All Your Dreams Won’t Come True

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

There is a moment in every life when you realise that something you desperately desired, as in top of the manifestation board, life or limb yearned for, isn’t going to come to pass. Before I got into fashion, before I wanted to become a writer, before I had any idea about the woman I would become, I wanted to live in New York City. Aged 12, I tacked a huge poster of the Manhattan skyline above my bed, a silhouette of skyscrapers completed with those now phantom twin towers. It became the guiding light for everything ahead. I came so close at one point, with a visa and relocation all planned, but events conspired and the opportunity has never since materialised.

I look at that near miss as such a sliding doors moment, a fissure of lifelines. I was so near, but so far from a different future in which the father of my children would have remained unmet; the two hearts outside my body would have evaporated into the ether. No regrets clearly, but I do still mourn what almost was. The truth is that for some dreams to be realised you have to deny yourself others. When we talk about having it all, it’s not only about parental, or work-life balance. It can also be about the hunger for a full clutch of life lines, all the different stories, fuck it, additional books of the many lives we could have led.

Ten years ago, if I’d had the chance to move to New York or explore a nascent relationship with my soon-to-be husband, I’d have gone to New York. That sounds cold, but I’d been in love with this city since I was a kid and I’d only just met him. In the early days, the longevity of our relationship seemed unlikely and certainly not serious enough to be compromising my most fervent fantasy. I’d have been on that 747 to JFK with barely a glance back.

Arriving in the city earlier this week, I was met by the usual overwhelm. The heat, the intensity the OTT identities screaming (on occasion, quite literally) in my face. Even though I’m always in and out of central London, my beat is increasingly sedate. In Manhattan, there is no escape from the energy and day one I’m always shocked by it. In that New York minute I’m almost relieved that my dream didn’t bear fruit. But then something shifts. The noise and magic of the sidewalks start to seep. My heart, which was juddering at the pace and confidence, resets to the rhythm of the avenues. And that dream, the one that was once snatched, looms big. Looms massive.

Of course the way you key into any city changes as you move through the chapters of your life. Where once I was struggling in stilettos on the cobbles of Meatpacking or drinking sticky skinny margaritas on the Lower East Side, I’m now walking past Pride flags on my way to a Clinton Hill yoga class dodging buggies and artisan cookie stores. The New York of my teenage dreams is gone and as a settled, nearly married 40-year-old mother, my lens on the Big Apple has shifted. I’m never going to be a twenty-something, bar hopping around town, dating multiple Mr Bigs or building a career on the 25th floor. I know the reality of raising children here, the rents, the healthcare, the politics. The fantasy has fizzled and to a broad extent, I have put the dream to bed.

Yet coming back here always feels like bumping into an ex. That’s probably in part because I was once moving here with a different husband, but instead of relocating as a couple, the marriage was broken off, my visa cancelled and off he went alone with our dog to live the dream I had lobbied so hard for. After months conquering mountains of paperwork for us both, it really did add insult to injury. Looking back, missing out on moving to New York aged 29 was probably the sharpest edge of my divorce and I often think what would have happened if we’d moved and split while I was here. It wouldn’t have been pretty no doubt, still, the city would have provided a cinematic backdrop for my heartbreak. Better than Kilburn at least. 

I don’t even have to close my eyes to imagine myself as a New Yorker. I know where I’d live and where I’d shop. I know where I’d summer and where I’d drink my wine.  I can see that woman and she looks happy. Even though I am so content and anchored in my little spot on the Thames, and so gut-deep grateful for my big and little men, the Hudson continues to whisper to me, still beckoning. Obviously we can all say, ‘who knows! Stranger things have happened,’ and you’re right. Strange things do happen. But in this case, I do know really. My fiancé isn’t as enamoured with the concrete jungle and based on his business, if we were ever to bridge the Atlantic, we’d land on the west coast. As I’ve mentioned before, he’s not really one to have his arm twisted. If I’m being honest with myself, New York is always going to be the life that got away.

Acknowledging all this reminds me that there are only so many experiences we are ever going to get in this slice of consciousness and it doesn’t do to be greedy. At some point, the desire to build with my boyfriend, to create a family and a career in London loosened and unraveled my New York ambitions. Whether we know it or not, we’re all in a constant reappraisal of our priorities. Even if we aren’t black and white saying I’m giving up on a) in exchange for b) that is exactly what we’re doing. I may not have intentionally put a move stateside on the back burner, but that’s surely what I did. 

At this moment in my life I’m navigating the fallout of all the dreams I gave up on in my 30s. I nixed my dream to edit a magazine, I gave up trying to be a fashion person (though that was mostly because I didn’t like what I saw when I got up close). I’m still in the (long process) of giving up on having another child. These corners of my identity have been scrubbed out leaving the shape of who I am looking increasingly amorphous. Life is so subtle that often you don’t see doors bolting behind you and for most of the dreams above, there just is no way back. The chance was missed, the ship but a tiny white sail on the horizon.

They say that what was meant for you won’t pass you by. As much as it sounds like a cliché written on a fridge magnet, the older I get, the more I’m convinced it to be the truth. Also true: we think we know what we want but often we don’t— fate frequently seems to be a better strategist than any storyline we could have written for ourselves. 

More recently my life has tipped over into the era of community and even if my kids could manage the upheaval of relocation, I don’t think I could leave my network behind right now. I am wedded and bedded to my neighbourhood because it makes combining motherhood and work work. Rearing children often isn’t glamorous and it doesn’t matter where you do it. But knowing that there are 10 women down the road who have your back when the chips are down - all with kids the same age - has profoundly changed my experience of parenting.  It’s taken me nearly seven years to build that and I still remember how isolating it felt not to have that web to hold me. I don’t have the stomach to go back there.

Instead I will continue to cheat on my real life with the teenage dream of what that life would become. I’ll fly for three days here, a long weekend there and ensconce myself with the Yankee besties who woulda coulda shoulda been my neighbours, sharing beds in their apartments, treating their locals as if they were mine. It will sometimes feel bittersweet. Then one day, perhaps I’ll visit the city with my husband and children and we’ll look up my old haunts and check in on old addresses. I’ll be sentimental and they’ll roll their eyes. Maybe the boys will like it too and decide to lay down their own roots up and down the island and I’ll feel both envious and wildly excited for them. Because even though my grand romance with New York City may be over, we’re definitely going to stay more than just good friends.