The Heart Wants What It Wants

“He’s my last baby, girl. Diana, you always wanted to have a man and a family.”

“I know, mama. I still do. But I also want to be a lawyer. I’ll find a way to make it both work.”

“That young man, Trevor, he took good care of you. He understood your ambition.”

“I know. He still does, but as a friend, mama. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a conference to attend this weekend and I have to get a lot of work done before that. I’m sorry, mama, but I have to go.”

Goodbyes took a few more minutes, and Diana was feeling pretty drained by the time she hung up.

She loved her mama, she did, but it was draining to talk to her. It was draining to live up to expectations. It was draining to keep on getting reminded that she was not being the daughter she’d always wanted to be.

For a moment, she let herself sink into that day dream – the one where, in five years, she was a lawyer, working for a firm that placed some importance on ethics. She’d have a loving husband, a child, and she’d have nothing to worry about.

Well, she’d have plenty to worry about, but they would all be about things she could do something about. They’d all be about things she could manage, and help.

She’d have clients she believed in, she’d find precedents that mattered, and maybe, she’d even do something that mattered.

She’d have a handsome and caring husband who believed in her and loved their child so much that she’d never have to nag him about changing diapers. She’d be thinking of having a second child, because she didn’t want the age gap to be too big, and she was confident that they could make it work, anyway.

It was the perfect life.

It was the life she had always wanted.

Well, she was on track to get the job part of it sorted out. She’d been doing part-time law school, which was another reason why she wasn’t too happy about the conference. Being out of town meant that she’d miss one evening of it. She could make it up, of course, she always did, and her grades were great. She’d switch to being a full-time student in a year, and she was on track to become a lawyer, as she wanted to.

All the experience she’d gotten as a paralegal would come in very handy.

But the having a family part – that part had her stumped.

So many people seemed to manage it, some without trying at all. But she couldn’t seem to do it.

The gloom was settling in, as it often did after a conversation with her mother. Rachel was a wonderful woman, and a capable one. She had managed to raise the family after her father had passed away, leaving her a young widow with three children and very little support.

But Rachel didn’t think much of Diana’s professional ambitions. She did believe that a woman should be financially independent, something she had learnt through hard lessons in her own life, but she did not see why that meant something as complicated as becoming a lawyer. A lawyer had to study for years, work long hours, and was often not home for their family. According to Rachel, the whole point of being financially independent was to be able to provide for her family.

Diana did see her mother’s point. She really did. But she didn’t think it was the whole point or the only point.

Sighing, Diana ate her solitary dinner sitting by the window – she could get a glimpse of the park if she sat at the right angle – and wondered what she had to do to have it all, like all the books said you could.

Maybe she’d find out.

But for the moment, she had a lot of work to finish, and then she had schoolwork to do, too. Maybe a change of scenery wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe she should just look at it as a weekend away, and make the most of it.

Who knows, she told herself as she washed the dishes and put them away before settling down to work for the evening, she might even surprise herself by having a good time.

Stranger things had happened, after all. Like Diana David being a paralegal working for one of the most respected law firms in San Francisco. That would have seemed pretty unlikely to most people ten years ago, when Diana had been dumped by the boy she’d thought she’d marry and have babies with, and she had run away as far as she could, going to college on a partial scholarship that she had somehow managed to get, which still made her loan repayments less traumatizing every month than they were for most people.

She’d had a lot of lucky breaks in her life.

The only thing where she had been unlucky, really, was love. And in the grand scheme of things, was that really worth being so upset about? She should count her blessings and be happy.

She was good at her job, she had good friends, she had family, and she was reasonably fulfilled in life.

Maybe it was a good thing she didn’t really have time to date anymore. All her relationships seemed to end in some kind of disaster.

She was going around in circles in her own head. She had no time for that.

Diana grabbed her work, set up at the table that doubled as whatever kind of table she needed, where she’d just had dinner, and she set to work.

At least there, she knew what she was doing.