On Leading a Double Life
One of the reasons I wrote my memoir – and then, ironically, one of the reasons I hesitated to publish it - was because I was leading a double life.
I’m not being dramatic here. I was quite literally leading two separate lives: At home, I donned sweats and made bad jokes and cooked and cleaned and nagged my kids to shower and do their homework;
On Wednesdays, Thursdays and every other weekend, I wore stilettos and designer dresses, went out to shows and fancy restaurants, laughed at handsome suitors' jokes, and relearned to embrace and express my sexuality and individuality.
For the first time in over a decade, I was a single being in the world - not defined as one half of a couple, not seen only as a mother to my children.
It was frightening, confusing, exciting, and terrifying. I felt constantly - whether out, having a social life (for the first time in what felt like an eternity), or home with my kids (meeting the expectations of those around me) - that I was living a lie.
After a few years of living in this precarious state, as the distinct line between my personal and family time grew bolder, thicker, wider... I decided to confess. To the entire world.
I wrote a book about my life. I detailed what had previously only been secret thoughts; I exposed the guilt, shame, and intrigue of my new experiences and relationships; I admitted that I liked being an independent human and a mother.
Then, as I was ready to publish, I got cold feet. Was it truly necessary to air all the dirty details in order to ease my growing discomfort? Couldn't I just glaze over parts of it and include only the good stuff?
Perhaps unfortunately for me, in my mind it was all or nothing. If I wasn't going to include the embarrassing moments, if I wasn't going to admit to the unease, the befuddlement, the biggest failures, I didn't feel it right to include the successes, triumphs and downright dirty fun. either.
Why? Because I thought about how difficult it had been for me to engage in said experiences, how challenging it had been navigating a new world and rediscovering my role in it... and how lonely it had been because I had gone through it all alone.
At the time, I didn't know any other divorced parents and didn't even think to try to meet any. I had no one to whom I could turn for advice or with whom I could talk about the weirdness and excitement; no one with whom I could commiserate.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had to publish the book, not to 'confess' or to set the record straight for personal reasons, but to create a lifeline for those who were in the position I had come to know oh-so-well, and let them know that they weren't alone. That there were so many of us, all trapped and flailing in the same chaos, all tingling with anticipation at what might come next that we had never expected for ourselves!
So, I published my book: the good, the bad, the ugly included. Then I opened a blog, an Instagram account, a Facebook account and a Goodreads account to promote it.
What I hadn't expected was that going public wasn't a step towards combining my disparate lives. It only served to compound the situation...
Because, you see, publishing a memoir about a specific moment of time in the past during which I'd had some bizarre, interesting and unique experiences was one thing. But presenting who I was now and how I was choosing to navigate the world AFTER all those experiences in real time was quite something else.
And now, almost two years on, I'm still not exactly sure who I am or where I belong; I'm still figuring out how to integrate all of the seemingly contradictory aspects of my persona - mom, author, online sex symbol, brokenhearted divorcee, confident single parent - into one singular being.
It's almost hard to believe that they can all be me at the same time.
But of course they can. Regardless of how jarring it may be to acknowledge unexpected or even unwanted aspects of oneself, and regardless of our natural urge to label things - to label people - simply and tidily into neat little boxes in our minds, nobody fits into just one box. Nobody is "just" a mom... or an author... or a sexpot.
We're all a myriad things, a collection of past experiences, dreams for the future and the prevailing situations that we're navigating in the space between. And that's not tidy, that's messy as hell. But it's real.
Do you lead a double life? At work, at home, in your personal time? How do you manage to stay sane? Or do you?
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