What If…

What if I just lived? 

What if I stopped worrying about my health. 

What if I stopped googling how to lose weight, how to prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, wrinkles.

What if I stopped sending myself exercise videos through Messenger and stopped feeling guilty when I don’t do any of it.

What if I stopped pretending to be a good person. 

What if I stopped worrying about what people think of me.

What if I stopped trying to be a good example for my kids.

What if I just said fuck it…

And only said what was really on my mind?

What if I smoked the pot and drank the wine and loosened up.

What if the next 20 years of my life were lived only for me, and I became…well, me.

What if I spoke only the truth like Fran Leibowitz.

What if I had passion like Dianne Von Furstenberg and found the sensuality that I have lost for so long.

What if I was free.

What would that look like?

What if I lived in New York for 6 months and went to plays, and drank more wine, and hung out in museums and walked the streets at night in the snow.

What if I was profoundly lonely, and in that place found my profound creativity?

What if I lived on a beach and let my hair go wild and loved my aging body and sang with the band.

What if I stopped caring about living a really long time, and instead, just lived as long as I’ve got left with complete gusto.

Not suburban housewife gusto.

But a late in life mystical creature who takes a lover that writes a book about me gusto.

What if I eat the steak.

Say the mean thing.

Break out of the cage and fly away.

Would I rather live to be 96? Another 40 years of exactly this? Knowing that my rules and etiquette and societal and familial roles have stolen my wings?

Or would I rather only live 20 more years of absolute mental and physical freedom?

What if freedom is its own cage?