This summer, on my family’s first trip abroad together, I took a solo walk through Ireland’s Killarney National Park. The sun was setting and the path had turned golden green. It was lined with lime trees so densely swarming with bees that at first I thought someone had mobilized a drone army. Beyond the path stretched rolling hills and beyond them a small copse from which loomed Muckross Abbey, a 600-year-old Franciscan monastery. In its courtyard, an ancient yew tree peaked through the window openings and reached up to the sky through the now roofless portal.

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

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

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

Unfortunately, after two weeks of admiring every single stone house in the Irish countryside, our vacation ended and we flew back home to Oregon.

You know the sentence: No matter where you go, you are there?

I say that’s nonsense. I’ve been a thousand women in a thousand places.

In London, I went from being a couch potato who constantly watched TV shows and films to being an unofficial city guide. The energy of this city gave me the strength to visit every museum, every tourist attraction, every theater, every castle, every village, every forest and every historically significant park bench.

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

Normally I’m modest and teetotal, but one summer in Spain I spent topless on the beach and drinking wine late into the night in cobbled squares. When I moved to San Francisco at 26, I worshipped three things: avocado toast, artisanal coffee and “disruptive technology.” In Germany two years later, I persisted with my outspoken, pragmatic personality, which Germans admired almost as much as punctual trains and perfectly sorted recycling waste.

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

Now, at 37, I write this at my kitchen table in Portland, Oregon, where I’ve lived for the past four years. I’m a wife and a mother. Across from me is a laundry basket, the table piled high 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, a mysterious neighbor replaced him with a family of three little gnomes. And when we returned from Ireland, I was never more grateful to sink into my own bed. Over and over, I told my family, “Ugh, I love this bed. I love my plants. I love our coffee maker.”

But that knowledge doesn’t stop the fantasies. And the fantasies live on on Zillow, where I sit hunched over my phone at night while my husband sleeps beside me, trying to suppress my sighs as I stare at a high-ceilinged apartment in Amsterdam. Maybe there I’d be the kind of woman who rides her bike to the market to buy fresh tulips. Oooohbut if I moved into that 18th-century Vermont farmhouse with the exposed beams and fireplace in the kitchen, I’d be the kind of woman who sets out a cauldron of apple cider with a shot on Halloween. Last winter, when I attended a writing retreat on Whidbey Island, I spent half the time looking at properties and texting my husband things like, “We could rent the barn for weddings!”

These fantasies reflect the parts of me that still exist, buried under piles of laundry and packed lunches – the Marian who is not fully expressed in this life. Looking at houses allows me to explore these many versions of myself without giving my family whiplash. I can live a thousand lives, even if my true one remains rooted in one place.

At least for now.

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

But I also know that through this ongoing exploration, I keep the door open and connect with all the women I once was and still aspire to be – adventurous and ever-changing. In doing so, I hold onto the idea that no matter how old I am, there are still countless versions of myself 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 being diagnosed with autism as an adult, and her memoir, A Little Less Broken, is out this September. You can pre-order it here if you’d like.

PS: What it’s like to be a parent around the world.