Tomorrow is my first day back. I’ve got to decide what to wear. The first day, of course, is the most important. You don’t have a second chance at a first impression, you know. Your appearance on the first day back dictates how people will treat you for the remainder. It shows what you’ve been doing, how you’ve grown, how you’ve changed. You don’t want to look like you’re trying, so you can’t be too formal, or too trendy. But at the same time, you do have to try—you can’t look sloppy. I’ve spent over an hour and tried on at least a dozen outfits, and I still haven’t chosen the right one. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, so I’m not sure exactly what the day will entail. What the day entails dictates a lot of how I dress. If I know I’m going to be busy, I want to make sure I’m more comfortable, with flats and pants that actually fit. If I won’t be there as long, or if I know I won’t be too busy, I can be more daring. Finally I decide on wide-leg trousers, a fitted sweater, and black kitten heals. No, it’s not the first day of high school after summer break. After three years of having a real job, it’s my first day back to work at Nordstrom.
We start out young, with no knowledge of anything, no sense that you are not in tune with the masses, and no regrets about the way things are or might have been. In elementary school, I dressed however I wanted, which was usually based on whatever I could find on my floor. My older sisters’ advice on matching and clashing didn’t register, and I considered it good if I just had on pants and a shirt. I sometimes wore mismatched shoes—out of necessity, due to my mother’s training method of picking up everything off the floor at the end of a day, locking it in a box in the closet, and making us pay a quarter to get anything back—and didn’t care a bit. But then middle school comes around, and your body starts to change, and your thoughts start to change, and suddenly you don't know who you are anymore. Everything is different. Everything is off. You're confused, scared, unsure, and there's this funny tingly sensation when you look at the boy across from you in math class and suddenly those romance novels your sister had don't seem so icky anymore. You take those sex ed classes—from the lesbian health teacher no less—and think that it will all get better one day. That eventually you'll get back to normal. So you drudge through, accept Aunt Flo when she comes, find a way to hide that boner when the teacher calls you to the front of the room to do the math problem on the board. You accept that fact that your friends are changing as rapidly as the hairs are growing in completely strange places. You shudder at the feel of your father touching you, the hugs seem just a little too long, the pats on the back just a little too smooth—not because of him, but because anything from a boy is just weird. But you look forward to the time when it will all be different, back to normal. To high school.
But then high school comes around and it's the same uncomfortableness, just different. It's the same awkward feelings, just different. The friends who were your friends in middle school, who are not the same ones as they were in elementary school, are no longer the same. You've diverged onto different paths—the jocks, the nerds, the preps, the hicks, the Mormons (if you live in Ontario), the Mountain kids (if you live in Sandy), the Mexicans, the theater, band, and choir geeks (who may or may not be a part of the same group). And even if you're at one of those progressive high schools, one of those ones where “everyone's friends with everyone” there's still a level of cool and not cool; the cliques are still there, they're just larger cliques. So you drudge through high school, thinking, things will get better when I get to college, when I'm surrounded by people who have the same interests as me, people who want to do the same things, who have the same goals, who feel the same things. But you leave the comfort of your small pond, dive into the big pool, and SPLASH, you find out it's still the same shit. And you think, things will be different when I'm out of college, when I have a career, when I'm doing what I really want to do, not just working at bar after restaurant after retail store, trying to make enough to support my drinking habit and pay for birth control and still make it to class on time. Things will change. But then you graduate, and you have to take the first job you get (student loans, you know). So you drudge through that, because, you know, it's just until something better comes along.
The thing is, it's always the same shit. For the rest of your life, it's going to be the same shit.
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