I Wanted a Rich Man With a Fast Car And I’m No Longer Apologizing for That

My aunt Sherry used to joke with me about the time we watched Stuart Little as kids. After the movie, my sister Athena said she wanted to marry Stuart. I, on the other hand, said I wanted to marry a rich man with a fast car.

To this day, we still laugh about it how Athena chose a rat and loved him deeply because he was a “nice guy,” and how I was the complete opposite. Money and speed. As adults, not much has changed. Athena still loves love, and I still love money and fast cars.

But there was a time when I questioned myself for that.

I started to wonder if my dreams were shallow. If wanting wealth, freedom, and luxury meant I needed to lower my standards to be realistic. I told myself that to get a man like that, I’d have to become someone else entirely lose 50 pounds, change my face, soften my ambition, secure some perfect corporate job, remove pieces of myself just to fit a mold.

That couldn’t have been further from the truth.

One of the biggest lessons in life is realizing that the gap between who you are and who you want to be is often just mindset. I can want anything in this world. I can become anything in this world. The only requirement is betting on myself.

The Timeline I Thought I Needed

When I was 20, I had this very specific vision: by 25, I’d be married, have kids, own a house, and work some cool, stable job. A very “Type A,” picture-perfect life.

What’s funny is that growing up, I never actually wanted that. I wanted a husband, sure but not traditionally. I wanted to be the hot girlfriend with dogs. Which is hilarious now because I don’t even like dogs.

When 25 came around, I wasn’t who I thought I’d be.

I was better.

I didn’t have a husband, but I had IMDb movie credits. I didn’t have kids, but I had my cat Jasper, who is essentially my child. I didn’t own a house, but I had an apartment in New York City. I didn’t have a corporate job I was supporting myself through acting and modeling.

I was living the dream I had as a child, and yet somehow, I still felt like I failed because everyone around me was getting engaged or having kids.

It’s wild how you can be actively succeeding in your own dream and still feel behind.

When Comparison Turned Into Self-Doubt

I remember scrolling through engagement posts and pregnancy announcements thinking, What’s wrong with me? Why couldn’t I get engaged? Why wasn’t I building a family?

I started convincing myself that I was selfish. That focusing on my career instead of a man and kids made me immature or unrealistic. I revisited that old joke about me wanting money and power things society says are acceptable for men to want, but questionable for women.

So I played with the idea of changing myself.

Maybe if I tweaked what I wanted. Maybe if I softened my ambition for a man who didn’t even exist yet, I could have everything career, marriage, kids, movie nights watching Shrek once a month like a perfect family.

I tried it.

And I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

The Cost of Shrinking Yourself

The truth about me is that I can fit in anywhere. I’m very good at mirroring. I knew exactly what I needed to do: get a cozy corporate job, tone down my ambition, give up control the thing I hate most.

And it worked.

It was easy to get a man.

The catch? I hated him.

He liked me because I had a ceiling. I resented him because he didn’t. He got to live freely while I suffocated in a life I built to feel “normal.”

That relationship taught me something important: there was nothing wrong with me. I could’ve been married within a year if I wanted to. The problem wasn’t commitment it was that I lost confidence in my future self.

I believed if things didn’t happen right then, on everyone else’s timeline, they’d never happen at all.

Looking back, that was the most delusional I’ve ever been.

Choosing Myself Again

One morning, watching him get dressed and hating everything about his outfit (and the fact that I’d have to see it again), it clicked. I had to leave.

I was watching someone live comfortably in their dreams while I was suffocating in a Disney-Pixar version of life I never wanted.

Not long after, I was at work doing a credentialing report when I got a last minute audition email. I had an hour and a half to get from Crown Heights to Red Hook. I took my lunch break, grabbed my things, went to the audition and never returned to that job.

At that audition, I felt alive again.

I also ended the relationship shortly after, politely telling him that his services were no longer needed. He was built for someone with a ceiling and I am not.

Trusting My Own Timing

When I returned to auditions and continued seeing engagements and pregnancies, something shifted. It stopped feeling like failure and started feeling like not yet.

And truthfully? I didn’t even want it to be my time.

I wanted to travel. I wanted to book a major role. I wanted to know myself deeply before becoming someone’s wife or mother. I had convinced myself I couldn’t have both—and that fear almost cost me everything.

I compared my life to people who never left their hometown while I moved to the most expensive city in the world. I judged myself against people who had been in relationships their entire lives when my first real one didn’t happen until 19 or 20.

I was applying someone else’s timeline to a life that was never meant to look like theirs.

Confidence Changed Everything

Once I trusted myself truly trusted myself everything aligned.

I know now that I want kids. Marriage is still optional. I’ve explored adoption and artificial insemination. I no longer fear marriage or resent it. I trust that when the time comes, I’ll know.

And if I’m ever hurt again, it won’t be because someone got the best of me it’ll be because I ignored my own intuition.

That’s accountability.

When I look back, most of my heartbreaks came from moments where I knew better but didn’t do better. I operated from insecurity instead of confidence. I repeated lessons because I refused to take responsibility.

Once I did, everything changed.

I can have it all. The career. The family. The freedom. The fast car. The life I imagined.

Because no one is in control of my life but me.

And being the best version of your future self starts with being honest and confident in the present.