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 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.
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.
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.
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.