Scarlett Bean

We go through our days and often we see the same people on a regular basis; the barista at our favorite coffee shop, our coworkers, the people we've become acquainted with over the years. Some (like me) are stay at home moms and we go to playgroups, the park or birthday parties and we see other stay at home moms. We fill the silence by talking to one another about our children or the weather. We go around with our masks that we wear all day, everyday, and we rarely lift them to expose the person underneath. Maybe the woman at playgroup with the purple sweatsuit and the curly hair writes erotic fiction in her spare time. Perhaps your favorite teller at the bank is in a rock band. The point is that we often don't see these people as REAL people with lives outside the context in which you are used to seeing them.

What if I told you that I am a wife and mother who usually can be seen wearing jeans and sneakers but a few nights a week will put those away and transform into a burlesque dancer, sassy and sexy. Instead of sneakers, I wear heels. Instead of jeans, I wear my stockings and garters. I shimmy in my sparkly bras and sequined booty shorts onstage, free from the confines of the stay at home mom stereotype.

Or.. perhaps you come into my home for a playdate and see that it is indeed tidy but the decor is rather eclectic. Do you think it's that way because my husband and I have different tastes and this is the only way it'll work for both of us? Perhaps. What if it's this way because I can't be bothered to choose a theme, the way I can't be bothered to commit to an album to listen to so my music is always on random? Perhaps it never crosses your mind that it is almost painful for me to make such decisions so I just throw it all together and leave it.

And here is the part that is sad sometimes... there are days when I have the best ideas in the world and I throw myself into hundreds of projects at the same time. For every one of those days, there are others when I can barely get out of bed and my child is the only reason to even bother with it. This is the struggle of a person with bipolar disorder. You rarely discover this about other people unless you are very close with them.

My hope in writing this blog is to make sense of the duality of wife/motherhood and the wild child I feel deep down. Maybe it will never make sense but I feel as if there is a way to bridge this gap somehow.