The point of this picture was to see what my legs looked like in tall
shoes, because while I'm totally good with flashing my stem skin now
it hasn't always been that way and I still have feelings of mehr about
my sturdy Irish farmer legs. (That came without ankles but in the
interest of keeping away from body shaming or whatever I won't bemoan my
lack of ankles here. Except that yes I will, because this is my blog
and it's not shaming to wonder where the HELL I was when the ankles were
being handed out.) So whatever anyway I took a picture to decide
whether or not I could wear these shoes in the world. And I realized
that sometimes I spend far too many minutes trying to see my physical self the way
others see it. That is an unnatural angle for one's neck to be craning
in for so much time, friends. And I am sharing this with you because I think, somehow, it would bother me more if I kept it to myself. All secret-like and dust-gathering and gross.
I'm pretty comfortable with my body but I do catch myself measuring it against the standards of some made-up something that I never have been and never will be more times than I am happy with. I remember telling my brother I wished I had his legs once when I was like ten and he was eight and we were laying in the hammock in our yard only by "laying" I obviously mean trying to push each other out of it or make it spin all the way around with both of us inside of it because that is clearly the intended purpose of hammocks. I WANTED THE LEGS OF AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD BOY. A particularly scrawny one, at that. What in the whatting what. And I don't do that anymore, honestly ever, look at someone else and say "I wish I had their ____." Because that is a waste of wishes, is what that is. And also because the older I get the more I appreciate the reflection of my life that my body is, and also also, let's be honest, I have aged really well. I look good. I mean really good. In fact, why doesn't everyone come and see how good I look?
Anyway all I'm trying to say is, if you don't see me around in grown lady shoes during these hot months (which I don't believe are ever going to get here for real and stay because I have PTSnowD) it's not because I'm insecure about how they display my lack of ankles. It's because I can't walk in them. And also because my summer project is to trick this man who is only slightly taller than I am down an aisle (any aisle, I'm not picky, but hopefully the cookie one) and if that isn't a good excuse to keep on wearing different-color Old Navy flip-flops and passably-cute Target sandals from like three years ago, then I honestly really don't know what is.
