The girl in purple pants

In fifth grade, I had cool pants. They were the shit and I felt like a million bucks when I wore them. They were bright purple denim with giants white flowers and flared pant legs. I distinctly remember one day I wore the pants with one orange sock and one pink sock and took my shoes off and looked down at my lower half and thought, "Yes. This is it. I am everything." And then I probably skated across the tile floor to establish my badassary. 

Then one day, some kid laughed at my pants. I remember feeling so shocked. Doesn't this kid know these pants are everything? They make me feel like me. But this kid thought they were weird, and got lots of people to believe they were weird too. And before long I was wondering why I ever thought my pants were cool in the first place. I looked around and realized that no one else was wearing purple pants with giant white flowers on them and I thought something was wrong with me. I always felt so cool, being the only girl with purple pants, but now everyone thought they were weird, so I did too. 

And that's my first experience with shame, self-consciousness, and letting other people tell me who I need to be. 

After that, it wasn’t just the purple pants. No one else was wearing velvet dresses or doing their hair in pigtail buns. No one else had vegetable patterns on their shorts or pink sandals. No one else played spy kids in the back yard or inhaled books in one sitting. 

Instead, girls had their ears pierced and I didn't. They had straightened hair and dark stuff around their eyes and I didn't. They had bedazzled flip phones and I didn't. They all seemed to be great friends with boys and I wasn't. They all thought reading was for nerds and thought kids who liked school were weird.  

I stopped seeing and loving and appreciating who I was. I looked to other people to tell me who I was. I depended on them to tell me if I was valuable. I looked to them to tell me if I was worth something, if I was wanted.

I folded up my purple pants and stopped wearing them, ashamed for ever believing I once thought they were cool. I shut myself off from honesty because that's what comparison makes us do. It forces us to create an image instead of creating room for grace. 

Comparison lies and makes us forget who we already are.

So to the wearers of purple pants: wear the damn pants. Wear them and feel like everything. Wear them because it's okay to be different. Wear them because there's nothing wrong with purple pants or with you.