There are several things I’ve done during my short 24 years here on this planet earth that have made me feel like a complete and utter fool. Including, but not limited to: using bare hands to clean a swimming pool with corrosive acid, running down a mountain covered in cactus (in shorts), passing up free front row tickets to see O*Town (hel-lo, Ashley Parker Angel, still so much love), drinking tap water in Guatemala city, allowing my Father to take a wood tick out of my back with a hot knife, biting a 300 pound bouncer at my favourite bar & paying rent on a credit card (for three months…)
With that said, there are a number of foolish things I have done in the past 24 years that I have done shamelessly and that should have (but haven’t) made me turn 5 shades of red. Including, but certainly not limited to: peeing over the side of a moving motorboat, drinking someone’s chewing tobacco spit (not on purpose, obviously), returning his text messages 670 odd times, singing a drunken & rowdy karaoke rendition of ‘Santa Baby’ in front of a talent scout and baking a chocolate cake mistaking icing sugar for flour.
Of course, then there are all the times I’ve embarrassed the people around me without even meaning to, which is where it gets interesting. I’m relatively well-mannered in the scheme of things. Not when I’ve had six drinks and am out with girlfriends and certainly not when you piss me off, but generally the Sunday School teacher in me prevails. So I don’t ever assume that my actions are about to cause people discomfort… but if there is one thing that has caused more uncomfortable problems in all of my relationships (ALL of my relationships) it’s me and my… “taste.”
You see, I have this thing for country boys. For outlaws. For those blue-collar, rough-around-the-edges, tail-gate-party and cowboy-hat kind of men… and yet I also have this thing for fine dining and really, really high heels. You would think that this would work itself out somehow. And perhaps, if I was born and raised in the land of the Georgia Peach there might be more of an understanding between the ‘lady’ and the ‘southern gentleman’, but as it stands, I end up embarrassed because he doesn’t own a suit and he gets embarrassed because I wear Jimmy Choo’s to a kegger. True story. Check it.
Over the years I’ve worn “inappropriate” heels everywhere from a fishing boat to a shooting range. I’ve bailed hay in 6 inch espadrilles and watched a pig roast (eyeballs and everything) in 5 inch Mary Janes. If you recall a past blog article, I even once stabbed a 5 year old in church with a pair of pointy toe stiletoes and made her bleed through her adorable little gap tights. It’s just part of me. If the shoe fits, right?
Well, the shoe always fits. Both literally and figuratively. I’m a size 7, which mean every shoe I want is always available in my size and figuratively, I’ll never need a reason to wear something ridiculous to an understated event (a girlfriend once had to talk me out of bring Louis Vuitton luggage camping…) My mother has [finally] stopped asking if I packed flats (instead she puts them in my Christmas stockings) and my friends think I’m naturally 5’9.
A friend of mine recently blogged about her shoe collection and how she’s no longer feels like she has to justify it. This got me thinking about all the times I have refused to justified mine. I wrote an article for this blog when I first started it about the connection between my high heels and self-esteem (it gets nearly as many Google pulls as “naked Ryan Kesler” !!!) but I’m begining to think that this self-esteem is related more to the fact that shoes helped me build a thick skin.
Chances are, if you catch me on a bad day and tell me my eyebrows look crooked i’ll cry. Someone once told me I was a horrible softball player (true) and it upset me to such an extreme amount of tears that my boyfriend of the time nearly punched him. But if you catch me on the worst day of my entire life and tell me my shoes are retarded, I won’t even hear you. Or I will hear you perfectly loud and perfectly clear and I’ll walk even taller.
So why is it we can’t be like that with the rest of ourselves? Sure, we don’t walk up to the Holt Renfrew display window and pick ourselves off the shelf along with a bottle of leather protector, but shouldn’t we have the same indestructible love and commitment towards ourselves? The last time someone called me fat I lost ten pounds and felt shitty until someone told me I looked thinner. What if we didn’t feel the need to justify our weaknesses (from shoes to love handles) and just… walked taller?
So the next time you start feeling down about your short comings… instead of letting people make you feel foolish… why not just click your heels together three times and say to yourself “there’s no one like me, there’s no one like me, there’s no one like me”? Worth a try, no?
xo & yw
*all images can be found and credited on my Pinterest
