Letting Go of Labels

So, I have this one friend who makes me feel inferior. It's not her fault, it's entirely in my own head. At times I feel as though we have this weird imaginary secret rivalry, and sometimes I think she might even be doing the same thing, as our conversations seem to revolve around name-dropping and casual oneupmanship - who has been to the most obscure concert? Who has the most bizarre haircut? Who has read the most dark yet intellectual novel this year? Sound pointless and exhausting? Well, yeah. It kinda is. 

Eventually I realised that every time we hang out (which isn't often, these days - are you surprised?) I come away feeling like I need to amp up my weirdness and make it more visible.

I've always loved alternative fashion. When I moved on from my intense goth look, a lot of my friends expressed disappointment. They had enjoyed that I didn't dress like everyone else. But I've always found that my style is a fairly fluid thing. I take inspiration from a lot of places and I don't like to be limited to one palette or set of parameters. For a while fairly recently, after the flamboyance of being 'alternative' for most of my young life, I enjoyed the simplicity of T-shirts and jeans with no make-up, especially as a new mum. It felt freeing. But after a while, I found I didn't feel great about the way I looked.

One (brave) friend eventually commented, "I feel like this is just how you got used to dressing when you were pregnant. I don't feel like it's really 'you'."

I was furious about this for a while. But to some extent she was right. Between the all-consuming nature of parenthood, my 'eco-anxiety', which makes me feel as though the apocalypse is generally hanging over our heads (I mean, it is, right?) - might as well give up on looking nice when we'll all be killing each other over the world's last potatoes in a few weeks - and some vague, never-fully-expressed background thoughts about patriarchy and beauty standards and freedom, I'd slid into a rut of trying extremely hard not to care about how I looked and kind of hoping it would read as punk-rock-devil-may-care rather than, well, boring.

Every now and again I'd catch an unflattering photo of myself and think, wow, I need to get my shit together, but you know how it is, there are always more dishes to do, and the toddler mushed my eyebrow pencil anyway, and I'm saving money by not buying cosmetics, and Dai likes that I'm not so high maintenance... And so it would get pushed to the bottom of the priority pile over and over, manifesting only as uneasiness, a loss of confidence, feeling awkward in social situations.

Enter a visit to Secret Rivalry Friend. I feel bland in my jeans and jumper. That night I dream about - honestly - dying my hair radish-pink and getting a snakebite piercing. I hate this feeling that I have to be a certain amount of alternative for it to count. Like, all the little things that make me - make anyone - unique - music taste, reading material, sense of humour, talents, guilty pleasures, hobbies - don't add up to anything if I don't adopt the appropriate uniform.

I have a similar issue with Paganism. This is ridiculous, I know, but I always feel I ought to dress the part if I'm going to a public ritual, an esoteric shop or even a place with a notable Pagan community like Glastonbury or Burley. I worry that I won't be taken seriously if I don't look, well, witchy enough. 

And I find this tendency in myself deeply, deeply irritating, because the older I get and the more I learn, the more I find in myself that doesn't fit into a neat little box. The books I like to read. My music taste. My interests. My dress sense (which dependent on mood and activity runs the gamut from Animal to Mary Wyatt London via Wobble And Squeak, for want of a better way of describing it). And, yes, my Pagan practise also. 

I don't consider myself particularly 'eclectic', and what I do generally seems to fit under the banner of Druidry, but if I squint at it from different angles, on different days and in different moods, there's green witchcraft, kitchen witchcraft, a sprinkle of Wicca from time to time (I grew up in the 90s; Wicca was my intro point), a lot of wanting to be Terri Windling when I grow up, and a fair amount of winging it, with a sprinkle of 'stuff the house spirits told me to do'. Is this a thing? Is this Pagan-ing correctly? I really have no idea. But it seems to work for me. So generally I keep my mouth shut around people who might complain that I'm doing it wrong, and get the hell on with it.

And, to come back round to clothing - honestly, a lot of my actual practise seems to involve crawling into hedges or going barefoot or wandering about in rain and gales, so as I've alluded to before, when I look the most mystical I'm generally doing the least actual work, and when I look like a pasty, messy-haired anorak I'm probably feeling extremely Druidic. (Sadly this does not translate well socially - people do not see the anorak and go, "Aha, she's like super connected to nature and stuff,", they go "wow, she's really let herself go." But never mind...)

I've wandered, as I often do, far from the original point I wanted to make, which is that realistically, I like a lot of different and diverse things - I'm not sure why, in my head, I've made this into something to minimise or apologise for. This competitive comparison aspect isn't fun in my friendships, my daily life or in my Paganism, and I figure that the best way to get rid of it for good is to throw out all the labels and do what feels good to me. Looking nice doesn't mean always looking the same, being alternative doesn't mean adopting a uniform, and uniqueness is not something you have to wear like a badge. I want to embrace my different influences and inspirations by allowing myself to be as chameleonic as I please.