I used to be cool. I rode bikes, went rock climbing, backpacking on multi-week long trips, took surfing lessons, kite surfed all over the world. I saved money and quit my job and travelled for a couple years. I spent a year traveling. I can wakeboard, wake skate, roller skate. I read books all the time, I know the basics of physics and philosophy and history. I loved to learn new things and write about them. I liked to paint and create art. I was so committed to LIVING in my twenties. I was really cool. I mountain biked and hiked. I was never awesome at anything but I liked trying new things and doing stuff. I think I was kind and thoughtful. I tried to be.

I wasn’t ever trying to find myself or anything like that, I was just hungry to taste as much of the world as I could. I used to work in a nursing home and I was scared to get old and sick without knowing what it felt like to raft the Zambezi or hike to Macchu Picchu or ride across the Mongolian steppe or drink tea in the Himalayas. I listened to the regrets of the elderly all day and I didn’t want to have any so I threw myself into the world. I think I was cool, I think that I was cool for me.

I was pretty too. Not a stunner or anything but I was pretty enough that people were usually a little extra nice to me. I was approachable pretty. Men used to ask for my number regularly. I felt happy about how I looked. I never felt like a bomb shell but I never felt bad or insecure about my looks.

Then I got back after the traveling and I was thirty and my husband wanted kids and I agreed. I had two in the next couple years. They’re the best thing that ever happened to me. And now my youngest is a year and I’m forty five pounds overweight and I have stretch marks on my stomach and my chest is lopsided and pendulous and my skin is horrible and I never sleep or read or do anything that I used to enjoy and haven’t for nearly 5 years now. I broke my foot badly so I’ll never be running again.

I’m not cool anymore. I don’t like to go out and do things and I’ve developed some kind of germ phobia. The same person who ate street food insects. I try to be a good mom. I don’t know if I am. I’m not pretty. I think women of all shapes and sizes are beautiful and I love seeing and supporting women who love themselves but I don’t feel like that about myself anymore. He isn’t attracted to me anymore. And now that my body is trash and I have no hobbies and am boring and anxiety ridden my husband wants a divorce. Fuck. I’ll never make enough alone to buy a house here. I’m too embarrassed of myself to ever date again.

My kids will never know I was cool and fun and I don’t think I ever will be again.