Bras!

Today I bought new bras.

(I know this sounds like it's headed nowhere, but bear with me...)

First of all, I don't shop the day after Thanksgiving. In fact, in the first eighteen years of days-after-Thanksgivings I've experienced, either I or my family made a conscious decision to stay inside, cozy up with movies and leftovers, and generally just avoid the conflict that suburban malls bring with them.

So today, when I awoke at 3:00 pm, I thought to myself: Today is the day I will try shopping during this notorious and hellish day.

And indeed, after my 3:30 pm shower and 4:00 pm breakfast of leftovers, I slid into the Beetle, iPod and iTrip close at hand, ready to brave the forces of suburban elitist mothers who drive large SUVs and keep their children at bay with screeching promises of "No dessert!" and "We'll see if you're good enough this year for that toy!!"

((Note: While driving to the lovely Cincinnati Tri-County Mall, I rediscovered my love of driving with the volume up so high that I can shout along with the music and not care what I sound like. Queen, Ray Charles and the Rushmore soundtrack found new homes in the blaring speakers of the Beetle this afternoon.))

I make no pretenses about what I was going to buy. Hell. I stated it right up above. I was buying bras. And, hell yes, I was buying them for myself.

There's nothing more gratifying and/or disturbing in the realm of shopping to a girl than the purchase of intimate garments. I think we can all agree that breasts are pretty awesome and bras are fun things, but they're expensive endeavors. Choose wisely, oh naive shopperette, thine garments wilst stand the tests of self-scrutiny and conscious decision-making: Thou shalt not place thine bra in the firey depths of the DRIER!

But eventually, thou shall, and thou knowst it to be so. But whilst thou stand in front of Victoria Secret's glistened mirrors, thou makest false promises of air-drying.

So hopefully, I haven't lost my entire livejournal audience by discussing laundrying tactics, but this is important. These were the thoughts running through my head while I was deciding while bra to buy.

Buying this underwear at Victoria's Secret (I've never owned one of their bras, by the way...) gave me an opportunity to do some self-reflective and perhaps egocentric thinking. And what better way to do that thinking than doing it while looking at your own reflection??

And, not surprisingly, I figured a few things out.

I haven't hung out with a single person from home since I've been here. I ran into Carolyn working at Kidd Coffee today, but that's the extent of my interaction with "home-folks." And somehow, that's okay.

I guess if this were Christmas break, and I knew I wouldn't be seeing any of them for all that time, I'd be distressed...but maybe not even then.

Instead, right now, I have this inner calm and sense of completeness about who I am and what I am doing. I've talked about my academic future with my parents, and although none of us can definitely know the path it will take, everything seems like it's going to be fine...and more. It will be what I want it to be.

It's having this sudden sense of control that overwhelms me right now. I'm home and home sure isn't what it was two, three or ten years ago...but that's fine. Home now gives me opportunities to be alone and think that school, just as a matter of its essence, cannot...

So maybe that's why when it was just me and my half-naked reflection for a while today at Victoria's Secret, I was thinking:

I know what I want and I know what I am feeling. I know where I want to be and I know who I care about. I want to make the most of myself and I want to make others feel what I feel. And it's alright that I'm at a hiatus right now--things will fall into their places.

That may not make everything okay in the interim. I'll be disappointed. I'll get hurt. I'll fail at times when I hope to succeed. But, with the sense of self I have right now, I challenge the future:

Alright. Show me struggle. And watch me stride through it.

And I'll do it in Body by Victoria style...