A Lie I Am Tempted to Tell About Myself

My gut knew it to be true, but my mind immediately became critical.

While living in my van, photo taken in the Eastern Sierras

In September 2016 I was fresh off living in my van for seven months. I knew a couple of people who lived in Denver, so I rented a room for what I thought would be a winter pit stop before eventually getting back on the road. However, I was burnt out from vanlife. I craved creature comforts and a stationery pillow to rest my head on every night. Shortly after landing in Denver, I wrote this in my journal:

“I want roots. To put my hands in the dirt. I want animals around, and to wake up to that same pot of coffee drip drip dripping. I want to share dinners and bottles of wine with friends and family and watch the colors of fall roll in over the hills. I want a dog by my side each night for protection and warmth. I want to eat real food, good food, and fresh greens from the garden, the garden I'll harvest with my two hands. I want to play instruments and spread out canvases and works in progress all over my house. I want SPACE. And dancing and music and open sky.”

This was a new feeling for me as an adult. In my teens and early 20s all I yearned for was change and excitement. I dreamt of becoming a magazine writer in New York City. Moving to Chile for a year to work on a farm. Living on a sailboat in New Zealand. My mom raised me as an only child on cruise ships from grades three through eight, where she worked and homeschooled me. While at the time all I wanted was stability and to be on land with my friends, those experiences majorly shaped my personality and constitution.

When Eat, Pray, Love was released my mom and I went to see it with her sisters in the theater. “Amanda, that was so you,” they all exclaimed on our way home. I distinctly remember the scene where Liz and her friend talked about their lifelong dreams. Liz’s friend admitted to having a “baby box” that she kept under her bed with clothing and toys for her future children. Liz responded by saying she had a “baby box” of her own, except hers was filled with old issues of National Geographic and clippings from the New York Times travel section. I related so perfectly to this scene. Still do.

Now, it’s 2024 and I’ve lived in Colorado for nearly eight years – the longest I’ve resided in any place, ever. There are many positives to being rooted here, like having real-life friends and people I see every week for hikes and coffee and climbing. Community has been revolutionary to my emotional and mental well-being. I rent a little cottage that’s all mine, and an art studio in a shared warehouse space in the north part of town. I know my neighbors and all the bike paths and back roads. I have a favorite coffee shop and even an acupuncturist (I know, bougie).

A few days ago my boyfriend and I were driving into the mountains while the foothills were getting pummeled with a heat wave. A winding canyon road stretched before us as the rising sun trailed close behind. I sat in the passenger’s seat, shoes off, knees tucked into my chest as the morning coffee finally kicked in. “Let’s answer a question,” I offered. He happily obliged.

I pulled up prompts from Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin conversation card game and perused until my eyes locked on one that stirred me, “Ooooh. Let’s do this one. A lie I am tempted to tell about myself…”

He went ahead and shared his answer, while mine was still buried under mental and emotional fog I couldn’t shake. “I’m gonna let mine simmer. I’ll share on the way back.” I was excited to have a question to tumble around my brain as we walked through the forest. 

An answer came while sitting next to a river, where the water rippled over shallow river rocks, and American Dippers crisscrossed the atmosphere above the riverbed, catching bugs and diving into the water for food. I sat and contemplated Esther’s prompt and could feel some truth simmering beneath my skin, about to percolate the way my Moka pot eagerly steams on the stove in the morning.

A lie I am tempted to tell about myself… is that I am okay with a small life.

My gut knew it to be true, but my mind immediately became critical. Who do you think you are? That sounds pretty arrogant. What’s so bad about a small life? Maybe you don’t really mean it the way it sounds… That’s so Western… so American… and on and on my mind twisted around this truth I had just uncovered. Even now, I feel the need to justify or explain what I “really” mean.

The lie comes out in insidious ways, “I don’t need to be a working artist.” “I’m okay with my work never being recognized.” “I’m content with just getting by financially.” And the truth is, I am okay with all of those things. But I would also love if more became of it all. I often tell this lie under the guise of humility. It somehow feels more noble to not want these external things. In reality, I’m afraid to admit what I want because that opens me up to the risk of external failure. Like any artist, I’ve experienced a lot of rejection in my career. I won’t lie — it’s taken a few knots of wind out of my sails.

From 2016, newly planted in Denver

To me, a small life means giving into my fears. Not publishing. Watching reality TV instead of doing my weekly writing. Opening Instagram instead of a tube of paint. Staying in the same place because I know what to expect.

It’s scary to admit. If the lie is, I am okay with living a small life, then the truth is, I want a big life. I want to continue taking risks. I want to keep dreaming like I did when I was 16 and naive to the grind of adulthood.

There is a woman who walks her stout, wiggly black dog around my neighborhood. We are often out at similar times and always wave to one another. I’ve noticed we walk similarly — slowly, letting our pups smell all the smells, hands clasped behind our backs, gently trodding across the sidewalk, often with a smile. I would guess she’s in her late 60s, and I easily can see myself in her shoes — if I’m lucky — still being in this neighborhood, with my dog, contentedly taking him on strolls in my middle-to-older years. As I age, develop routines and rituals, and become established in Boulder, I see how time flies. I know it will get even faster, that I will blink and be 60-something. I’m not afraid of getting older, but this visceral awareness of the swift passage of time has contributed to this recent awakening.

I refuse to abandon my adventurous inner child — the dreamer. I feel her stirrings, and while it honestly scares me a little at this point in life, I am equally excited to return to her.

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