Tiny thought: Maybe that’s not so bad

Wardrobe.nyc shirt — there’s a white one now too, but if that does not appeal, should I even bother suggesting this mens Polo again? Khaite jeans and boots. Not exactly the same but they’re on sale? And actually, not no to these for $351.

I’ve worn this outfit 100x before, it’s one of the few I come back to without changing a thing.

I once told an old friend that these are the clothes I turn to when I’m at my strongest — feeling good and confident and loaded with agency — but I thought about that recently and realized in fact that often it takes these qualities (optimism, confidence, helpselfness — a fake word that just came to me as the opposite of helplessness) to go out and try something different. To step out of the comfort zone, suspend the old way; to explore, take a risk, then weather the outcome.

So, I surmised, these are actually the clothes I turn to when I’m not searching. When I don’t have a question, or desire to ask one — when for the fleeting moment of buttcheeks unclenched, I’m satisfied w things as they are. Or maybe what I mean is, I’m satisfied w me as I am. No need for immediate change.

Unconsciously, I think I’ve always believed that implicit in change is novel progress, that returning to something can’t be a change. That if you’re returning, you’re not progressing, and if it’s not progress, you’re not changing and if there’s no change, there is no growth, and that — the prospect of not growing — has always scared the shit out of me.

But I’ve been revisiting some shelved beliefs, ones I’ve already grilled or tried to abandon or outwardly move past in pursuit of “growth” only to find that all this time later, I still believe some of the shelved. And surprisingly, that it doesn’t scare me.

It relates to the outfit in that I had this tiny thought after I was dressed that it is a settling-kind-of-nice to find that a choice you’ve made 100x before still feels like the right one when you make it again. It became a life metaphor very quickly and then I was like, wait, is this unwitting regression? A refusal to depart from The Comfort Zone? To dismiss a calling towards growth? But then I was like, what? No!

There’s a difference between unwitting regression — overindulging in a comfort zone, making the same choice repetitively because it is easier or safer or wtvr — and what I’m describing, which is more like having a set of buried values (garments?) rise up to the surface as you dust them off.

I have been back in the neighborhood where I grew up for like 18 months now and at first it was very uncomfortable and I hated it and myself for coming back, for thinking I wanted to come back. And I wanted to leave and I couldn’t walk down certain streets because they reminded me too much of when I couldn’t stop writhing.

Those flare-ups have quelled and lately, I find myself shopping at the grocery stores where my mom used to shop to prepare for big Sabbath dinners, or past the hairdresser where I’d keep her company on Thursday afternoons or into the diner where we still get jam and toast sometimes and I’m filled with this warmth I’m not used to. Like maybe I’m not so different from where and who and what I came from or maybe I am — it doesn’t matter — but maybe it wasn’t that bad.

Maybe it wasn’t bad at all. Maybe it’s okay to come around and see that some way you think you were forced to be actually aligns with how you want to be. Or with how you actually are. And maybe there could be some relief in that. Maybe.