Shirts!

Life is hard—it just IS. But there are some days you can handle it.

You know what I mean.

There are mornings when you wake up, the bills are paid and there was a little left over, the laundry is done (yup, even put away), the dishes are done too, and that other situation—the one that could have gone either way, and you would have put money on the bad outcome—is peacefully resolved and you came out looking pretty good…

On those mornings, you know it is going to be a good day!  And since your confidence is around 150%, you grab that gorgeous pencil skirt or those pants that make your  _______________, (fill in your body part) look amazing, and you ROCK them!

But then there are the OTHER kinds of days…

 I am pretty sure you know what those days feel like too. You paid the bills, but there wasn’t enough left for food. The mound of laundry has been growing in the hamper. The dirty dishes seem to be multiplying too, and if that wasn’t enough, your back aches and your stomach is all crampy because…yeah, it is THAT time of the month.

It is all you can do to get out of bed, throw on the comfiest pair of jeans you’ve got, a big oversized shirt, and pray that no one dies. 

On days like those, I have two favorite shirts. They are my wearable emotional crutch, my comfort when I can’t drink coffee all day long.

My first favorite shirt is actually a sweater, so it can only comfort me when it is cold out, but I LOVE it! And there is a special story behind it. This sweater belonged to my sister-in-law, Marcy. We lost her a long time ago and, as everyone who has lost someone does, we have moved on but not forgotten her. I still have several things of hers—shirts, a beautiful winter coat, and a quilt—but the sweater is my favorite thing of all. I love the colors, and that it is HUGE, warm, and comforting.

It may sound odd, but when I wear this sweater, I feel like I can exhale—like it is okay for me to be me.

My other favorite shirt is actually a strange story. It is a flannel shirt that I bought as a Christmas gift for my ex-husband. He didn’t like it and never wore it, so it became my shirt. For those of you that don’t know me well, I should explain that I LOVE flannel shirts. I have 6, for now, but I love this particular flannel shirt because it is a man’s shirt, so it is BIG. I can wrap it around me a couple of times and get lost in it. I put it on when I wake up in the morning, and wear it when I have my first cup of coffee. And when I get home from work and am tired and uncomfortable, there’s nothing like grabbing my flannel shirt and wearing it all evening.

It gets worn every day, all year long, and it goes with me when I am traveling. It is my wearable security blanket.

It isn’t cold enough for me to wear my sweater to work yet, but there have been a few days where I have been tempted to wear my flannel shirt, and one of these days, I will. The thing is, the people I work with have no way of knowing these are my safe shirts.

This got me thinking…

I can’t be the only person who has a special shirt or pair of pants for those hard days. And just as other people don’t recognize my special shirts as special, I don’t know when the people around me have their safe shirts on. The solution? I will try and be nice to everyone; for all I know the only thing keeping them together is exactly what is keeping me together – coffee, and my shirt.