So, I have worn the same socks for a week straight. A week where I worked on my feet almost every day running back and forth in a hot kitchen. I was sitting in a friend’s apartment feeling my feet squish in my shoes as if I had just come in from a day of walking through the woods where I had slipped into mud multiple times and now was warming my feet by the fire, only serving to melt the ice that had formed inside my socks and make the soles of my shoes puddles of gushy and I thought that this needed to change. Instead of doing my laundry like a normal person, I went to Target to purchase a whole new set of socks.

I stood in the middle of the mega store unable to comprehend the signs around me. The combination of my body recovering from a freezing episode outside, the pain in my sinuses from being sick expanding across my face, and the exhaustion I felt from being on my feet working for 12 hours led to me mouth agape, eyes unfocused, feet stagnant in the middle of a red bullseye feeling like a stoned dolphin realizing it could survive on land but not knowing what to do with his new found power.

Too intimidated to ask a customer service representative how to find my way to the socks, I wandered aimlessly in circles around the escalators not sure whether my aimlessness would be more fruitful on the first or second floor. It wasn’t that I was scared of the people, but more that I was scared of what would come out of my mouth if I attempted to speak to someone right now. I have a tendency to be overly honest with people. Not about them, I never find use talking about others, but I will explain my deepest desires and fears to people I am relative strangers to.

My sickness, my tired, my life all lowered my defenses even more than my already minuscule walls were and I was scared that I might explain my fears of big business, shopping, love, and being lost to the red shirted person who first opened their ears to my search for cloth that would make my feet not smell like a prostitute’s vagina being soaked in the yellow snow outside the dog kennel.

Now I sit in the cafe that was the reason for most of the stench and stickiness of my feet an hour earlier with a pair of fresh feet coverers. I bought low cut socks and the new jeans I bought don’t quite cover my ankles well enough because I refuse to try on pants that cost less than $10. My ankles are cold and my head aches. My body is bookended by uncomfortability.