Masquerade

If you could take any one day of your life and be anyone you wanted to be, who would you choose? Would you be a queen or a princess for the day? Or a famous poet, a fully-charged athlete, a hot rock musician; maybe you’d travel back in time or into a book as Joan of Arc or Lady Guinevere, or Cleopatra!

It’s funny but I started pondering while chatting with a girlfriend the other day how we as woman have secret lives; whether acted upon or not, we have fantasies and dreams that may or may never be fulfilled.

I know that sounds a bit negative, but truthfully, we do. We may have the career that never came into fruition because we gave it up to have our children and family which is a wonderful thing, but leaves us with a certain longing.

It could be because our husband wasn’t 100-percent on board, selfish and guilted us out of it. Perchance we were just too afraid to take the leap and having a family proved more significant.

Then there’s that guy who got away – or we sprinted away from – leaving us in an intermittent state of “what ifs?” You know who he is, girls.

What if we never broke up? Where would we be now or 10 years from now? What would my life be like?

Well, perhaps, chances are where you’d be is right where you are in the present, or is it possible that people really can change and grow, work out their issues, come face to face with their dark side, take a good look in the mirror and just let it go and move toward peace and love?

The symbolic masque at Halloween, leave us in wonder of it all! The mystical party where smudges of bewitching color swirl around in the dark and everyone’s in their own trance. And so it’s fun to put on the disguise once or twice a year and just be anyone but ourselves, right?

Sorry, honey, but Janel – she’s left her body tonight. Say hello to Alice!

I sure could use a wonderland about now sans the the Queen of Hearts; I’d like to keep my head in all perspectives. We all could use it at some points in our lives, to kind of filter out the turmoil and the emotional baggage we carry, escape and ding-ding!

There’s that word again, escape!

This Hollow’s Eve, it’s your free pass to be whoever you want and mean it, feel it, live it!

I remember pre-married days, my girlfriends and I use to go away for the night or weekend and be completely out of character. Let’s see, once we were southern belles and pretty good with the accents too, another time my sassy sis was Lucy the Fortune Teller, happily reading palms. And quite believable I must say.

Why? Because when you’re in disguise there’s no expectation; social norms can go out the window, we release. Some of us wear the disguise on the outside and some of us wear it on the inside, never revealing our true selves or finding out who our true self is minus the ego and superego. Who are we at a soul level?

And believe me, when you’re always busy with work, ballet, piano, cheerleading, football games cooking dinner, taking the dog for a walk, buying groceries, homework, cleaning the bathtub, cleaning the toilet and everyone’s underwear (I haven’t even grazed the surface, right, ladies?), it’s easy to get lost in the details and you just go-go on auto pilot.

On some futuristic date when robots are affordable, it would be nice to be like the Jetsons and send our sweet Sally off to take care of some of these redundant responsibilities.

After sleeping on it though, I say this, girls: Just have fun! It’s so adventurous and exciting to be in disguise, to be free, to experience our most conjured up fantasies, but in the end the absolute best person to be is yourself.

Ciao Bella

Posted by Janel M. Harrison on October 18, 2012. Filed under Columns,Girl-2-Girl,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry