Finding Bianca

This blog is dedicated to the long and arduous journey I have been on in search of who I really am.

I began life with the notion that everyone had to fit into a certain 'mould' or 'category'. Not being very confident in who I was I made it my quest to discover which niche I would fit into.

It was apparent from a very early age that I was never going to fit into the 'academic' category. I have always been quite vague and I think my younger sister started to out smart me when she was 18 months old and I was 5. So the very first persona I tried out was the perfectly pretty but very dumb one. Yes, astonishing isn't it!! At the tender age of 4, I demanded that my hair be absolutely PERFECT before I would step foot outside the house. I refused to wear pants or jeans of any kind, even in winter, and only wore skirts or dresses. I not only demanded perfection in my hairstyles, I demanded variety. I would sooner die than have to wear the same hairstyle to kindy more than once a fortnight. My poor mother would go insane having to think of new styles to do my hair. There was the pony, side pony, half pony, braid, side braid, two braids, pigtails, pigtails plaited, pigtails plaited then looped up, a bun, two buns on either side of my head, a fishtail braid, an inside out braid...... the list goes on.... My poor mother!!! I also had the doey personality down pat too. My mother and father never had high hopes for me academically. While my sisters would be in trouble if they came home with anything less than an A, everyone would rejoice if I bought home a B. I think I astonished everyone when I graduated from highschool and went off to uni!!

I could quite happily have gone along with this persona for the rest of my life had it not been for one tiny glitch in the plan. There comes an age where YOU have to start doing your own hair and I was FAAAAAR too lazy to do it. So I completely ditched the whole facade, even the dresses, and decided to give something else a try.

I think the next mould I tried to squeeze myself into was the surfie chick. Never mind the fact that I was dark haired, tubby and could not surf. I decided that surfer chick was the way to go. It wasn't just that I couldn't surf, I also hated the beach so I have no idea why I decided that this was my niche. As far as I was concerned, being a surfie chick involved wearing lots of Billabong and Ripcurl labels. On anything and everything you owned. My poor mum and dad must have spent a small fortune on surf products for me. I have photos of myself in a billabong shirt, billabong shorts, billabong hat, billabong bum bag AND a billabong back pack. Yes, it was tragic. Very tragic. When it became bleepingly obvious that I was not a surfie chick (and surprisingly it took me a few years to find out) I abandoned it in favour of another very interesting phase....

After a brief period of thinking I was a hippie I settled on being a goth. All the surf clothes were abandoned in favour of anything and everything black and baggy. I would wear dark eyeliner and black boots with black socks. I was in a play by a local theatre group called 'Death Web' - need I say more??? I went to psychics and played with tarot cards and made my mum walk 3m behind me in the shops.

Luckily this phase evolved quite quickly into the alternate 'drama' phase. This was one of my favourite phases as it is probably closest to who I really am. My friends and I pretended that we didn't care what anyone thought of us and would do crazy things where ever and whenever we pleased. Whether it be singing at the top of our lungs on the train or performing street theatre in King Georges square we acted like we didn't have a care in the world. I was very sad when this phase ended. I think it wrapped itself up when highschool finished and all my drama class mates went off to unit to do different things.

Somewhere in here, I'm not quite sure where, was my Vegetarian phase. I am sure that I must hold the record for the shortest period of time that anyone has ever been a vegetarian. I didn't even have time to consume a vegetarian meal in my time being a non meat eater!!! It started with an announcement, just prior to going on a walk with mum and Kristy, that I had decided that I loved animals soo much that I wanted to be a vegetarian. So off we went on our walk. During the walk mum and Kristy told me all about being a vegetarian and the foods I wouldn't be able to eat (what??? There is meat in jelly???) and the foods I would have to eat (beans, tofu, eggplant - YUCK!!). By the end of the walk I had decided that being a vegetarian was not for me and I happily tucked into my lamb chops that night for dinner.

My next phase was quite self destructive. Not having fitted in with any of the other things I had tried, I decided that maybe substance abuse was the way to make me cool and popular. So I took up smoking and boy did that make me feel cool!!! Drinking followed with disastrous results. My morals relaxed A LOT in regards to boys and I tried a few illegal drugs along the way. This period in my life bought about a huge dark cloud of depression. I had really lost who I was and I didn't like who I had become. There was some good times during this period, and it was definitely harder to ditch than the other phases as I had become addicted to nicotine.

Luckily I found salvation in the form of my friends and Ben. I have wonderful supportive friends who always made me feel so good about myself and then Ben knocked me up, which quickly put an end to any substance abuse problems. I could no longer smoke, drink or party. Thank goodness!!!

And so began the most wonderful part of my life. Motherhood. There are no words to describe how much I love being a mother. My heart feels like it is going to explode with love every time I even think about my 4 little kiddies.

Since I have become a mother I have been contemplating my own journey and have thought hard about how my actions are going to be perceived by my children. I stopped going on constant diets as I thought that it might harm their self image, and may be a bad example to set for them - and have never been happier. I have stopped worrying about what others think of me (to some degree... I still do filter a lot of thoughts and opinions) because I want to teach them not to care about what others think.

My phases have stopped and I have just started being who I am. Which, as far as I can tell, is a very down to earth, diplomatic, comfort loving, diet coke drinking, science book reading chocoholic. I am also very into yoga right now but I am unsure as to whether this is just another phase or whether it might be something that I continue for the rest of my life. All I know is that I really love it and I don't care that there are 60 year old women in the class who are more flexible than me (I don't bend very well!!!). It makes me feel good and it helps me to focus so that's all that matters!!

If nothing else I know that my phases have provided much entertainment for my family, who constantly laugh about them and bring up different times. I don't regret any of the things I have done because it has helped me to become the person I am today and given me a greater understanding of people in general (or so I like to believe!!!). It must be nice to be so self assured from infancy, that you know who you are and what you want to do straight out of the womb (aka Ben). But for those of us, who aren't so self confident, the journey to discovering your true self is a journey worth taking!! Ok... maybe that last line was a bit soppy... but I'll leave it in for laughs sake!!!

It is now 12:30a.m. and I have a house full of sleeping kids who are going to be up soon so I had better sign off.

Anyone care to share any interesting phases they have been through????