Pretty Enough To Wear The Dress

One of the goals I set for the Winter Wonderland Warriors challenge was to blog courageously. I try to always be an honest person. However, sometimes instead of being open or sharing my thoughts about something I just won't say anything at all. Call it fear. Call it cowardliness. Whatever. My goal was to comment when I want to comment. Add when I want to add. And post what I want to write. With that said the tone of this post isn't supposed to be depressing. It's supposed to be happy. So hopefully it reads that way!

When I was 12 years-old my dad took me shopping for clothes. He has really really good taste in woman's clothes, jewelery, you name it. We returned home with this beautiful dress. It was the nicest dress I had ever owned. Usually my mom made me get clothes from Fields or Zellers. They might have changed by now but back then they were pretty "uncool" clothes. But this time my dad took me shopping at a higher end store in town. The most expensive in our small town.

This dress was gorgeous. It went down to my ankles and had spaghetti straps, which was all the rage at that time. It had various shades of blue and white flowers all over it. The kind of blues that made my blue eyes pop. The fabric was so soft and silky feeling. There was only one problem. I didn't think I was pretty or "good" enough to wear it, so I kept it in my closet. This was back in the day when my parents used to take us to church every single Sunday, and when I attended private school and we always had functions. So I consistently had reasons to dress up. I was one of those girls who had long lanky legs and a long nose I had to grow into. Plus the acne. It didn't help I was shy and teased a lot by my classmates and family for my appearance. But then again what teenager isn't right?

I used to pull that dress out of the closet every couple weeks and  touch the fabric and look at the beautiful colors, then look at the mirror and think No, not pretty enough yet. Then I'd stick it back in the closet for another few weeks until when I'd do it all over again. I didn't want to wear it and have people think that's such a nice dress, too bad that ugly girl is wearing it. I was pretty harsh with myself but that's where the low self-esteem came in.

Time went on and just about two years after buying the dress I stormed into my room. I had to get ready for a Christmas program at school. I somehow got one of the leads in the play and was SO nervous about people looking at me. I had nothing to wear so finally I had that talk with myself. You'll never be good enough to wear that dress so you might as well wear it tonight. So I took that beautiful dress out of the closet and this time put it on. Only to find out I had outgrown it! I could just barely pull of wearing it. My heart sank. Here I had wasted two years of wearing this dress all because of my own stupidity. Nothing like holding yourself back.

I wish that was the only example I have of  "putting a beautiful dress back". But it's not. I still do it a lot. I'm getting better at believing in myself but there's still too many "dresses" in my closet. The good news though? Every week I pull out a gorgeous "dress". Put it on. Look in the mirror. And smile as I say "Girl you own this dress. Now go wear it with pride."