Playing dress up

I used to live for playing dress up. I had tons of costumes and it gave me a lot of joy to wear them. As a younger person every day was a new opportunity to express myself through clothing and makeup. I didn’t need an occasion to create a silly fun outfit and parade around in it. Constantly reinventing myself and putting how I felt on the outside to wear it was a daily act of creativity and artful arrangements. Playing different characters, exploring who I was and how I showed up in the world gave me a lot of joy.

The point of it was less to look like a familiar character or fit an established look and more about being someone new. Using fabric and fancy to fashion a portal into a new kind of expression, I dressed for the part I felt like playing that day. My closet was full of mix and match parts, puzzle pieces that fit together in a million new ways. Something shiny that caught my eye at a thrift shop, some vintage, glorious piece of visual history to build a new outfit from and become that person for a day.

Some days it would start with the shoes. I need to wear these boots, what goes with this bit of fun and how can I showcase an aspect of this fashionable item and tell a visual story around that. Other days it would start with a feeling and the outfit was a way to encourage the courageous or bolster the timid using clothing as homage or armor as the day demanded.

There were no rules, no need to show up a certain way. The need to fit in or seem professional wasn’t a part of my life then and no one expected it of me, I was just there in a professional setting looking like little bo peep ate a goldfish for no reason. No one really questioned it, including me. It was just the way it was. Other people were sensible and I was a mermaid.

I don’t remember when it changed really. When I went from dressing to express to hiding under clothing. At a certain point I stopped wanting to show who I am and I started protecting myself. It stopped being fun and everything became bland and boring. The color drained out of my world one day and I don’t remember noticing. I stopped feeling safe.

I guess that’s why Halloween stopped being fun. The last few years I don’t feel like dressing up at all. For a long time I didn’t do dress up on normal days but I would lean into any occasion that called for a silly outfit. What was once a daily opportunity for creative expression became a semi annual holiday event and I went all in on that, taking the time to plan and looking forward to the chance to shine.

Maybe it started to feel like an obligation and I began to feel a need to try to show up as a sexy fill in the blank here with some known thing people will recognize and not just me in an outfit. I caved in to the question they all ask, what are you supposed to be?

What indeed am I supposed to be. I used to know. I was supposed to be me. Myself only having highlighted and exaggerated some aspect to create a new part to play based on myself but more whimsical, as if I lived in a book no one had ever read but me. It was a way to find out more about who I was and how I show up in the world, not a way to imitate a tv show.

I miss those days. Now I can’t be bothered to put on the witches hat and pretend. If I’m not going to be fantastical and use it as a portal to a new world then really what is the point? I can’t haunt myself, I won’t do it. There are some things that are still sacred and if you can’t manage to do them right maybe it’s best not to do them at all.

If you’re looking for me I am a moonbeam. I have become gauze, this year I will be the personal embodiment of the thinning of the veil. I am all portal, no through. I have become so ethereal I’ve looped back and turned into a rock. I am my own anchor, keeping my heart safe from tricks and treats alike.

Boo

Happy spooky season to those of you who celebrate. I hope you glow in the dark and find yourself surrounded by benevolent ancestors reaching for you through time and space to let you remember you are loved. May we all find our special ways to express who we are and share it with the world! It needs us. And we need each other. Keep shining. Show up for each other. We got this.