The Many Lives of My Zillow Alter Ego

This summer, on my family’s first international trip together, I was taking a solo walk through Ireland’s Killarney National Park. The sun was setting, and the path had turned golden green, flanked by linden trees so thick with bees I thought at first that someone had mobilized a drone army. Beyond the path were rolling hills and beyond that a small copse, from which sprung Muckross Abbey, a 600-year-old Franciscan friary. In its courtyard an ancient yew tree jutted through window apertures and spilled out through the now roofless portal into the sky.

If I lived in Kerry, I could walk here every day.

I would lead a slower life. I’d get up early to walk in the woods, then settle into my wildflower garden to write and drink endless cups of Barry’s tea. I would be more creative. How could I not become the next Maeve Binchy with all this physical beauty around me? And if I had to leave my husband for a rugged sheep farmer named Seamus, so be it.

Back at the hotel, I pored over listings on MyHome.ie and researched how to move to Ireland.

Sadly, after two weeks admiring every stone cottage that blanketed the Irish countryside, our vacation ended and we flew back home to Oregon.

You know that phrase, No matter where you go, there you are?

I call bullshit. I’ve been a thousand women in a thousand places.

In London I transformed from a binge-watching couch potato into an unofficial walking tour guide. Something about the energy of that city gave me the capacity to visit every museum, tourist attraction, play, castle, village, forest, and historically significant park bench.

In my twenties, I lived in New Zealand, where I became Adventure Marian. I hiked the Tongariro Crossing; I took a six-month yoga teacher training and spent another month working on a farm planting native trees and sleeping in a cabin that overlooked a mountain range called The Remarkables (seriously — that’s what it’s called).

Usually modest and teetotaling, I spent a summer in Spain tanning topless on the beach and drinking wine in cobblestoned squares late into the night. When I moved to San Francisco at 26, I worshiped three things: avocado toast, artisanal coffee and “disruptive tech.” In Germany two years later, I leaned hard into my blunt, no-nonsense personality, which the Germans admired almost as much as punctual trains and perfectly sorted recycling.

I was younger, of course. Everything I did back then felt like walking through an open door into a new life.

Now, at 37, I’m writing this at my kitchen table in Portland, Oregon, where I’ve lived for the past four years. I am a wife and a mother. A basket of laundry sits across from me, the table piled with the detritus of everyday life. It’s a far cry from the adventures of my twenties, but this version of me is as real as the others. When our beloved garden gnome was stolen, some mystery neighbor replaced him with a family of three small ones. And when we returned from Ireland, I was never more grateful to sink into my own bed. Again and again I told my family, “Ugh, I love this bed. I love my plants. I love our coffee machine.”

Yet, that knowledge doesn’t stop the fantasies. And the fantasies live on Zillow, with me hunched over my phone at night, as my husband sleeps beside me, trying to muffle my sighs as I stare at a high-ceilinged apartment in Amsterdam. Maybe there I would be the kind of woman who rides her bicycle to the market to buy fresh tulips. Ooooh, but if I moved to that 1700s farmhouse in Vermont with the exposed beams and fireplace in the kitchen, I’d be the kind of woman who sets out a cauldron full of spiked cider on Halloween. Last winter, when I attended a writing residency on Whidbey Island, I spent half the time browsing compounds and texting my husband things like, “We could rent out the barn for weddings!”

These fantasies reflect the parts of me that still exist, buried under mountains of laundry and lunchboxes — the Marian who isn’t fully expressed in this life. Browsing homes allows me to explore these many versions of myself without giving my family whiplash. I can live a thousand lives, even as my real one stays rooted in one place.

For now, at least.

Do I sometimes wish I could burn down our lives to move to a rocky island in Maine? Absolutely. Do I understand that life will always be a little unromantic no matter where I go? Sure.

But I also know that this ongoing exploration is how I keep the door open, tethering me to all the women I once was and all the women I still want to be — adventurous and ever-changing. It’s how I hold onto the idea that no matter my age, there are still countless versions of myself waiting beyond the threshold.

Marian Schembari’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. She has also written for Cup of Jo about getting diagnosed with autism as an adult, and her memoir, A Little Less Broken, comes out this September. You can pre-order it here, if you’d like.

P.S. What it’s like to parent around the world.