I’m having kind of a bad day, a day when I need to be strong. And I haven’t been doing a great job of it. In fact, I’ve been failing miserably. And I’m normally so good at the strong thing. But today I feel like shattered glass that cracks and cracks until it can’t hold up anymore and ends up in a million pieces. And I feel as though I’m letting things get to me that I shouldn’t and if that only I were a better, stronger, more together person, I wouldn’t be glass. I would be stone. Unbreakable. Solid. And even more than that, I think that the things I’m letting break me are like feathers and only a very weak person would fall under their weight.
And faced with miles to go before I sleep, I am tackling my weaknesses, the miles, the promises to keep by shopping for dresses online.
I don’t really own any dresses. Not really a dresses or jewelry or frilly kind of girl. I’m mostly a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. I’m not at all into shopping for clothes, mostly because I’m infinitely too lazy to deal with trying things on. When I do shop, I tend to just grab things and bring them home and tell myself that if I don’t like them or they don’t fit, I’ll return them later. Only then I never do and I end up with clothes hanging in my closet with the tags on until one day I clean everything out and donate everything.
During the rare times that I do shop, I’m always attracted to very ugly things or very pretty things. I look at fancy party dresses I would never wear and frilly lacy things that would swirl as I walk. And then I buy a pair of jeans. I was in New York over the weekend and walked through the designer clothes and tried things on despite my laziness and ended up with jeans, Vans, a t-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt. All of which I love way more than frilly dresses, so I’m not in any way complaining. But today, being all jagged, splintered, blunt edges, I just want to be pretty. I don’t want to have to be strong and hard and take anything that comes at me. And so even though I know that’s what I need to do, I pretend, for just a minute, that I can be soft and frivolous and might one day be able to just breathe and have somewhere to go in a swirly dress.