At the risk of showing my age and
alienating those readers born too late to share in the cultural phenomenon of
children's TV in the 70s, I'm reminded of the daily choice of which window to
go through: round, arch or square? (1)
Choices back then were simple, like which type of penny sweet to add to your
bag in the sweet shop on a Friday on the way home from school, or which outfit
to put on a Sindy doll when your friend came round to play - it was always the
ballerina.
Still, making simple choices as a child is good practice for the myriad of indecision coming your way as an adult. I often think of myself as standing in a changing room looking at a row of pristine white doors, each with its own neatly numbered shining plaque, considering my options before opening one of them to put on the outfit that hangs within it and pick up the baggage that accompanies it. Don't we all have different roles that we play each day? I have my wife role, kissing my husband 'Good morning' before I stumble around the bathroom trying to make myself presentable for the day ahead. I have my Mum role, which used to involve a lot of multi-tasking to enable my children to get through the pre-school checklist of breakfast, dressing in uniform, bag checking, picking up lunch boxes, reassuring that PE would be fine that day and they just needed to try their best in their spelling test. Lately, my Mum role is more likely to involve a checklist of whether breakfast is going to be eaten before a work shift or calling up the stairs to see how long it really takes to do eye make-up! As children become more independent, my Mum role is more that of a hotel receptionist checking everyone in and out and asking about their dinner reservations. I expect it's a common cry from parents of teenagers and beyond to bemoan the use of the house as a hotel with all services on tap: laundry, meals provided, room service when I've removed the pizza boxes casually thrown on the floor when they had a friend round and ordered out. If I moan too much about the lack of responsibility and demand that chores are completed, am I being a diva? If I continue clearing up after them and doing those Mum things that were always part of my job description, does that make me a door mat?
Well, clearly the dressing room door to the Mum outfit contains a lot of baggage! What about the other roles that I habitually adopt? I don't know if anyone else has these scenarios going around their head, but my adulting life is managed by me adopting different characters within it. Don't get me wrong, I don't actually have names for each and physical costumes to wear - that would be entering some kind of multiple personality realm - but adult life is only really advanced role play isn't it? What started in the home corner or on board a pirate ship just becomes more refined and subtle as an adult.
I have my 9 to 5 soundtrack in my head as I fire up my computer to check on emails and start my working day. I have the socially adept, a smile for everyone persona when faced with a family / friends gathering. You know the ones where small talk is the order of the day and no-one really actually talks about anything significant and we go back to our lives having moved no further forward as a person. I have my daughter role where I balance being supportive and taking on a semi-parent role reversal scenario with moments of being back to being told what to do, as I was as a child, although this is now in the guise of friendly motherly advice. Then there’s the more recently developed writer’s role. In this I inhabit a somewhat romanticised world in my head where I am both the editor and writer with a deadline, snatching moments of time to write the latest piece or addition to a longer work in progress. Sat in a coffee shop or in a quiet space at home, writing for whichever current project, allows me that feeling of headspace which is fast becoming the goal to strive for within a busy working week.
Now, as I stand in the dressing
room with all those doors lined up before me, I see a door that had been mostly
left shut for a while. This is the door with outfits behind that allow me to be
myself, a woman looking to have an evening out with friends being relaxed and
doing silly things just because I can. A woman who likes to dress up in a newly
purchased outfit and put on my bright lipstick and paint my nails and have a
date night with my husband – whatever that might entail. A woman who doesn’t
have to explain to anyone why she might have had a few too many drinks and is
now singing rather too loudly on a night out. A self-assured and capable woman
with diva aspirations.
The reasons this door has been
neglected are complex and perhaps we all go through phases of being the last
priority in a long list? In our busy lives with work demands and family
commitments, especially when the children are younger and more dependent or there
is a family member with health issues, it is so easy to get caught up with the
automatic and mundane and find so many reasons not to put yourself first from
time to time. I have recently found myself asking if this has meant that I have
created an expectation that I will drop everything when asked and rush to help
others – particularly where my children are concerned. I think the
circumstances of the last year or so have had a cumulative effect where I lost
self-confidence and sought solace in seeking out a calm ticking over life by
having a default mechanism of agreeing to things, in that sort of ‘anything for
a quiet life’ way.
When you’re feeling low and lacking
confidence it is somewhat of a paradox that you take on more by not saying no
to requests. So yes, there have been times when I’ve been thinking that rather
than the sassy diva I would like to portray like a leading lady upon a stage in
the spotlight, I’ve been more like the proverbial door mat – down trodden and
gathering the dirt and dust from the stamping feet above. The way forward now
is to pick myself up off the floor, fling open that last door and strut out
with confidence – well, at least every once in a while.
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