i want to talk about style and why it is important right now. the trouble is that i keep coming up with more and more reasons why it’s important for me – it’s a reflection! being my own expert! i am a thoughtful curator! when x happens, then y can happen! honoring my body! – and if i write about them all, this is going to turn into a novel.

so, let’s start with one of them.

i found myself sobbing on the drive home from an afternoon that included shopping so i followed the tears to their source in my journal.

it was a long meandering trail. i think i will just share it with you.

begin journal entry.

first, i was thinking about going dancing and how one of the troubles with it is the inevitable, “but what do i wear!” and how it feels vulnerable and silly to ask that question. i think that same thing trips me up for other activities.

it made me wonder if i think that people whose style i am drawn to must know how to do things that i want to do. or that they know how to do things in general. and that their sense of style somehow reflects that knowing. so clearly i can’t have a sense of style because i don’t have that knowing.

looking at people’s clothing is one of the ways in which i tell myself that i am an outsider. that of course i don’t (or won’t) fit in because i don’t know how to dress like that.

it feels like it has something to do with belonging.

it seems common to think that the right clothing makes you belong. on the one hand, i imagine that if i had the right clothing, i’d feel like i belonged. on the other hand, i imagine that unless i belong, i can’t have the right clothing, because clearly it’s the belonging that makes the clothing possible. clearly that feels like something that is impossible to achieve.

it feels like it has something to do with homecoming too, as in, coming home to yourself.

do i think that the right clothing makes you feel at home in your own skin? or do i think that’s how it works? but i know that clothing hasn’t made me feel comfortable in my skin so clearly you have to feel at home in your skin and then you have the right clothing – and maybe i think that’s impossible? but do i really think it’s impossible to feel at home in your own skin?

is it something about seeing what i want and having a sense of how i think it will make me feel – and knowing that it truly won’t make me feel that way so it seems impossible to get to the feeling if i know deep down that the thing i think will get me there won’t get me there at all?

that does make sense. it seems like it would show up more clearly in fashion because it’s easy for me to look at something and know that i like it and not be able to see at all how i get to be the person who can wear it.

i wonder if it’s partly “now is not then”.

there was a version of me who did wear clothes that she liked and felt cute in. she remembers that clothing didn’t do the magical things i suspect she always thought it would.

(because of course, in my head, it was the girls who were cute and thin and looked cute in what they were wearing who were popular and got the boys and also seemed to be comfortable wherever they went or whatever they did.)

that version of me remembers that it didn’t work that way for her. she didn’t get the boy or feel at home in her body or feel at home in the world or feel cute enough or thin enough. she still felt wrong underneath. horribly wrong. and eventually things became hard and sad – and then out went the cute clothing and in came the fleece pants.

i understand that clothes aren’t the thing that changes everything (except in the sense that they can help you practice and remember and focus). i understand that it’s actually the inner work that changes things. but that version of me doesn’t know that.

ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

it is bigger.

it is “now is not then” and it is also that i can see that now it is different.

this time, my style is not changing (wait, can you call fleece pants a style?) because i think it is going to magically change things and make them better. it is changing because now i am doing the work that actually matters. this time, the outer changes are a reflection of inner shifts, and reflecting inner work on the outside feels big and scary.

end journal entry.

clearly, in my case, retail therapy is highly effective!