If I Could Have Been

When I was in high school we did a production of the musical Working. Every night I would sit in the wings listening to Beth Arago sing "If I Could Have Been" and every night, in my head, I would sing along. "If I could have been, what I could have been, I could have been something..."

I was 16 years old and could imagine few things worse than being old, like 40, and looking back and thinking If Only. "If only I could have... If only I would have... If only I had..."

Fast forward almost 26 years later and here I am - nearing 42. And I still sing that song, only now it has such deep personal meaning. And it hurts. Nearly every day of my life I feel the wind of If Only. Sometimes it is only a light breeze and sometimes it's a hurricane. When I was sixteen years old, backstage during our productions of Working, my father had only been dead a few months. I was hanging on for dear life but still had no way of knowing how deeply that event would affect me and the course my life would take as a result of it. I had no way of knowing how deeply I would be affected by my membership in the Mormon Church and how it would color and dictate enormous life decisions and choices I would make. I still believed that I had the world at my fingertips and that my life would play out exactly as I wanted it to. If only...

If only they hadn't died... if only I hadn't married... if only I hadn't dated... if only winter wasn't so hard... if only I had been braver... if only I had fought harder... if only I had left sooner...

The other day I was getting my hair done by my friend Cassie and, as I usually do around her, felt the wind blow. I met Cassie several years ago and she has become one of my nearest and dearest. The thing that reached out and violently bitch-slapped me when I first met her was that she was me when I was in my early 20's if only I had been allowed, by both myself and the world around me, to just be me. Cassie is talented, successful, beautiful, funny as hell and, most importantly, free. Cassie just is. And I wonder why that makes me ache like it does.

I think it's because I feel like I am still running a million miles an hour to catch up - to make up for lost time. But I am doing it. I am getting there. And, really, it's all about perspective isn't it? The hopeful thought that I am clinging to is that, somewhere out there, there is an 80 year old woman looking at me the way I look at Cassie and saying to herself:

"If only..."


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