Kansas!

This dress, along with yesterday's shirt and a few cheap belts were all from the same H&M trip I was bitchin' about yesterday. I got my hair done right across the way and since they're both 25 miles from my house, I decided, "eh! why not?!" and wandered over to the H&M after my hair appointment.

UPDATE: I now know "why not?!"

But I did leave with this fabulous dress! It is ethereal and dreamy and makes me feel like a fairy or a woodland imp or Puck from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which are all fabulous things to feel like in my book. It was only $19.99 and it is made out of recycled water bottles. Well played, H&M, well played.

This dress is shapeless, but wonderful. Which is very out of character for me since I am a huge "belter." I always always always put a damn belt around a dress. This might be from years of religiously watching What Not to Wear, but it also might be because I am finally accepting that I am a grown woman with curves (well, kind of) and that's a pretty HUGE step for me.

Does anyone else remember puberty being super traumatic? At the time I distinctly remember swearing to God I would stab the next person who said "you're just becoming a woman" to me with a sharpened toothbrush. It was a brutal time in my life. It seemed like everyone wanted to talk to me about hormones or the "changes" my body was going through or something equally as nauseating to a 13 year old.

In retrospect, it is what it is, but at the time... what the shit?! I got a waist and hips and cheek bones and that kind of stuff, but I'm still waiting for the boobs. At this point in my life I could care less (I love muh little guys!), but at 12, 13, 14... it was torture!

Dress: H&M

Bag: Thrifted

Boots: Franco Sarto

Bolo: the Goodwill by my house

Speaking of my MIA boobs, the most poignant moment of realization about how men view women came to me in 8th grade. I was walking into a pep assembly and some boys by the door were yelling "Kansas" at me and my friends. I remember thinking that's strange, but I wasn't too worried about it. Later that day I remembered them yelling "Kansas" and went over to the encyclopedias (haha, YESSSSSS, this was before the internet!) and looked up Kansas. When I read the very first sentence and it included the phrase "flat plains" I knew exactly to what they were referring.

I find it funny as hell now, but oh my GOODNESS was I upset then.

Isn't it magical to be young? It is especially striking to look back at all of the occurrences that were suuuuuuch HUGE DEALS back then and now, with over a decade of time having passed, they are nothing more than silly anecdotes.

Honestly, if I'd known then what I know now, yeah, being a teenager wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic or jarring, but really? I needed to go through that kind of stuff, I know it made me empathetic and self-deprecating and goofy. It made me understand that no one is bulletproof and that there will always be people who have something negative to say. It kind of helps you get out of this sort of sense of self that is based on external input and into a much better defined internal sense of self. If I was never picked on, who knows? I'd probably be one unpleasant, cocky sumbitch.

So cheers junior high me, you did me a solid :)

Again, rambles rambles rambles, or, for my second Shakespeare reference of the post, "words, words, WORDS!"

Have wonderful hump days anyone who might see this!