...and what I wore

What do you wear when you're alone? What do you wear when you're alone with the one you love?

Are they different?

I had this discussion with a group of women today...and then I went to my Person's blog where she had cited the following words from the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller:

 “[I want to] marry a girl who, when I am with her, makes me feel alone.  I guess what I am saying is, I want to marry a girl whom I feel completely comfortable with, comfortable being myself.”  How lovely a thought is this?  The idea of being with someone and being able to be yourself completely when you are around them, and know they will still be there, this is what I too have always wanted in a marriage.  The author is not married, he has a discussion about marriage with one of his friends, whose main issue with marriage is that while he is in an intimate relationship, it will never be the ultimate fulfillment, because “there are places in our lives that only God can go.”  I found this idea fascinating.  After this conversation, author then writes a monologue of a husband to his wife, in which he says: “I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer.  I will love you, as sure as He has loved me.  I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me.  And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.”  This is what I want in a relationship, in a marriage.

Back to my discussion.  When I am alone, more often than not I wear plain white tee shirts and shorts of some sort. Usually basketball shorts, but sometimes I wear shorter shorts.  I don't wear dresses, I don't wear pants, I don't wear accessories or make up (well except for lip gloss), that's my naked.  For some people comfort is nothing at all, for me simplicity is comfortable, no muss.  I think that I dress that way as well.  I do nto wear a lot of accessories, I do not wear jewelry or busy prints, I prefer things clean and neat and pretty.  Is that what I wore in my last relationship? No.  In that relationship I preferred to be very put together.  So much of me, even from the very beginning, already felt broken or scattered.  I really didn't want to be "messy" in any other sort of way.  I think that then, with him, I wore leggings instead of shorts even.  I was always acutely aware of how I looked and dressed.

Semi ironically...this morning E texted me and said he dreamed about me, in specific he dreamed that I cut all my hair off.  I thought about the last time he saw my hair, or more precisely, the last time he didn't see my hair.  The last time I went over to his place my hair was wrapped up in a scarf.  While he saw me all "done" and put together, he also saw me slumming in things I only (usually) wear alone.  Because I trusted him with that part of me? Or because I cared so little his opinions...And what of P2AD? We were roommates...he saw me in every stage of dishevelment.

Next time, the answers won't be different.  Because I'm unconcerned with how a girlfriend is supposed to look and I'm more interested in what Jessica wants and wears.  This need to be a certain something (then crucifying myself for not) was just...in every single thing.  The constant work of forgiving myself...it is never ending but continually rewarding.

“My skin is kind of sort of brownish pinkish yellowish white. My eyes are greyish blueish green, but I'm told they look orange in the night. My hair is reddish blondish brown, but its silver when its wet, and all the colors I am inside have not been invented yet.” 

― Shel Silverstein