Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel
May be triggering for some people.
Roots to Blossoms courage to hit publish tilted my courage to write today's post. The debate ran around like squirrels on a hamster wheel. NewCounselor mentioned at my last session that I dress like a frump. Shouldn't have bugged me, but it does. I remember in high school wearing hot pink velvet hot pants with a silky purple pirate looking shirt to school. My mother bought it for me. I was one of those girls that teachers complained about how short the dresses were only to find out that their mother's bought their clothes. I wanted clothes that were different from everyone else. Electric blue pants suit. Maxi skirt with stars and planets. Macrame belt on hip hugger jeans with huge bell bottoms. I worked hard at having clothes that nobody else had. Disappointed the day another girl wore the same red velvet dress to school on Valentines. I was 'branded' wild because of the clothes I wore. Nobody realized I spent 80% of my time doing homework. I wore clothes like a fabulous disguise. But the clothes were all wrong for me and only made me look silly most days. I once begged my mom to curl my hair for pictures. She used rags and made my hair into tight ringlets. She wouldn't brush it out or let me wash my hair to get rid of them. They lasted a long miserable week of a lot of teasing. I got hand me downs from a cousin that had a totally different coloring and body shape. I looked silly. I wanted to be cute but always seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. In college I rode my bike 3 miles to school so clothes had to be what I could ride my bike in. However, dances were no holds barred. Short, long, silky, slinky, what ever mood I was at the moment came out in my clothes and my dancing. Yes, I got a lot of attention with both. Unfortunately, a lot of negative attention.
After marriage, I still wore the same clothes for the next 10 years. After 6 kids, I thought I should update my wardrobe and tone down my clothes a bit. I still liked wearing bright colors but they were more stylish and conservative. Then I became sick. Really sick. My last two pregnancy the big event of the day was to get up. Changing out of a robe was done only on the days I had to leave the house. I loss all interest in my clothes. Plus about this time, I started noticing that someone kept putting weird clothes in my closet and shoving mine to the back. (I didn't know until much later that each of my separate personalities each had their own wardrobe.)
I headed back to work my clothes devolved to serviceable and cheap with an emphasis on the cheap. I also worked as a computer tech. If you only see the techies come in to fix office computers then you may not know that many jobs having to do with computers shoved under desk and into closets with wiring going every which way, I wore clothes that could go there without exposing too much of myself. One of the assistant principals insisted that I wear clothes that looked more professional...she meant a dress. The day I worked on her computer she found me laying on the floor with my arm up behind her desk fiddling with the wires that connected her to the network (BW, before wireless.) She stared at me on the floor and out of no where proclaimed, "Dresses wouldn't be appropriate for you." I was truly proud of myself for not busting up laughing on the spot. Another computer job at the art school and I indulged in funky off the wall T-shirts. My wardrobe was still devolving. I used the excuse to wear overly large men t-shirts and blue jeans. When another department took over my job they insisted that I wore button down shirts. Women's shirts are two short when I was in my 40's and still needing to bend, twist and stretch like a contortionist. I wore men's Hawaiian shirts, buttoned down and covered even at the weirdest angles. I had cancer...my clothes devolved further hiding a huge scar and a feeling of somehow I was less. I mostly shook off the feeling but kept necklines as high as possible to cover my nothingness. I started counseling and the bottom fell out of my world. I learned things about myself that I am in awe that I forgot in the first place. With remembering came being able to feel. I became a washed with emotions. When it came to clothes, one of the emotions that stomped all over me was shame. Intense, horrible, oil spill of shame and embarrassment for my younger self. The realization that my mother dressed me in a way that spoke of a sexuality well beyond my years, like she was pimping a hooker, shorter, more revealing, more body hugging the better was her opinion. I realized that she was trying to auction me off to the first person that would wed me. I felt shame for all the times I chose clothes that looked sexy when I should have been too young to know what it was. I wanted to attract male attention and I did for all the wrong reasons. I felt so much shame for what I did and was done to me. The pedophile told me repeatedly that my clothes gave him easy access so I must want what he was doing to me. Shame. My clothes devolved further.
Integration proved to be hard in some ways and the main way was the realization that all those weird clothes in my closet were all mine. The shame I felt intensified. I used clothes to hide behind. I gained a lot of weight over the years. I felt ashamed of what I became. I was a frump. Hiding in ill fitting clothes that totally camouflaged and hopefully made me invisible. I was devastated when some one asked me why I wasn't in Hawaii with my boss. I told them because he went with his wife. My clothes devolved further trying to prove I wasn't chasing my boss. I didn't want to be attractive. I didn't want people to notice me. I wanted to disappear, the easiest way to do that is to dress like a frump. Who notices a frump?
PS Please be kind to my counselor. Right now we are working on my view of my sexuality and how it effects my everyday life. He didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and was totally acceptable in the context of the conversation. I was surprised that I felt upset by it. I encountered the same reaction with KavinCoach about 5 years ago. I thought I already worked through why I dress the way I do.
