Time alarm clock went off – 5:55 a.m. (better); Number of times pressed snooze – 7 (easily done); Actual time out of bed – 6:15 a.m. (phenomenal); Minutes getting to school – 11; Minutes spent stressing about being late to school – 0 (instead, they were spent stressing over speed limits, red lights, stop signs, etc.)
These first months of school, clothing is vital – an outfit is more than cloth on skin. It is a statement, a definition. It is a mess of moods and memories, pockets of success, flirtatious smiles. I dress to mirror what I want accomplished in a day, what I’m feeling. Green is my color. It brings out more than just my eyes. It tugs on my happiness, eases my laughter into the world, pulls my opinions, my words through parted lips. I wear skirts and tie-dye when I want to channel that lost era of hippie days, peace and love and dude, when I want people to stop and think, wonder. Sweatshirts are my shields. I wear them when I want to hide. When I want rest. Just rest. I am what I wear at the same time that what I wear is me.
Perhaps people shouldn’t place so much trust, so much value on these pieces of fabric put together with thread, filled out with flesh and blood. They are after all, only things that can be bought and sold, traded for time worked. They wear out over time. They develop holes, dullness. They stay the same size while the person who wears them grows. But do the impressions, the definitions, do they fade? Maybe, maybe not. The point of clothing is to show character, to keep warm or cool, to cover what in this day and age is shameful. It is not meant to shove people into black and white categories of good or bad. It is not meant to be the basis of judgment.
Underneath our clothes we are all naked. Underneath, we all have the same needs: to be loved, to give love and to live life full. Underneath, we are souls parked on a shelf waiting to be hatched, waiting to feel the sun on our bare skin, waiting to have our views and opinions considered and talked about like an adult. Underneath, we are all waiting to end the wait.
