Shoes Are My Heroin: This is my green…

This morning I’m digging into the dream shoe closet for something to wear. There’s a funky outdoor wedding on Saturday. Everyone’s supposed to wear green, for St. Patrick’s Day. Naturally, I need my neon pink spring heels. I don’t wear green. Ever. Not even on my feet. Don’t ask me why. Probably for the same reason I always have to look up heels when I write it, to make sure it shouldn’t be heals. I’m difficult. I zone out on important things, then obsess about nonsense as if the day depended on it. Colors make me feel certain ways when I wear them, so I obsess about them. And green makes me feel sick. So, naturally, this will be my green on Saturday…

Pink Neon Theory

They’re so cool and light and totally comfortable, despite the heel height (don’t hate me, high arches are my friend). It’s like wearing a party on my feet, each first time I slip them on in the spring. Like ice cream melting in the sun or lemonade going down smooth and bubbly. And, yes, like shamrocks on St. Patrick’s day.

If I hadn’t gotten rid of them last year in a dream closet feng shui frenzy, these would have been perfect.

miu miu python green

They were all about great texture and soft-as-butter leather and a killer shape. I bought them for the shape. And the fact that they looked like a painting to me. And green I can handle on the walls, in limited amounts. On my feet, though… I think I wore them once, and even then they spent more time off my feet than on. Not because they were uncomfortable, but because every time I looked down they made me cringe.

What I was thinking when I bought these next ones, is anyone’s guess. My husband shook his head the night they came home with me.

bright green patent wedge

“Aren’t they great?” I said, wanting him to assure me I hadn’t thrown our money away on the hope that I could celebrate the green-ness of that season’s budding grasses and bushes and trees, as the world come back to life around us. And he said, “Yeah. I know someone who will love them, when you hand them to me next month and tell me you can’t keep them.” And he was right. They didn’t even make it to the summer.

And these weren’t my finest hour, either, though I wore them more than the rest.Cole Haan’s have Nike Air Soles in them. Parting with state-of-the-art, foot-comfort technology is just about the hardest thing to do, for a shoe addict who actually has to wear her shoes when she’s at conferences and reader events.

cole hann green python wedge

Again with the texture and super soft leather. And feeling like you’re walking on clouds isn’t to be rejected lightly. But they’ve rotated to the back of the dream now, on their way out even though I haven’t yet talked myself into purging them in my reality.

Why do I keep buying into what doesn’t feel good, when it’s time to put my feet on the ground and walk my spring walk? How has my shoe addiction come to this? Contrary to what those who’ve followed this blog series might think, I don’t buy many shoes. Yes, I buy quality and always, always, ALWAYS on sale, and even then what I purchase tends to be expensive. But I maybe pick up one for-the-long-haul purchase a year, knowing I’ll enjoy each pair for seasons to come. Why would I waste that love-match on a color that, whenever I’m around it, literally makes me feel ill? Addiction therapy may be in order. The addiction to wanting my idea of beauty to match everyone else’s

I want to live bold and free of constraints, is the only other excuse I’ve come up with. Shoes are a creative outlet for me, like cooking and interior waterfall hiking and random photography with my iPhone that’s captured some of the best colors of my life. I want to wear them all, with a rainbow of hues to choose from in my dream shoe closet. I don’t like to think there’s beauty out there that I’m denying myself.

Perhaps, though, my obsession is talking to me about seeing my world my way. My idea of beauty, my shoes, belong to me. My feelings of joy and delight. Perhaps these shoe detours are teaching me to select only what’s best for me from the amazing things I can have, and to stop putting myself into situations where I must let go of things (people, opportunities, conficts???) I never should have invited into my dream at all. I must see beauty my way, or will it ever really be beauty for me at all?

beauty in the eye of the beholder

So, Saturday I’m wearing my garrish, neon, see-me-from-the-other-side-of-the-garden-wedding pink lovelies to that St. Patrick’s Day wedding. They and my ecru dress will compliment whatever green choices my friends wear, even if I do stand out because what’s best for me isn’t what everyone else is doing. My friends already know I’m different. They have their addictions, too. Their craziness looks more like one another’s than mine does, but I’ve learned to trust that they want me there anyway.

I can see my colors, and wear my pink idea of the perfect green, and be a freak in yet another minor way that, added to all the rest, screams to the world I want to belong to that I don’t really belong. And it’ll still be a lovely wedding where two wonderful friends begin a new life together.  It will be beautiful. It will be spring.

This season, what will you pull from your dreams?

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3 Responses to “Shoes Are My Heroin: This is my green…”

  1. robena grant says:

    Pink. Definitely wear the pink shoes. They’ll look super against the grass. And grass is green. : )

  2. JOYE says:

    Remember the wedding isn’t about you so wear what you want. They will be looking at the bride. (That’s what I tell myself when I have to pick out something to wear to a wedding!)
    I like the pinks shoes a lot.

    • Joy I know the wedding is for the couple uniting their lives. And it was a beautiful moment I shared with my Facebook followers. My shoe angst is all about the blast of emails that went out the week before, that everyone had to wear green. Green–a color I can’t stand to even have in my closet ;o)

      I obsess about the oddest things in my quiet little world. Which gives me a fair to middlin chance of going out amongst the “normal” people once I’m done, and seem like I belong.

      Even if I’m not wearign green.

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