What Kind Of Woman Will I Be Today?

I wasn't the only one though. Emily didn't know who she was either.

She'd grown up without knowing, without really knowing at least. Growing up in that little town with big ideas and even bigger dreams and I could empathise with that. Could understand the idea that your life was in a holding pattern.

Just you wait...

Just you wait until I head off to college, then I'll find myself. Just you wait until I have some spending cash, then I'll start to have real fun. Just wait until I get a job with paid vacation, until I get that promotion, until I get that new apartment.

Until I find someone.

My life, the life I had lived until I'd been thrust back into this one, was a life lived in a holding pattern. With me constantly waiting and searching for the right thing to kickstart me into actually living my life, as if I was sitting at the starting line with my feet in the blocks waiting for the pistol to crack so I can begin my sprint.

I'd been waiting and waiting and waiting and I could see all the same elements of it in her life as well. A dresser filled with clothes that she'd tried on once before setting aside for the right occasion and books all read that talk about a different life than the one she was living day by day and I think I get a part of it now, as I sort through the options and stand facing a bevy of them I think I might finally understand.

There are many levels here, many levels to this change. The old woman made me Emily because, just maybe, a woman was who I needed to be. But Emily was no less me than the version I'd once lived and she could fall into the very same traps that I did.

Paralyzed by indecision, she could live her life finally waiting for it to begin.

I'd been there though. I'd lived through that. I knew what it was like and it was bad enough to make me wish for a second chance and now I had that chance and it was up to me not to waste it.

It was up to me to not only decide what kind of woman she was, but also to make sure that she didn't become it. That she was it all along.

I pushed aside options on the bed. A long sleeved shirt more suited to winter went back into the drawer. A pair of jeans that were tight around the top but flaring out around the ankles, almost like bellbottoms, were folded and set aside.

So too, though, went the dresses. Not because I was denying myself the femininity of them but because they weren't appropriate for the day. They didn't feel like her, or like who she wanted to be.

Emily Ross was, in her heart of hearts, a tomboy. A lot of people saw tomboys as a masculine aesthetic but the truth was it was more complicated than that. Because, as I could clearly attest, masculinity and femininity were not binaries. You were not one or the other, you could exist along the spectrum.

And so you didn't need to be wholly one or wholly the other. You just needed to be you.

You needed to know who you were and to embrace it.

Emily was a tomboy and wasn't at the same time. She was opening up like the petals of a flower, blossoming but that was something that took time.

Time.

There were times for dresses and there were times not for them. Today, all casual and nothing formal, wasn't one of them. With the heat and the movement and the walking around and the having to talk to people, a dress felt like it gave the wrong impression.

So what gave the right one? What kind of outfit lent the right kind of idea of Emily? What kind of outfit could I picture her in?

What outfit did I want her in?

As I plucked and eliminated the options I saw a pattern emerge and I leaned into it. Moving almost on instinct and pulling it all out, the outfit quickly presented itself.

And when it did I stepped back and smiled, taking it in. Because of course it was that. Because of course that was what she would wear.

Because the moment I saw it, I knew it was for her.

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