I didn’t choose career over men; I chose my dreams.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

I didn’t choose career over men; I chose my dreams.

You just snidely use the word “career” to make it seem like I was somehow brainwashed by capitalism, like the career was something I painted myself with to hide in society as a man. Career is the unnatural thing, the thing that you think can be peeled away to reveal a mother underneath.

I didn’t choose career over men; I chose my dreams. Career was just a side effect of pursuing those dreams. Careers aren’t just something that someone plans strategically —

Sometimes, a career is what happens when you’re good at what you do, and when you’re willing to follow it to the end of the earth. When people connect to your art, when your passion for justice results in change, when you successfully heal the sick.

There are other ways to plant the seeds for what turns into a career, sometimes unintentionally. Sometimes you do the work just because you love it, just for itself. Do you know what that’s like? Are you jealous? Is that why you want to take it away?

Yes, some people choose their careers — But some people are just passionate about something, and follow their dreams. And that, one day, becomes a “career.”

I didn’t choose career over men; I chose to follow an absolutely illogical dream. I chose to go to college for writing, even though everyone told me not to. I chose to go to college for writing, against the advice of two ex-boyfriends. I chose writing even though I had no connections, no money, and no guarantee of making money.

I made what was, for all intents and purposes, a bad choice. But it was my choice, and that was what I wanted, and it’s what I still want.

I didn’t choose a career over men; I chose my dreams. I chose my dreams and I thought about the women in my family who didn’t get to follow their dreams. I chose my dreams for the ghosts of women who haunt me.

I didn’t choose a career over men; I chose women. I chose myself.

I chose my own humanity — the desire found in people of all genders to follow their own light.