The Siren in Sweatpants

“I want to be feminine in a way that scares men, like one of those deep-sea sirens.”

A dangerous femininity, magnetic, mysterious, untouchable. 

I would walk into a room and the hair on people’s arms would stand up. A ripple in the air. Faces turning. Mouths falling open in awe. There’s something they want from me. They don’t know quite what, but the longing is real. So is the pain.

I apply red lipstick. Blood red. My eyes are dark. My perfume lingers, enticing and unsettling, like something you once wanted but didn’t dare to admit. Skin glowing as if I live by candlelight. Hair wild and wavy like seaweed in the tide. My hips sway to a song only I can hear. I am mystery incarnate. A goddess risen from the foam. A—

"MAA MAA!"

I jolt out of my daydream. The spell breaks. My eyelids flutter. Reality crashes in. I am not a sea goddess. I am no longer Aphrodite on her shell. I am a woman in pyjamas with toothpaste on her chest.

I take my toddler out of bed. We sit at the breakfast table. We laugh. He giggles. For a moment, it’s perfect.

Then he decides he doesn’t want bread. Or eggs. He wants chocolate cookies. I say no. He screams like I’ve personally ruined his life. Eggs land on the floor. And in my hair. I offer a banana as a peace offering. He accepts it. And then hurls it across the room like a tiny, angry dictator.

I crouch on the floor in saggy pyjamas, my butt showing like a fat construction worker, scraping banana mush off the table with the edge of a plate shaped like a dinosaur. I mutter to myself like a witch mid-incantation:
“I am a siren. I am a siren. I am the storm they warned you about.”

Then comes the poopy diaper, and a meltdown over the wrong socks.

I finally get him to daycare, wearing a messy bun that’s more bird nest than casual. Running shoes and an unattractive coat that hides my lumpy, tired body like a used garbage bag.

As I walk back home in the morning air, disheveled and a bit embarrassed about how I went outside and interacted with people, I can’t help but feel… like I’ve disappeared.

Obviously, I’ve never been a siren-like woman. But I feel like I totally lost myself in motherhood. The toll of two years without sleep and with constant stress is carved into my face and body. Somewhere between the sleepless nights, the mental load, and the constant giving, I misplaced the woman I used to be.

The wild one.
The sexy one.
The creative one.
The me that wasn’t just someone's mom, someone’s partner, someone’s something.

Where did she go?

I hope she’s not gone. That she’s waiting patiently for me to get my shit together. Under the pile of laundry and the daycare drop-offs. Surviving, hanging on, despite the tantrums and the to-do lists.

She’s there, in the way I still sway to music while meal prepping before my toddler gets home, in the way something in me refuses to go quiet. She doesn’t ask. My hips just move.

I don’t want to go back to who I was before being a mom. I don’t want to escape motherhood. I don’t want to be someone else. But I do want to be more.

I want to bring the part of me to the surface that’s wild and sensual. But at the same time, I’m also a girl who’s sweet and silly. Sometimes I laugh too loudly. I daydream about ancient forest rituals that involve dancing under stars while a campfire blazes and women in flowing gowns circle beside me. I daydream about running with the wolves. At the same time, I’m a grown woman who wants to build a snowman and whose perfect Friday night is being in her pyjamas on the couch by 7 PM.

Yet, I want to be all of them.

The siren.
The mother.
The barefoot, untamed forest girl.
The girl in soft, fluffy socks.
The career-driven woman.
The warm, funny me that’s all over the place.
The best possible mother.

Can I be all at once? The problem is not that I don’t know who I am, but that I try to fit myself into a single type and feel like I’m less if I don’t always fit the stereotype. But do we have to choose? Be the temptress or the caregiver? The boss bitch or the kind, gentle woman. The mystic or the mother. The sacred or the silly.

Is it possible to be more than one type? Can I ask whichever type I choose that day, or even that moment, to appear when I need her?

Maybe you don’t owe the world a neat definition. Maybe you just choose which archetype suits the situation and let the others take a step back. I’d like to bring certain types more to the forefront and let the mother who stresses about everything step away from the wheel once in a while. I know I need her, and she serves a purpose, but I need the others, too. And I’m determined to have a new mantra from now on:

Be the siren.

Be the mother.

Be the whole damn myth.