Yellow Shoes [steffeny]

Listen . . .

Do you hear it? Can you hear? As I sit the walls scream out to me. The perfectly painted walls, smart and glamorous, glorious crown molding proclaims. The charming matching curtains chime in. The neatly kept granite counters command. Together the chorus demands:

Be perfect. Look good. Be wonderful. Hide your hurt, your worries, your uncertainty, and insecurity. There’s no room for realness here. Pull yourself together. No corner of this house can take your mess. We will not accept it. Put on a smile. Harden your heart. We will show you the way to live in a house such as this. No crying. No pouting. No real life allowed. Only our make believe, fabricated, fake world can survive. This is the house on Barbi Lane where everything is beautiful.

Thus goes the familiar song of colorful compulsion and condemnation. But today something inside of me is compelled to answer back. No, I declare. My heart is a mess. My heart is alive. You perfectly painted walls, you fountain sinks and falls. I hear you call out to me, but I decline your request for pretense and perfection. And so a battle begins. Resistance is born and I find it personified in the form of two yellow shoes.

They’re bright, cheery, and unassuming. I love them. But the house snubs at them. She can’t even bear to have them near. They make my heart smile and remind me that freedom from sternly matching décor is possible.
As I step into the “princess bathroom” I feel the chic coupled blacks and whites sharply closing in around me. They surround me from every angle. Their piercing glares could tear me to shreds in minutes. Even the hot pink walls are menacing, sneering at me and my yellow shoes. The pristine granite shower and shining silver racks displaying matching towels neatly tied with polka dotted bows look down at me, growling their judgments. Their contempt cuts deep to my core. My heart feels the stabbing pain. This place might envelope my precious yellow shoes at any moment, sucking them off my feet and down into the underworld, sentencing them below into a dark abyss forever. This house will not tolerate their quiet defiance. Somehow my simple shoes stand a threat to this perfectly polished empire of elegance.

But wait, I stammer, I grew up in this house. It fits me. (I think…) Its messages and mantras fill my mind. I love my cheery yellow shoes. (Don’t I?) But I hear the accusations; you aren’t REALLY going to wear those shoes, are you??? I’m torn. I love the house on Barbi Lane and I love my precious yellow shoes. What do I do? How do I choose? I don’t want to revolt. I don’t want to rebel. And I don’t want to hide my yellow shoes.

Dear Barbi Lane,
Your daughter loves yellow shoes. Do you think that maybe you could love them too?