there and back again

I’ve been thinking a lot about how people who have been friends forever tend to perceive each other.  We put each other into little boxes—not out of cruelty but because it’s easier, it’s part of human nature.  We like that we’ve got such comfortable routines, that we have a shared history.  

I’ve always had this terrible habit of bitting my fingernails; it started as a nervous habit that I just couldn’t break.  But I’ve been trying to get rid of it this summer and one of the ways I’ve tried to stop is by always keeping my nails painted.  This isn’t something I normally do; in general, I tend to be pretty low maintenance about little things like that, make-up and such.  But I’m liking having red nails this summer.

On the other hand, my friends are totally perplexed.  Did you ever have one of those days when you wore something a little fancy or different and everyone you saw made a huge deal about it?  They’d smile at you and ask what the special occasion was or who you were trying to impress and I really hated it.  As I get older, I spend more time thinking about how I look and what I like to wear; it’s less about vanity and more about that fact that as I get more mature I like taking bigger risks with what I wear, I like experimenting with how I look and how others see me.  I didn’t really ever rock the boat, sartorially speaking, in high school.  So now if I ever show up wearing something a little different, or with painted nails, I have to have the whole “special occasion” conversation.  So we have the conversation and I have to defend why I’m wearing a dress or why I’m wearing heels and it gets awkward.  I start to feel less confident in what I’m wearing and my friend then has to backtrack.  You look nice, they’ll say, just different from usual.

I wish that sometimes we gave people a little more leeway for personal expression.  I’m not perfect, I’ve definitely asked people why they’ve chosen what they’re wearing day to day.  But isn’t fashion really just another form of personal expression?  I don’t ask people why they listen to the music they like, or why they chose to get that particular haircut.  It’d be nice if we could give everyone a little more room to experiment with who they are.  

Sometimes I really wish people would just smile and say, “Hey, you look nice.”