One of the things I challenge myself to do is to live an Authentic Life which is sometimes difficult to obtain in this complicated and complex world. Still even though my grandparents and parents are all long gone, I try to live in a manner that would make them proud of me, however difficult that road sometimes becomes. But I never thought I would fail so magnificently as I did last week after ordering some pants from Talbots. Now anyone who knows me on a personal level knows that prior to my weightloss I wore my clothing until it fell like rags from my back. In fact I still have a few items way too big but still in my circulation closet, but buying clothing that I can wear outside the home eventually became a priority. Initially I purchased items piece by piece, hanging onto the old stuff, believing I would be back in it by the following year. But after a significant amount of time had passed I felt the need to have some more stuff so when the Talbot end of season sale started, I went to see what treasures I could obtain at obscene discounts, and they didn't let me down. What I needed was new slacks and I'm particular about comfort so I only purchase certain styles. What I had been eyeing all summer were these sick sharkskin slacks that I had to have so I found them, now reduced from $119 to $24, so I immediately placed them in the cart. Next I found some really cool grey pants with cool understated black starbursts on them and had to have them. Later I found another pair of grey slacks that looked very similar to the other grey pants but they were only $18, and you can't wear starbursts everywhere, so I added them to the cart as well. Finally I found a somewhat familiar pair of slacks that were nice and so that rounded out the 4 pairs of pants I thought I needed.
A few days later, 2 packages arrived but containing a total of 3 pairs of pants. The first thing that came out of the bag were the cute embellished grey pants, followed by the other grey pants. Hmmm... they are exactly alike except one has embellishments and the other does not. I dropped them and moved onto the next bag which held the blue/white slacks. And then the lightbulb went off. These look almost exactly like another pair of slacks I have except that pair has a gold band woven through the blue. But still I didn't have the sharkskin slacks so after waiting a few days to make sure they weren't in the mail I called. But before the call I had a lot of time to ruminate on this situation. Here I sat with 3 new pairs of slacks, 2 of which were almost duplicates of 2 other pairs, and in recognizing this I thought of my childhood and all those years of hand-me-downs from my older and younger sister and felt ashamed of myself. I remembered complaining to my grandmother one Sunday afternoon about my clothing crisis and she told me that I should be glad that I have clean clothing because it's more than many children have, and I felt deeply ashamed, as much as I did now staring at my redundant purchases. I immediately decided to call Talbots Customer service, find out where the sharkskin slacks were and return all but the pair of final sale pants. Ironically the only slacks I truly wanted I now found had been sold out and I wouldn't be receiving any. Then with contrition I explained to her what a greedy pig I had been for ordering clothing I apparently didn't need and would be returning them. As always Talbots was great and made the returns as painless as possible.
After the call had ended, I couldn't shake the hypocrisy of ordering more clothing than I need. Who cares if I'm seen twice in the same week with the same outfit? If it bothers me so much next time order more nondescript items so nobody else is the wiser. Which brought to mind some other sage advice ascribed to many but spoken by novelist David Foster Wallace: You'll worry less about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. The clothing is now returned but the shame is still lingering. However I feel stronger for the experience because I know I'll never make that mistake again. #shame #shopaholic #talbots #overabundance
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