I don’t take fashion seriously at all. It always cycles and for me it’s way too much work to follow the trends. I’m very much unlike some of my fellow 25 year olds around me! But I have noticed a few things when I looked over my wardrobe and the favorite pieces of clothing that I like to wear. I feel most comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt or jean shorts and a tee. I hate layering, which it probably why I suck terribly at it. But I have a mixture of styles I like to wear…edgy chic punk, pretty girlie dresses and tops, casual jeans and band tees, boho blouses and sweaters, very classic dresses and dress shirts…just an assortment of things. I think it steams from my history of always trying to find out where I fit in this world. And I think it’s come to a point where I don’t fit into any category or label, and I’ve realized this, have internalized this, and I just mess around.
Some days I’m the girlie girl in my flowy dresses and other times I’m edgy in my dark burgundy red tops and black leather boots. Whatever I feel at the moment, that’s who I’ll be. I wear things based on how I feel. Days when I feel a bit blah I like to go out in yoga pants and a soft tee, often braless because I just can’t deal with any of it. When I feel okay and good, it’s jeans and a nice shirt or tee depending on the events planned. But those days I feel really good, fresh and clean out of the shower, I play around with my clothes and dress up a little. I’ve always dressed my emotions.
I try not to care what others may think of me. I see this as my personal style. I’ve realized it reflects how I live my life. Like I never fit into any clique in school or anything. I was a floater, hopping from one group to the next. I have an assortment of friends from all over that don’t really fit together. But that’s always been how I lived my life and it’s becoming normal for me. Trying to find out where I fit in was stressful and caused me a lot of anxiety. It just took some time to really accept that I have the choice to really be whatever it is I want because I’m not tethered down to one label or category…and that’s quite beautiful.
It’s interesting…I was at a party maybe two summers ago. A bunch of my friends and I were hanging about in my friend’s (who was throwing the party) room just talking, when one of my friends asked if he could read our palms. He told us he learned palm reading some years ago from books he studied for fun…so obviously we didn’t take him seriously, but we let him read our palms anyway. He read mine last and at first he sort of just stared at it. I instantly thought something was wrong with me, but then he said that my lines were so faint, that it wasn’t a bad thing. What he proceeded to read from it was that my future, my life, is what I make of it. That I’ll have a lot of choices and the opportunity to choose whatever I want. “You can basically do anything,” he said. He thought this was so interesting because he’s never seen a hand that read like that. But I’ve been slowly coming to realize that that’s how I’ve always lived and will have to live my life.
My mother always told me since I was a child that I could do and be whatever it is that I wanted. I’ve never really took what she said seriously because I always had this ideal that I needed to be and do what everyone else does. Be a good student, go to college, get a respectable job, start a family, etc. Thinking about it now though, no one ever said I had to do this. My parents always encouraged me to explore things and do what I want to do, and I attribute my artsy ways to that nurturing. But after dropping out of college as a freshmen (then going back after a year), going through a depression, then graduating, I didn’t get a job right away. My graduation gift was a summer abroad with my best friend, which was amazing and such an eye-opener. I really felt it then that I could do so many things with my life and I had all of these plans for when I got back home. It was the last gift my dad gave me. He passed away from cancer the day I got back home from my trip and all of that enthusiasm sort of diminished.
It’s been two years since that day and I’m finally beginning to really realize again that I can do anything I want. I find it amazing that all of these thoughts came from just looking at what I wear, how I feel about what I wear and what that means for me. I never thought to make that connection, but it’s really profound!