My Closet

I was having a conversation with someone not long ago, relaying my weekend adventures. At the end of my story a perplexed look came over their face and they said well, you didn’t used to like to do things like that. Their tone was accusatory, like I’d offended or lied to them somehow. We’ll get back to that a little later….

I love the movie Campaign with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. It perfectly satirizes a world that I call home during my working hours. The parts we play, the perceptions we encourage and the utter ridiculousness that can be American politics. I especially love the scene towards the end when they’re at a debate and Galifianakis’ character pulls out a “manifesto” that Ferrell’s character wrote in the fifth grade. It was called “Rainbow Land”. The point of his rather hostile reference is that something Ferrell wrote that long ago should be held against him now. Certainly he hasn’t matured into an adult man in his mid-forties. There’s no way he could have grown and changed and developed an entirely different view of the world quite opposite to the socialistic leanings his fifth grade-self displayed in “Rainbow Land”. Why are we so afraid of someone saying I changed my mind? Why would that make them somehow less?

There’s that word, change. Does anyone really change? I don’t know the answer to that. I can only speak for myself. There are things I do differently and feel differently about now than I did when I was in the fifth grade too. I used to hate beets. I wouldn’t even touch them. I remember them sitting in a bowl on the table during dinner and thinking how gross and slimy they looked. Now, I love ‘em, can’t get enough. I tried them at a friend’s house not too long ago and immediately thought, where have you been all my life gorgeous? Did I change? Or did something just taste differently to me?

Color looks different to me now too. Perhaps it’s because children’s fashion nowadays looks like a crayon box vomited. I think it’s a bit of sensory overload. The city changes your colors too. Black and grey and navy feel cozy to me now. Pink and purple feel a bit silly. Every seasonal shift I ruthlessly clean out my closet to save precious space and just make getting ready a bit more manageable. A lot of color for color’s sake got donated this year. It just didn’t feel right anymore. Not good or bad or right or wrong, just not right for me. 

Have I changed? If I haven’t changed than what has, because something feels different. Just questions that float through my mind as I get ready for the newness that, in this case, fall will bring. I always get a little sad. I don’t like change, ironic, since it always seems to find me.

I think the person I mentioned in the beginning of my story felt betrayed, like I hadn’t shared a part of myself with them. This was a new part of me. I don’t think that was ok with them. I think they felt like I was rejecting them because it was something they don’t like to do. Navigating a relationship that is changing can be hard. Realizing it may not be salvageable can be even harder. How do you exist in a new reality? We have grown differently. If you can’t be happy for the good growth in each other, all be it in a different direction, how can your relationship continue in any other state than one of strife and negativity? 

Cleaning out my closet is always an experience…..