Counting down days to an upcoming vacation to Seattle and Napa, and suddenly I start wondering to myself,  “what the hell am I going to wear on this trip?”  I would rather wear pants than skirts, in case we are hiking a lot, but then I feel like I don’t have a jacket to match most of my pants. Plus, what if we want to go to a fancy meal –I will probably need at least one skirt.  Should I bring my favorite jacket…I want to pack light, maybe it is too heavy? If I bring a mix of pants and skirts can I get by with just one hat, or will it look too fancy with the pants and too casual with the skirts? Suddenly, what should be a relaxing vacation has me all stressed out, and I haven’t even left home yet.

Fretting I just don’t have the right stuff, I start trolling the web, looking for new travel clothes. Frankly, I feel bullied: Bullied by my body demanding that I accessorize and beautify it, that I hide the ugly parts. Bullied by the clothes I already have, demanding that I find things to match them.  Bullied by the future clothes that will force me to find storage for them in my already over-stuffed closet, that will need care and cleaning and folding. Bullied by outfits that will rip and stain and tear and make me sad to loose them, or that I will  grow out of and it will sit in my closet mocking me, reminding  me that I have gotten too fat or old to wear it.  My fingers clack at the keyboard extra hard –with the force of frustration and stress — still down, down, down, I scroll through Ebay’s fashion pages. If I am being honest, being bullied, “forced” to search onward by nothing other than myself.

Why do all this if it makes me feel so terrible? Because I need to be prepared of course! I need the right outfit to look chic on every occasion, the right jacket to keep me warm, the right clothes to convey professional but playful and elegant all at once, to announce my status and wealth, to augment my beauty and cover my flaws, to make friends and influence people and to be sure I fit-in. My wardrobe is just a tool box, filled with tools, to make me the on-top-in-control-buttoned-up-bad-ass-chick I know I am.

The problem: Can I possibly own everything I need to look chic on all occasions? To be warm/cool on every occasion? To fit-in and project the image I want to project on every occasion?  Wouldn’t I need an infinite amount of stuff? Can clothes really prepare me, can anything prepare me? Can an impermanent object, existing in an impermanent world, really be a fit-all-tool? I am literally chasing an impossibility.

“Fine” ignorant Alana concedes to wisdom Alana, before sneaking in a but, “but at least I can have what I need to be chic on these 2 occasions– a trip to Seattle and Napa.” Again though, can I really know for sure what the future of these places, in the limited window I am there, will be like? For all of my travels, how often have I brought too much stuff? How often was I missing just the thing I wanted? With countless past failures, why do I think I can be perfectly prepared this time? And is the right hat or jacket really going to be what guarantees my perfect preparation, even if  such a thing existed?

At the end of my frantic fashion scrolling I decided I couldn’t quite find the right stuff to buy. I figured I would just make due with what I already have in my overflowing wardrobe. But as I closed-up my laptop, frustrated both by not finding the “right thing”, and the mad-rush quest to find it in the first place, I couldn’t help but think about how painful it is to be lead around by my wrong view of what clothes are: By my delusion that they reify me, define and protect me, control how others see me.

The truth is, bad shit can befall me no matter what I wear; in fact, I have a high-heel induced toe injury that proves bad shit can happen because of what I wear. People can like or hate me no matter what I wear; in fact, jumping on the Z. Cavaricci  fashion trend to try and be cool in elementary school caused me to be bullied even worse than before I wore those horrid pants. Wearing white won’t make me saint like or enlightened, and keeping around a black jacket won’t make me emotionally ready to handle Eric’s funeral. All said, I can’t even remember a trip where what I wore was some huge issue, or where it made me happy, or satisfied or guaranteed either a good, or bad, time.