Fashion victim

It’s a Monday night and as I am writing this, it is presently a few minutes just before half past nine in the evening. It’s another one of those drizzly July nights, and hours before my midnight shift begins I am already sitting alone inside a gasoline station’s convenience store. I don’t mind. Unlike the Carpenters, rainy days and Mondays seldom get me down. They have a nice little café here, this gas station, although I’m happily drinking chilled apple flavored green tea instead of the warm coffee they serve while sitting on one of their empty tables. I like coffee, too, don’t get me wrong. Especially now that it’s all cold and drenched outside. The strong aroma that fills the air-conditioned store every now and then reminds me it is a pleasure to the senses that’s difficult to resist. It’s just that commercialized bottled tea is so much cheaper than the coffee brewing fragrantly in the café’s kitchenette. I can’t say it’s much more delicious, but yes, it’s cheaper.

Sometimes even I surprise myself. I’m not usually this prudent. I’d rather buy myself that tempting cup of coffee and go home with an empty wallet than start feeling sorry for myself. But lately I’ve become more conscious of my expenses. Especially those that aren’t very necessary. You see, my savings are in big trouble right now. I can imagine my bank account must feel like a poor pig in a slaughterhouse right now, wary of the imminent death that looms ominously in the hands of the butcher nearby. The frequent bank deposits I eagerly made earlier this year to feed my account have stopped. I didn’t really have a goal in mind back then. I was just saving for the rainy days, I guess. But now it seems those rainy days have come. The global economic crisis is felt by everyone around the world, yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about, really. I haven’t bothered to burden myself with dismal issues like that in a while. I simply cannot be burdened any more than I already am.

Old habits, as action star Bruce Willis would fondly say, die hard. Lately I’ve had to withdraw some money from my savings account just to finance my compulsive shopping episodes every other week or so, the same savings account I quietly vowed not to touch months ago. I’ve had a hard time controlling my urges to buy, own and wear the latest styles. Perhaps because I haven’t even really tried controlling them in the first place. It has even reached a point where I have had to disturb my shopping minions in the bigger cities with my quest for possessing the universe’s most eccentric wardrobe when the stores in my beloved province run out of the clothes I want. Still, if there were some form of rehab for this kind of addiction, I’d have willingly volunteered and submitted myself to have the sinful vice purged from my system, to have some sobriety, and to save myself some money. I’m not rich. That’s the problem. I’ve been living beyond my means. I’ve been buying clothes. Too many clothes. And now all my spending has come back to haunt me. Fashion does come at a high price, and I am paying it right now. With my hard-earned savings.

It’s not like I’m desperately out of control. I could stop if I really wanted to. I think. The problem is I don’t want to stop. And I still have the money to spend. In fact I am starting to feel I have come to terms with and have accepted my addiction, giving up completely on trying to resist and curb it. It may sound pathetic, but for me it’s just another way of expressing myself, of finding myself, of creating myself. Instead of spending my money on other destructive diversions, I’d rather spend them on clothes, clothes that help me define who I am and how I want the world to see me, how I feel about things and where I want to place myself in the society. It is in these material things that I now find my own share of happiness in this small earth that we live in, material things that give new meaning to my short, so far insignificant life. All my life I’ve known I wasn’t pretty. People would stare at me and wish they could pry out their own two eyes. Ugly people cannot afford to wear ugly clothes. Otherwise, they’d be the ugliest things this world has ever seen. And that’s really ugly. I’m sure no one wants to be that ugly. I’m sure I don’t. That’s why I resort to covering myself up with all these clothes that I buy, with the hopes of disguising my appalling imperfections and finally belong like the rest. I know I have everything that it takes to stand out, and that fitting in with the homogenous crowd isn’t something to aspire to, but instead something to get away from. But there really are times when standing out isn’t what you want, and you just wish you could also fit in.

See, this ridiculous fascination with clothes isn’t just something I neurotically developed out of sheer vanity and blasphemous worldliness and debauchery. It has a deeper meaning to it, a psychological aspect that most people fail to realize. All forms of addiction spring from some childhood deprivation and feeling of scarcity. Those who didn’t have shoes when they were young buy themselves hundreds of pairs once they’re old enough and rich enough to. Those who didn’t get to read comic books when they were young buy themselves all the issues they missed when they’re old enough and rich enough to. Those who didn’t live in a decent house when they were young build themselves flamboyant mansions when they’re old enough and rich enough to. In my case, I did have clothes when I was younger, in fairness. It’s just that as a child I’ve always felt like I didn’t have my own identity. Now that I’m old enough to stand up for all that I believe in, I buy myself all these clothes to create an identity for myself, perhaps a way of filling the emptiness inside and seeking to complete myself in all these material things that I surround myself with.

Not to worry though. I am not a victim. This addiction isn’t something that’s going to strip me of all my money. Or at least without me wanting it. I know money doesn’t grow on trees. You can’t just bury a coin in a pot of garden soil, water it, leave it under the sun and happily wait for it to grow and bloom and bear fruit to more coins. Too bad. That’s why I’m trying not to spend too much money now. So that I’d have some to spare to buy me some more clothes.