Putting the Therapy in Wardrobe Therapy

So the post that I had intended for this weekend ends up on Thursday. Sorry about that. First I was melting into the very fabric of my armchair thanks to a heatwave. Then I was enjoying not melting once the wave broke. It did so with one of the most spectacular thunderstorms I have ever seen. There is a lot of litter in my neighborhood, but it usually stays in the corners and the gutters. Tuesday night it went flying through the air, making little tornadoes of cups and chip wrappers. I'm on the second floor, and things were flying up higher than my window. An awning from the beauty parlor down the street broke free of its moorings and went crashing down the street, smacking into several cars on its way. Made me glad I'm not a car owner anymore, as with my luck it would have been my vehicle in the path of destruction. Lightning lit the sky with that eerie blue green glow. It was, as they say, really something.

Now I'm relaxing from the work day, which was spent in the cool air conditioned buildings at school. In this heat, it's nice to have a reason to go into work. :) I've done a deep clean of the bathroom, fighting a losing battle against cat gravel. The bathroom's the only place in the apartment for the box, but the floor is made up of those tiny 1-inch square tiles, and Minnie's a kicker, so there's gravel all over the place. I sweep and vacuum as much as I can, but there's only so much one can do. Now I'm cooling off with some cherry seltzer and biding my time until I'm refreshed enough for a 15 minute sweep through the kitchen, where, like Tuesday's storm, I will gather up all the detritus littering the table and counters. Unlike the storm, however, I'll put it all away or in the trash.

Which brings me to now, which seemed like as good a time as any to bare my chest (metaphorically speaking) and confess why I fizzled out on Wardrobe Therapy, and why I'm really not that upset about it. It wasn't the chaos of finals, although that didn't help. It was a very upsetting revelation: when it came to my wardrobe and grooming, I had largely given up. Oh, I still made sure that things were clean and covered and decent, and I didn't neglect basic issues of hygiene, and I was ever on the lookout for cute shoes and other goodies, but I really wasn't TRYING. I was SETTLING.

I'm not sure if I've ever written about this on my blog before (I took a brief look through the archives and didn't see anything obvious), but almost four years ago this month (June 26, 2004, to be exact) I caught/developed/came down with (I don't even know what verb to use) Bell's Palsy. I've never had the most loving relationship with my body and appearance, but I mostly managed. Once half my face was paralyzed, however, things took a definite turn for the worse. Depending on which websites you look at, between 80-95% of Bell's Palsy sufferers regain their lost nerve sensation. I was one of the unlucky 20-5%. While the droopiness has, thank heavens, gone away, half my face is fine, and the other half is set in a sort of neutral expression.

In the first weeks and months after I got sick, I gave myself permission to take it easy. I was sick, in part from the steroids that were treatment for the palsy, and making extra effort with my appearance was just too difficult. It was hard enough to get out of bed and go to work. As time passed, and my hopes of getting all the movement back faded, I got depressed, and that became my reason for not doing all the little things I used to do for myself. Why bother with makeup when half my face was a mask? Why try to look nice when I felt so terrible? In time the depression passed, more or less, but by then the neglect became a habit.

Going through Wardrobe Therapy, when I saw the dresses and skirts that I didn't really wear much because I had stopped shaving my legs regularly except for special occasions, or the jewelry I didn't take time to put on, or the nail polish congealing in its bottles (I used to have a nice pedicure all the time, now I could go months between applications, letting the polish wear away into nothing), or the makeup I didn't wear and the hair products I didn't use -- I realized how much I had been neglecting myself. Oh I was still interested in beauty and fashion, but there was this little voice in my head, telling me it was fine in theory, and for other people, but not for me, because why bother? I mean, it's not like I was a fashion plate before, but this is one case where the before was definitely better than the after.

So what changed? Well, I became interested in Wardrobe Therapy after following one of Dr. Wende's posts on Apartment Therapy. I started following in the middle of the last round, and decided to participate when she ran it again for the spring. Though I have yet to follow through on an entire Apartment Therapy cure, I was impressed by the structure of the program and liked the way Wende had translated it to clothing. I also got interested in Fat Acceptance / Heath at Every Size through reading the very excellent Kate Harding's blog. Sorting through my clothes was easy, but as I (slowly) worked my way through the WT program and read more and more about the way that society conditions us to undervalue ourselves, I started to realize how messed up my attitudes towards my appearance were. The Bell's Palsy sucks. It really does (though I realize there are far, FAR worse things that could have happened to me). But like my size, it does not define me. It does not make me a good person or a bad person, and it should not stop me from doing the things I enjoy doing or treating myself with love and respect.

I don't want to give up on myself. I've had some pretty emotional moments these past few weeks as I started to put the pieces back together. I've made some strides. My toenails are painted a bright purple. I'm making an effort to put on makeup and do something more with my hair than just brush it before I head out the door. I'm going through my (newly organized) jewelry box instead of just grabbing for my old standby jewelry. And I'm doing these things not so that they'll "distract" from the fat or the palsy. I know they won't. I'm doing them because I like doing these things and because I like how I feel and how I look when I do them.

I haven't been the most dutiful participant, blog-wise, during this round of WT. I regret this a little, especially since the other participants are so interesting and inspiring (and they post so much more often than I!). But I do feel as though I've gotten so much out of the program. Yes, my wardrobe isn't quite so bulging as it was before, and I've bought (or have planned to buy) things that I love and that flatter me, and I finally got rid of all that "make do" clothing. But what's more important for me is that it's helped push me back to being myself again. And that's more important than a clean closet any day.

If you're still with me, I apologize for the novel-length post. I just needed to get this off my chest. I'm actually a little embarrassed now that I've written this, but I'm going to post it anyway. Now I'm off to tidy up the kitchen. Then I think it's time for knitting and a podcast or two before bed. Thanks for reading. I promise it will be shorter next time.