a woman - and her shoes
You may be wondering why I wanted to start a blog.
I am wondering why I hadn't done it sooner.
In the summer of 2021, I watched all of Sex and The City. It ruled my life. Though honestly, I didn't find myself particularly attached to a single character, or reflected in them, I loved the escapism of the story. Nothing ever went too horrifically wrong. It was just four white women with a sticky-kind of confidence and an admirable amount of self-belief.
When I first heard Liz Phair's song "Why Can't I?" I hung onto that line like it was gospel. The song itself and how that line emerged is of something entirely different, but that line I liked.
Why Can't I?
In Carrie's world, writing was fun. In my world, writing was a way to get my feelings away from my body so I'd no longer have to be responsible for them. In poetry, songs, and text messages, I had created a world far away from myself, a place I could go to leave things I didn't want to return to.
Without getting into tooo much detail, because I have a piece saved just for the matter. I never felt close to white women or their stories or their fun. My parents are both from Mexico, I was their first kid in this new country and growing up moody, confused, and carrying the weight of the legacy they were trying to create was something that pushed me far into corners.
I felt jealous, excluded, resentful of what always appeared to me to be a kind of freedom that white American women and girls had that wasn't given to me by birth. It was and still is at times an ease that sets me spinning. In all high places of writing, music, academia, and womanhood when women were praised in a proud "feminism" it was often exclusionary of all women. And for a long time in my life, I was enraged at the patriarchal weight of my motherland and the misogynistic stain of the new. And when I wanted to be saved by the love that was promised of the new age of "girl power" I didn't feel so comforted by it.
So Sex and the City, against many of my principles and totally distinct from my world, created a thread that I would weave into a new understanding of my own life. And it felt synonymous to the words:
Why Can't I?
I pushed myself far away from places I felt excluded from to rebel against them, but it's not like anyone noticed, it mostly served them better. So instead, I wanted to take take take. Why can't I live in a way that is fun? Why shouldn't I continue to show up even if I don't feel welcome? Why can't I write nonchalantly? Why can't I be both more and less than what I am supposed to be?
So I let the writing get freer, cus nothing else was coming to free me.
That summer I crawled out from the inside of my own stomach and I let my words lead me. They were longer just responsible for my aftermath.
So I wanna tell you about my purses. And if you've ever seen Sex and the City, you know Carrie has a thing for shoes. I, never being too gifted at fashion and style, did find myself dutifully committed to one specific accessory. Maybe for how important it was for carrying everything I needed to have with me, or maybe because of how easily it paired with everything.
It all started when I was home one winter, and I found the perfect purse in my hometown Goodwill. It was a blood-red rectangular leather purse, with a perfect silver heart in the center and black leather straps. It was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever seen.
After that first purse, I got to accumulating many other purses, at thrift stores, flea markets. Each with their own little tale of my wonder.
Three years after finding the purse that started it all, I was back in my hometown Goodwill, rummaging around the jackets when I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be crazy if I found another purse of the same brand here?"
Driven by my intuition and maybe freaky, baby psychic abilities, I walked right over to the purses and right in the front hook, stacked in front of dozens of other purses, there she was. A purely black square leather purse with silver accents, and a silver heart, slightly different in the middle.
In the mind-fucking months post-grad and pre-full-adulthood I had been having, this felt like a moment of certainty. A reminder of my instinct. And a reminder of all the things I had yet to collect.
These purses are things I take out into the world as my armor. They remind me to be proud that I am stepping out into the world ready to make it, shape it, enjoy it, write it, create it, fantasize it.
The "why can't I" experience my own life as I want it?
As Liz says,
wouldn't it be beautiful?
