Yesterday we went shopping, and I bought nothing, except Mexican food and a magazine with Taylor Swift on the cover and some body wash that smells like vanilla.  Please know that I was tempted by books and hot pink shorts and whole other personalities I could put on like hats if only I bought the right items.  Also by hats.

Sometime last year, I seemed to have replaced the old compulsive eating with compulsive shopping.  It was problematic, given my lack of disposable income.  I wasn’t running myself into credit card debt (I don’t have credit cards), I was just spending money I would otherwise have saved, on cheap dresses from Forever 21 and books I didn’t need/didn’t have time to read.

I kept buying nail polish and Russian novels and cropped jeans and boots because I was bored, and lonely, and tired, and because people kept telling me I was pretty and I was sort of intoxicated with that idea, Being Pretty.  And with the idea of being this chic, sophisticated, Pretty Girl living in New York City, but I was—and am—in fact a wreck of a human being working a desk job and renting a tiny room in the far, non-hip, end of Brooklyn, failing college and possibly life.  All of which is fine, I was twenty, living alone, and allowed to be a wreck.  But.  I would keep forgetting to remind myself, standing in line once again at H&M, or to buy another $7 sandwich, that me buying these things would not fix any of the problems above described, nor would they transform me into that girl I was in my mind.

Yesterday I partly didn’t buy anything because I’ve gained 10 pounds that I’m less than comfortable with and partly because I’m saving money for a trip and partly because I didn’t feel like standing in line, but mostly because I can recognize the limits of a really nice dress.  It can make my waist look small and it can go well with my boots and it can maybe get me a free drink, but it can’t fix anything that I’m unhappy with except my lack of a red sundress which, let’s face it, I’m not really that unhappy about.