.the end of the affair.

While it lasted, ours was a love that was pure, passionate, and all-consuming. When we were together, people – strangers, even – would stop in their tracks to oooh and aahh over the dashing figure we cut. We were wild, adventurous and globe-trotting, impetuously meeting each other in Paris, Madrid, London, Los Angeles, and once, over the course of three months, Panama. Nothing – not bad weather, not rough terrain, not exhaustion, not injury – could stop us from giddily running around our hometown, excitedly looking for a party, a happy hour, an outdoor festival, a gathering of any kind at which we could revel in our happiness.  

And then it happened. We started to grow apart, the soundtrack to our slow, soft disenchantment provided by Stevie Wonder and his melancholy rendition of “Lately.” 

I could feel our love affair of the past 15 years coming to a sad, soul-altering end. I increasingly found that I couldn’t spend extended periods of time with my love without experiencing escalating levels of annoyance, even pain. Where once we could spend five days in a row in blissful comfort, now I would need to escape into solitude after a mere half hour. I began to seek the company of replacement courtiers that while never able to achieve the heights of rapturous glamour of my love nevertheless seemed a better fit for me.   And yet we trudged on, trying to make it work, still viscerally attracted to each by a force stronger than sense or sensibility.  

And then.  

And then.  

And then last summer this happened:  

Diagnosis? A torn peroneal tendon in my right leg, which would require wearing a heinous orthopedic boot for a minimum of six weeks and then a course of physical therapy for another six weeks.

That was it. The final rupture. My love affair with high heels was over.  

I found that even once I had completed my course of physical therapy and my leg started to feel normal for the first time in a long time, I could no longer regularly wear my beloved four- and five-inch heels. I’d become that woman – that woman that wears flats everywhere, that woman who pushes the sartorial acceptability of Converse sneakers to the very limit, the one who looks at woman walking around New York City in their stiletto heels with a mixture of wonder and envy.  

I want to scream at these women, “That used to be me!” High heels were my birthright, a tradition passed on to me by mother when, as a fourth-grader, I was preparing to be a bridesmaid in my older brother’s wedding. “Every good Dominican woman knows how to get around in high heels,” she patiently explained, teaching me how to elegantly maneuver in my 2.5 inch fuchsia dyed-to-match Thom McCann bridesmaids shoes. I wore my high heels everywhere – the supermarket, the DMV, the park, my classes on my hilly college campus. I would even have worn my high heels to Yankees games, had my husband allowed it.  Alas. Le sigh. Celine Dion-style thumping of my chest.

Over the past three years I’ve given away the most beautiful, the most impractical, birds-of-paradise-y pairs, only to be left with a few hold-outs. They sit in my closet, sad, forlorn, wondering what they did wrong, where we went wrong, why I have forsaken them.  I hurt too, my lovelies. I hurt too.

You're great, you're lovely, you're the stuff my dreams are made of. But I just don't think it's working anymore.

Oh, friends and family will challenge me on this point. They’ll note all the times this year they’ve seen me wear high heels. But I only do so if I can wear flip flops or my Chuck Taylor All-Stars to my destination and then change into high heels. I only do that if I am going to be sitting down most of the time, or if I will be required to walk only on plush carpet.   And that’s not love. That’s just a desperate attempt to recapture something that has already been lost. I’ve lost faith in my love. I’ve lost the stamina that would see us through our long evenings together.  

True, there is still nothing – nothing – that will immediately make me feel better about myself than putting on a nice pair of high heels. Except for maybe several coats of Yves Saint Laurent’s Faux Cils mascara. But the mascara I can keep on all day. The shoes I cannot.  

I’m sorry, lovers. I miss you. I will love you forever and ever.

© Chommo, 2009.