I am wearing a red thick wool cardigan with faded grey-blue and orange stripes about the elbows, cuffs folded six inches back, draped over a tight turtleneck and the swiftly-becoming habitual pale blue jeans with the frayed bottoms (because they were hand-me-arounds from some beloved friend with long male legs who's pot belly eventually outgrew his jeans).
Where oh where is the vynil now, my purple tall-as-reeds docboots are sobbing and I can hear them creak against the back shelf I've stored them on from here.
Oh, I am being ever so melodramatic but it is strange to look down at myself in a sweater I borrowed from a girl down the hall, and how horribly it clashes with the desperate pink in my hair.
And I'm having in-depth conversations about age-old goth tunes, the new cute guy from nowhereville turning out to be a big Siouxie fan, or The Mission...
Conversations about children and priorities and materialism and how none of it matters
none of it matters
but sometimes environment counts
and we're all desperately trying to find a balance between a comfortable home, something that feels classy and warm and beautiful, but that doesn't eat out of childrens' hands.
And so many of us are losing thebattle, and so many of us are losing the battle to the appearance of comfort, and then there's the handful of misfits
like us
that are winning some small battle but losing this great war of fitting in.
Because everybody's balance is just so painfully different.
But I'm getting closer to where I want to be, and with each step everyone else's reality is all the less threatening.