boots
I used to wear combat boots almost exclusively.
Of course, there were occasional deviations - stiletto heels or those knee-high fuck me boots I was inordinately proud of. Or no shoes at all (something I still do).
But combat boots, those were what I loved. I was particular about them. I'm always particular about anything and everything. I liked jump boots specifically, and I liked steel toes. I liked the way they looked, laced over fishnets or back-seamed stockings. I liked the toes peeping out from edge of long black skirts, I liked the attitude they conveyed paired with a short skirt or (inexplicably) a velvet evening gown.
I think, though, I think it went a little deeper than just that aesthetic. Those boots made me feel invincible. I'm tall. Imposing. I was blessed with a bone structure that my best friend used to call peasant stock. Broad shouldered, long- limbed, femininity is not my particular forte. Normally, I walk like a man, long strides, not much swing in my hips, shoulders set and rigid against the world. I want to present an impenetrable wall to the world at large, I want to convey strength and danger and tread carefully. I've cultivated this for almost two decades.
(another contradiction to add to my ball of inner enigma, I suppose)
The way I grew up, most would call sheltered. A small farm, homeschooled, in the middle of the country. I often argue that position, because it all lies in the definition of sheltered. I was exposed to the brutality of life but not necessarily the brutality of people. Nature is brutal, and I was comfortable with that - it was a rhythm I knew and understood.
When I first went to college, it was a revelation. I had an inkling of my 'otherness', but had never cared. Hadn't really been in too many situations where it was obvious, or those I was around were also 'other', and so we were all peculiar together.
The world at large, though. Disappointing. That otherness became a target, which simply made me react with increasing oddity (I'm known to be a contrarian). I wore the boots like a barricade against idiocy. I strode with as much menace as I could muster.
I dropped out of school, I moved away. I began to make poor life choices. I began to buckle under the onslaught of my own self. But lacing up those boots always made me feel contained, together, brave. Midnight drinking excursions in cemeteries, 'urban exploration' before it was a thing, sliding under loading dock doors chained shut, clambering rusted fire escapes onto the roof of abandoned warehouses to drop down skylights into the unknown below, the very ill advised venture into an abandoned mental hospital.
Boots and pocketknife and I felt prepared for anything. I might be weeping in the bathtub during the small hours of the night, but I could wrap it all up and put it away the next day, assuming that dangerous stride once I put those boots on. Nothing could harm me, nothing could get in. They were the physical manifestation of the person I showed the world.
It didn't work. I know, shocking, right? My unspoken belief that these boots that gave me such bravado were some magical fetish, an amulet to protect me from the ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night proved to be lacking. Bad things happened to me - the steel toes didn't protect anything more than my toes.
So my thinking changed. I might be broken, and breaking further, but I am still strong enough to run away! I snorted morphine and Oxycontin and read Jack Kerouac and William S. and yes, even a bit of Ginsberg. All they did was run away. From everything. The boots became an idealization of putting distance....physical, mental, emotional...between myself and all of this s h i t. The picture is from right at the crossroads of boots as strength and boots as distance. An old rail yard, the photographer someone who still terrorizes my dreams from time to time.
It's pretty hard to run away from yourself. Strangely, however far and fast you run, every morning guess who is staring at you in the mirror? I couldn't contain my brokenness any longer and those shattered pieces went flying off in all directions, so I laced on the boots and trudged into a psych ward, no more bravado, too tired to run any more.
that was...ten years ago, perhaps? I still have the boots, but I hardly ever wear them now. They need to be resoled, and the stitching along the back ankle is all torn out on the left boot because of my very bad habit of tucking my left leg under me when I sit (I'm doing it right now, even). I lace them on a few times a year, when I need to fill the back of my truck with manure for my gardens.
Kind of funny, really. I used to put my faith in those boots to get me out of shit, and now I only put them on when I'm literally wading in shit.