The best thing is the changes that
have happened in me. As I’ve learned who I am, I’ve become more self-confident.
I’m more confident in the choices I make as a parent and for myself personally.
There have been times when I’ve bought skirts or pants or even two piece
outfits because my mother insisted I had to have them. I even tried telling her
that I would prefer basic colors such as navy or black for ease of dressing,
but she insisted that I just had to have the print skirt/pants and outfits,
even though in one case I only wanted the top. Looking back on this, I think
she may have wanted them for herself, but couldn’t afford them. So, if I bought
them, she could at least enjoy them vicariously. Now I follow my own
inclinations in clothing. I wear what I want without hers or anyone else’s
influence.
I’ve discovered that while I still
like dresses of all lengths, I want my shorter ones to have straight skirts and
the longer ones can be straight or fuller, but not too full. I’m also not
afraid to enhance what I have with my clothes and that on occasion, it’s okay
to wear something, which tends to be a little revealing, but still leaves more
to the imagination than it shows.
Even now, I find my tastes changing.
For years when I bought new jeans, I would buy two pairs of black ones and two
pairs of blue. To me, the black ones were a bit dressier. Now I’d rather just have blues ones. Then I
don’t have to worry about what shirt I’ll be wearing. With blue jeans, I can
wear a navy colored shirt, whereas with black ones I can’t. Not to mention I don’t
like wearing purple with black. Makes me feel like a walking bruise.
I also like clothes I don’t need to fuss
with. I want to put them on and go.
I’ve gone back to the kind of jewelry
I wore when I was younger. I always had a preference for smaller earrings. As
some of my college classmates could tell you, I had earrings that hung down to
my shoulders. When I was younger, I wore big earrings on occasion, but always
had a preference for small, delicate earrings. It was with the encouragement of
a woman whose fashion sense I respected that I started wearing really long
earrings. I re-discovered that I still prefer smaller earrings. If I do wear
larger earrings, they generally don’t hang past my jaw line.
In recent years, I had cut my hair
short; so short at times that if I hadn’t been as well built as I am, I could
have easily been mistaken for a man. In fact, one night I was mistaken for a
man.
In the course of pursuing my paralegal degree,
I took a class in legal investigation. One of the assignments for this class
was to do a ride along with a police officer and write a report on the
experience. At one point during the ride along, a man was put in the back of
the car with cuffs on. A minute later, he said, “Sir? Excuse me, sir.”
He must have spoken at least half a dozen times
before I realized he was talking to me. I quickly set him straight about my
gender and the fact that I couldn’t do anything for him.
Shortly after I moved into David’s
house, I decided to allow my hair to grow out. Just over a year later, my hair
went from being short layers at the top of my ears and the top of the back of
my neck to just about my shoulders. I never had the patience to allow my hair
to get any longer than shoulder length before cutting it. This time I let it
grow as long as possible. It took about four years, but it got down to around
my hips when I decided I’d had enough. I was having to pull the hair up as I
combed down to insure it all got combed. Not to mention having to constantly tie
it back to keep it out of whatever I was doing.
I’ve come to realize that while
makeup is nice when I dress up to go out, I don’t really care to wear it daily.
I have better things to do with my time and energy than stare at my face while
applying foundation, eye makeup, etc. When I did wear makeup while working, I
wore dark, dramatic colors. If I were to wear makeup now, I’d choose more natural
colors for my skin tone.
The other major change in me is
connected to my overall possessions. When I first moved into David’s house, my
stuff filled his basement, took space in the attic and I still had about a
dozen or so boxes stacked in the living room and more under my bed. This was
just my personal stuff. I only had a couple of boxes for Caleb and that was
mostly clothing that had been given to me for him. Sometime after moving in, I
went through everything I owned and sorted it out according to what I wanted to
keep and what I wanted to get rid of. The stuff I wanted to get rid of I would
haul to the swap meet in my car and sell. When I got done sorting, I realized I
needed a pickup truck to haul everything to the swap meet. I couldn’t believe
it. I had gone through all my stuff a few years before and a friend of mine had
taken my stuff and me to the swap meet in his little pick up. But how in
heaven’s name had I managed to keep so much and acquire so much more that I
needed a pickup truck again? I’d been trying for years to unclutter my life, so
this was quite a surprise. Some of the stuff I could tell you exactly why I had
it in the first place and why I had hung onto it. Some of it though was like,
where did this come from and why in the world did I keep it?
A couple of years after taking stuff
to the swap meet, I went through my stuff again. This time I organized it and
made inventory lists of everything stored in the basement. I still found a
couple of boxes of stuff to get rid of.
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