I Want to be Someone Else

Not All the time. Just right now.

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

It happens more often than I care to admit.

There are moments when I am suddenly, overwhelmingly, hit with one thought: I want to be someone else.

For a long time, I wanted to be Gwyneth Paltrow. (This probably isn’t quite past tense yet.) Sometimes it’s Joanna Gaines. Sometimes I want to be one of my friends.

Sometimes I unintentionally (read “intentionally”) feed this when I’m scrolling through Instagram. In a nod towards masochism, I tend to scroll more when I can feel this desire to be someone else coming on. I see a fellow mom with a child with Down Syndrome and I imagine life is better in her world. She is parenting a special needs child with way more skill and alacrity than I am. See how often she smiles? I would rather be her.

Sometimes this sensation hits me when I’m listening to a podcast interview of an accomplished woman who has claimed her superpower and is now sharing her new awareness with the world. If I’m not paying attention, before I know it, I am consumed with how much I’d rather be her.

And sometimes, I don’t have another person in mind. I would just rather not be me.

I can be so exhausting.

Feeding the fantasy

When I’m watching, scrolling, listening, or studying another woman, lost in the idea that being her would be so much easier; I am entertaining the fantasy that she doesn’t have issues, or at least her issues aren’t as messy or uncomfortable.

This other woman is much more fun or exercises more or isn’t ruled by the thoughts in her head and thus has mastered this whole “being human” thing better than I have. Sometimes creating this fantasy requires conveniently turning a blind eye to the other woman’s struggles or hardships, but fantasies go like that.

The other woman I’d rather be doesn’t get wounded by her 13-yet-old son but rather empowers him to individuate as is developmentally appropriate. The other woman doesn’t ruminate in constant existential crises and she has a house where all the kids like to gather. She isn’t at war with her body and her inner world. She isn’t mercurial. She gets enough sleep.

She doesn’t have depression.

I’m beginning to think this other person I’d rather be doesn’t exist.

Is it just me?

All of this can feel so isolating and embarrassing. Intellectually, I know that others don’t always feel comfortable in their skin, but that is the powerful nature of the illusion I believe, that everyone else generally wants to be themselves, and I often do not.

At 48, a complete overhaul of myself seems unlikely. What I would rather experience is a sound, rooted awareness that I am me, and me is good.

I don’t want to want to be someone else. I’m just not entirely sure how to not want that anymore. (And yes, I ran that sentence through a grammar check.)

And then I reread Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. Mama Doyle reminds the reader of the universal experience of being human.

“We all seem to function in the exact same way… we feel left out, envious, not good enough, sick, and tired. We have unrealized dreams and deep regrets. We are certain that we are meant for more and that we don’t even deserve what we have. We feel ecstatic and then numb…If this is our shared human experience, where did we get the idea that there is some other, better, more perfect, unbroken way to be human? Where is the human being who is functioning ‘correctly,’ against whom we are all judging our performances? Who is she? Where is she?”

Wait. The other woman I want to be is just as human as I am?

Glennon continues,

“If you are uncomfortable — in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused — If you opt out of a bio, let us know so that won’t hold things up. we like to publish early in the day. thanks for submitting!!! If you opt out of a bio, let us know so that won’t hold things up. we like to publish early in the day. thanks for submitting!!! have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.”

Oh.

It appears that it’s not the “being me” that I’m trying to avoid. It’s the “being human.” And I’m not ready to give that up yet.