Last weekend I spent a horrifyingly long amount of time looking for shoes online. By a long time, I mean A LOOOOOOONG TIME. Like, all weekend, for hours, staring at the little pictures on nordstrom.com. And I could feel myself descending into this irreversible pit of crazy, you know, I could tell that I’d gone so far that Mr. E thought I was a complete freak and was sort of ACTUALLY disturbed by it, and that it was damaging how he thought of me, and that every time I wore these fucking shoes or someone said they were cute I’d have to hear about how craaaaaaaazy I am and I could feel myself going to this place of “not a normal amount of time to spend on the internet looking at shoes and agonizing over what pair to buy” and still I COULD NOT STOP MYSELF.
I couldn’t stop. I had to find the perfect pair of shoes.
Later on, waiting in the drive through at McDonald’s for a diet Coke (we live large here in Nebraska), I tried to explain it to Mr. E. Told him about how it feels like one day you’re a cute sassy slip of a girl in cut offs and high tops and the next minute you’re a fat tired suburban loser with bad skin and a crappy job who wears sweat pants and her husbands XL Gap sweaters to work and how maybe a hot pair of sneakers feels like protection from the sad state you once let yourself get into now that you’ve crawled out of it. But I don’t know that he got it. At first I thought maybe it was because he’s never been fat, he’s never had to wear sweatshirts larger than he should have to, he doesn’t really KNOW. But then I thought maybe it’s because really, I never was that sassy girl, and in fact I haven't crawled out of anything. What I should have been explaining was not that I felt like at any moment my cute veneer could slip away and $85 Diesel sneakers seemed like a way to keep it from happening. What I should have been explaining was that in fact I’ve never felt cute. I’ve never been a slip of a girl. And sometimes when someone’s selling cute packaged in a pair of sneakers you feel like it just might work, like just maybe you can buy the magic and wear it on your feet. Because the truth is I’ve felt too fat, too large, and too ugly, for my entire life.
Oh, sure, I’ve had moments. The right pair of heels, the right black dress, the right cocktail in my hand, sometimes it all adds up to a fleeting moment of gorgeous, a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. The possibility of beauty. I can shake my booty with the best of them to the right song on the radio, and sometimes, on a warm day, wearing a certain skirt, sometimes I do feel pretty. And when I was 17, and I was so anorexic you could see my bones through my skin, I had this pair of daisy dukes covered with stars and when I wore those shorts I felt like I could rule the world.
But it’s not the moments where I’ve had it that haunt me. The moments that haunt me are the moments where I thought I had it, but I didn’t.
A few years ago we went to New York to visit all of our friends and some of our not friends and I had a new pink cell phone and I packed my nicest clothes and I wore lipstick and I won’t lie, I felt cute. I felt really cute.
I was wrong. I wasn’t cute. I saw pictures afterwards of the fat, redfaced awkward girl I was, sitting at a sweaty table behind a pile of beer cans with my dorky hair and my mom cardigan and a sad little shy smile and I think, for fucks sake, I might have been wearing pearls. I was NOT cute. No wonder no one would talk to me.
Thinking back on that moment and what a fool I was can make me sick to this day.
And it’s this moment that makes me hate myself, hate life, hate our friends, hate self confidence. I’d rather hate everything about myself than think I look good, only to realize later that I don’t. I’d rather ANYTHING in the world than be proven a fool. Honestly, it scares the shit out of me that life can do this to me. That I can get it so wrong. Nothing in the world scares me more.
We’re going back to New York in a few weeks.
And I can’t look back on this trip and realize I wore the wrong shoes.
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4 comments:
Wow. I can, sadly, relate to every single word of this.
This is perhaps one of the most depressing blog entries you have ever posted.
Cheer up, chin up girl.
Great entry...I can certainly relate!!! I'm still shocked when I look at pictures from my highest weight...even though I never thought I looked "cute" I at least thought I looked "okay"...but nope, I just looked like tee-total shit.
Great post. One of the worst feelings for me is feeling stupid. I think that's why I don't like talking to strangers on the phone. I'm afraid I'll end up saying something dumb and they'll think I'm an idiot. And I've also looked back at photos and thought "What was I thinking?" I think we all need at least one honest friend who will tell us when we look like shit.
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