do you do for the things you never had a say in?

That question lingers like smoke in the room of my thoughts, thick, unyielding. I never asked for the rules written before I could even spell my name. I never agreed to the script handed to me, a role performed a thousand times before me, by women who smiled through silence, who bore dreams they never got to chase.

What do you do when the world expects you to be someone, you're terrified of becoming?

You try. You pretend. You stand up straight, wear ambition like armour, and try not to flinch when their words laced with love, control, and judgment clip at your wings.

But what happens when you start becoming the woman you swore, you’d never be? The one who stopped fighting. The one who traded fire for obedience. Just another cog in the wheel that never stops spinning faster, louder, grinding souls into silence, just to be acceptable.

They tell me I’m selfish for wanting freedom over forever. They say I’m afraid of commitment, of responsibility. As if chasing your own freedom is a flaw. For wanting success more than a family. They call it rebellion, a phase, a shame. They whisper gold digger. Overachiever. Lost. Will they say I’ve missed out on life, that true happiness is in the arms of children and the warmth of a home?

But what if I don’t want that?

What if success is my kind of happiness?

What if this is simply who I am?

But then, what if I do choose family?

What if I trade my ambitions for cradles and chaos and quiet sacrifices?
Will I still feel whole? Or will I become the very mother I promised myself I’d never be - worn out, angry, full of resentment for the dreams she buried under laundry and lullabies? What if I become her, the woman my younger self feared the most? The one who once had stars in her eyes and now only counts diapers and deadlines?

It is a burden to see the world from every angle, to hold every possibility in your hands and still not find one that feels like you. What do you do when every choice feels wrong, and the only path that looks “right” leads to a version of yourself you can’t even recognize? What do you do when every choice feels like betrayal, either to yourself or to what the world expects you to be?

And even when I dream of love, the soft, all-consuming kind, I fear what it might take from me.

What if love, the kind I long for, becomes nothing more than a cage with prettier bars? What if the love I find becomes a cage, wrapped in soft hands and subtle rules? What if choosing family means letting go of everything I once dreamed and waking up one day as a mother who resents her own children for stealing her wings?

Is there a middle point? A place where I can have both?
Maybe. But life isn’t known for its generosity. There are no neat fairy tales. No perfect endings. We don’t get everything we want.

They say, “Don’t worry about it now. Time will sort it out. The answers will come.”
But what if the answers time brings are the ones I fear the most? What if time makes me into a stranger? What if I look in the mirror and see not a woman blooming with choice, but a shadow of the girl who once believed in freedom, not because I chose wrong, but because I had no choice at all? Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.

Maybe I’ll find a life that feels like my own.

But today, I’m still searching. Still asking.

Still trying not to become the woman I never wanted to be.