Blast From the Recent Past

below you will find a link to a blog entry i wrote in another blog i used to keep but stopped writing in a couple of years ago.  i wrote this entry at a very difficult time, when so many things were up in the air and i was unsure of where i was going to land next.  i am posting it here because, while it is not as bad now, i again find myself feeling that little nagging push. that little voice inside me is starting to chant again, as if to remind me about a forgotten task, forcing me to remember why i started to take this walk.
(editing this. i forgot that i had put in a special access thing to that blog. i was, at the time, still hiding in the shadows. i'm slowly stepping out so i'm leaving it here for you to see)

this is how i started my spiral walk.

VOGUE

I wear three-inch heels almost every day. I wear these shoes to work as part of my corporate look - polished, sophisticated, woman-of-the-world-striding-confidently image. You can almost tell the mood I am in by the sound they make when I walk – crisp, clickety-click of stiletto points on tile, each click coming faster than the next when I am eager, or excited or working on something that I enjoy doing; an almost soft chick-chick sound in a constant, slow beat when I am thoughtful, or relaxed or turning thoughts in my head; loud, stomping clack-clack-clacks when I am angry, or agitated about something, or worried and rushing to fix things.

I like the way they make my legs look longer, the thin line of the heel attaching itself to the line of my calf gives the illusion of streeetttcccchhh. I love the way my pelvis tilts forward oh so slightly when I stand in them giving the illusion of a come-hither -pose- that’s- not. And when I walk - ooohhh girl, you should see the way I walk in them when I really MEAN to walk. Sashaying with a swish doesn’t even half-describe it. I can almost hear the queens calling me “SISTAH”!

I have worn high-heels to work for almost forever. I stopped for a few months last year – some fluke on my part. But I missed the sound they made and the queens quit waving to me and I missed that too. So I put them on again and strutted, tilted, posed and vogued once more. They felt good.

They also hurt my feet a lot.

I was puzzled over this new phenomenon – they never complained before. I thought they liked being displayed in open-toed platforms. As if that wasn’t enough, my ankles started to make noise too. They would throb annoyingly during the day as I vogued in my open-toed heels or classic 3-inch pumps. At night, they would ache long after I slipped my shoes off. And then my knees started to complain, then my calves started to cramp. Calcium supplements , muscle relaxants and Ben Gay suddenly became part of my grocery list. While I seemed to have accepted the situation as simply something that happens when one gets to a “certain age”, something in my gut told me (yes dear – my belly and I speak to each other a lot!) that it wasn’t that simple.

Last night, as I sat reading, my calves started to throb. I had been on my feet almost all day supervising the finishing touches on a move of four departments in our office from one building to another and a million other little things that took me rambling over the three floors that our office occupies. As I sat there trying to concentrate on my book, the reason for this sudden revolt from my feet and legs against my preferred footwear suddenly became clear – THESE WERE NOT MY SHOES! I was wearing the wrong ones! Not wrong as in the wrong size – but WRONG ones as in NOT the shoes FOR ME. I had been voguing and tilting and sashaying and POSING in shoes that my body KNEW was not for me. I had been faking it – thinking that the corporate life in high heels was a total fit for me when in reality, it was not. And I had done it so well for so many years that I actually fooled myself into believing that this was what I wanted.

I started to cry. As if in sympathy and to emphasize a point, my legs started to cramp big time. I knew why. All these years I had been walking a path that was not mine, in shoes that did not fit. I sobbed louder, the tears coming hot and fast down my face, dribbling randomly on the book that I held in my lap. I was soon bawling softly and I had to muffle them so as not to wake my nine-year old son who slept a few feet away, totally unaware that his mother was wrestling with the ghosts of stilletos past.

The only thing that stopped me from really breaking down was the thought that I now had a reason to go out and get me new shoes. Now, THAT would be an adventure! 

JULY 2008