my aunt sent me my childhood shoes: i can't even look at them (recording added 15:46 est 11/18/2024)
our feelings about seemingly meaningless objects tell us more than we realize
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a few months ago i received a text from my aunt telling me she had found a pair of shoes i used to wear when she was taking care of me as a small child.
obviously she thought it would be a fun idea to send me these shoes, and i agreed.
“yes, thank you!!!” i replied. it felt so thoughtful and nice that she had kept these shoes all this time. and i’ve always had such nice memories of my aunt, who was basically my nanny when i was very very small.
but once the box with these shoes arrived in the mail, i just couldn’t cut the tape. proximity to the box itself made me feel eerie and uneasy. several times i thought, “i should open this box and send a picture to my aunt confirming i got the shoes! she will like that!” then i would steel myself to go near the box.
each time i tried, i could do no more than touch the cardboard. at some point i opened the lid, and i might have glimpsed the shoes for just a second, but now the shoes and the box itself are lost somewhere in my house (the picture is the photo my aunt sent me before mailing the shoes). i know i saw the shoes, but i don’t remember the moment i did so: it’s as if my brain is shielding me from something or my body is rejecting them.
often i have had this sense of connection with physical objects.
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the first post i ever made on substack was about my love for my butterfly bracelets. sometimes it even seems like my unread books are actually haunting me: like i physically feel uncomfortable when i see them, as if they represent some great challenge to come. when it comes to textures, i just love to feel them with my hands and i feel like every texture can correspond with some kind of feeling. colors also stir me inside: my favorite part about the morning is selecting my bracelets for the day.
i noticed this mystical connection to objects even more in the run-up to coming out. walking around outside felt like torture. for literally three years i had been almost completely immersed in feminine art forms, but i wasn’t allowed to express this, and i felt this intensifying restriction on myself, like i wasn’t allowed to merely exist: somehow, it took me a very long time to realize what all these feelings added up to.
my first girly accessories came in one big box in the mail: bracelets with dangling butterflies, purple chokers with bats on them, every shade of purple a scrunchie could be, women’s shirts and pink hair ties and butterfly charm necklaces.
i was ravenous. i could not contain myself. i was ripping open bags, my heart thumping. it seems so ridiculous: clearly i was just some unhinged online shopper. but it was more than that to me: these were the objects that i had wanted for so long and never been able to touch. i kept putting things on and staring at myself in the mirror.
what’s strange: very rarely did i ever actually articulate in my mind that i wanted all these girly things. it was just something i felt so strongly and either ignored or wrote off as an intriguing aesthetic quirk about myself.
when i saw buffy’s bedroom on buffy the vampire slayer, i felt this urgent need to spend the rest of my life in that place. passing by women on the street, i could hardly stop my eyes from trying to see their jewelry, hair styles, and clothing: and it was easy for me to say, “this is nothing more than attraction to women.”
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but it was more than that. those objects themselves had a gravitational pull on me.
it was like my soul was trapped inside some false life, but there was this spark deep inside of me that knew: those feminine aesthetics are a reflection of who i am inside.
i was drawn to these aesthetics constantly, even in terms of music, art, books, and tv shows. what did this mean? somehow my mind refused to add it all up, but at some point i could not take it anymore.
i bought one purple bracelet and one pink bracelet.
i put them on and went to an extremely cis heternormative function. the way many of these men looked at me: they rejected me. their eyes dashed to my bracelets like going near me might poison their own psyches with femininity. even just walking around in the street i noticed how men looked at me: you’re not one of us. and honestly i could not fucking believe it: maybe it’s that i lived in brooklyn for 8 years, and these people were midwesterners (which i am too lol!), but wtf?
i had barely done anything. all i’d done was throw on a few bracelets.
a woman at the same function handed me a scrunchie. a man squirmed in his seat.
the rejection from these men felt so validating. the moment i wore those bracelets, and the moment i saw how people looked at me, was the moment i couldn’t go back.
capricorn is my sun sign: i was determined to simply stay productive and ignore these feelings. but when i found out that pisces was my moon sign, and when i understood the meaning of a moon sign, astrology felt so much more compelling to me.
the pisces moon sign just felt so real to me. i thought about my pisces moon while walking around for hours in the park listening to phoebe. something about a combination of the pisces moon sign and the instrumentals in “smoke signals” all swirled together into something like an authentic reflection of my inner life.
i started to wonder: what is there beneath the surface of my capricorn obsession with staying so productive that i avoid really being present with the world around me?
i realized: it is because everywhere i look there is something forbidden to me, and everywhere i go there is something being forced on me.
those white shoes were among the first things forced on me from the outside.
these purple shoes are a reflection of who i am inside.
we should listen our feelings. even if we don’t have the language or logical understanding yet, our feelings are always telling us something.
when my purple shoes and haim crocs came in the mail, i knew i could never look at those white shoes. the eerie feeling made so much sense, and they’ve disappeared.
Poison their psyches I’m DEAD 😂 and in Brooklyn no less SHEESH so spot on! Amazing amazing yet again! It is so wild how things from our childhood hold such weight we don’t even realize.