I started contemplating on a pile of clothes that I had set aside to sell at the consignment store. Each item had a story about why it no longer fits in my wardrobe, or my body, or my lifestyle: So many reasons I was parting ways with each item. Details. But the overarching story is the same – the item goes when circumstance changes. When the circumstances change, the item no longer hangs out with me.

I have long thought of my wardrobe as some testament to me. To my fashion, my aesthetic, each ornament there to make my snowflake body seem unique. Or at least to hide its fatness and failings. No single shoe or necklace was the one that conveyed my identity, but all together… I just can’t shake the idea, that these items that I pick and choose when and how to wear reflect who I am. Why though? Each dress or top is the same in form and function. Each is with me while the circumstances allow and then gone to the trash or the consignment store or the good will. Why would the whole wardrobe be somehow more meaningful than its parts? Why would a whole body be more meaningful than its parts?

Shit even the meaning I assign to each object, or the whole, changes: What identity I am trying to convey and confirm with a wardrobe? Once upon a time it was a pretty, but professional Sexy Librarian. Then there was the edgy but, still sophisticated, High Fashion Punk with her Moschino hearts and studded leather jacket.

And nowadays, I accept anything slimming and flattering — like he losers in high school using each other at the table – some outfit to make my body seem less little, less undesirable, less out of my control. The reality is the clothes don’t do that anymore for me than the other kids sitting at the table. The clothes just hang with me. The loser table kids, we all just hang together. Looking for solace and comfort and acceptance in things that don’t really give those, that just hang with you for a little due to their own reasons, their nature, their circumstances, convention.

I want my wardrobe to help me to be accepted, to be more than a same-same like every other body. To have some control, some autonomy over my body through how it looks, to dictate my identity through the ornamentation I choose for this body. With a wardrobe, I seek to convince the world, to convince myself that I am somehow special. With the shape of a body, and its ornaments, I seek to confirm that I am ON TOP AND IN CONTROL. But that pile of clothes heading to the consignment store, this body with its chub, this face with its sagging, they belie the truth that I am not in control, I am subject to karma, to conditions, to the changes that occur to objects and bodies and circumstance in the world. Too bad for me that uncontrollable objects can’t possibly confirm my control of all the other rupa, and nama, that I am equally not in control of.