Linen Pants

I closed the tabs on my computer with the outfits I wanted to buy and launched a new browser. My mouse swirled as it zipped its way through the interwebs to a writing workshop I had been admiring.

And then, I signed up. In the darkness of a quiet world, I bought the thing I have been anticipating. I pressed my hands together and put them to my lips with satisfaction even though there was no one there to watch me do it.

I squealed a real squeal, the kind that bubbles up in my belly when I have done something in truth for me.

I put my money into a thing that can serve me. That can make me more of the person I am becoming, more brave, more confident, and more loud.

The inappropriately expensive linen pants I had my eye on served an old version of me, one that wanted to pull on new skins to blend into the sea of people I had swallowed up. I wanted to think what they thought and look how they looked because if I was perfectly average I could be loved.

I remember wearing the same dirty legging for days in a row when I was in India. They had started to wrinkle at the knee but I did not care. I was dirty everywhere in a place where no part of me blended in.

The water from the boiler in my room only occasionally worked and could not get hot enough to get me clean. I had weird zits on my temples from the dusty Indian streets but I was happy and loved myself for what I had done.

I would not have traded that happiness for a pair of clean leggings and today I won’t trade it for new linen pants.