What You're Not | ✔

01. The Walls

The walls of my old room were white. There's nothing wrong with white walls. They're nice, but I no longer wanted nice. I want different. Everything else different – where we lived, our family, me – so, why not the walls? If I truly wanted to commit to the idea of reinventing myself I felt I should start with my surroundings.

I spent hours of looking through paint swatches, but none of the colors were wowing me. I was hoping to get a color picked out before unpacking my room. That wasn't going to happen, though. How could I change my entire life, if I couldn't even change the colors of my walls?

"Knock, knock," Mom said before stepping into my empty, white bed room. Her box-braids were styled up in bun so high I thought she wouldn't make through the door frame without ducking. She did, though. Just barely.

"Guess what I found?" she sang. That's when I noticed the bulky, purple sewing machine that she poorly hid behind her back.

"Is it a giraffe?" I teased, walking over to retrieve the sewing machine. There was a thick layer of dust on it from its four year stint in the back of my closet. Now, it was very important to my reinvention plan.

Since Mom's entire savings went into the move, there wasn't much of a budget for new clothes. So, I had to bring Betsey out of retirement - named after my biggest fashion inspiration Betsey Johnson.

"Did you find that DIY site I told you about?" she asked, as I set the machine down in the corner next to my laptop. "Cristina, from the support group, she said there are some cute DIYs for clothing there."

"Yes, I found it," I said, picking up my laptop and turning to her. "I was a little skeptical at first because you mentioned that Cristina was seventy years old, but the creations on there are actually wearable."

I show her the website and she nods in approval as she scrolled through the various clothing projects. Her features changed from approving to disapproving in a blink of an eye.

"Let me catch you in this," she said, pointing to a risqué little black dress. "You're not too old for the belt."

"But that one is my favorite," I said, faking a pout.

Her lips spread into a grin, showing off her perfect teeth – her two front teeth gapless, unlike mine. I expected her to say something, but instead she stared at me like I was a baby taking my first steps. The hugging was coming and I had nowhere to run. She'd been hugging me a lot since I told her about my plan.

She stepped forward, embracing me in her strong arms and squeezing tightly. I held the laptop out to the side to keep her crushing it between us. The flowery scent of her perfume wafted around me and, despite my earlier protest, I melted into it. "I'm so proud of you for finally coming out of your shell."

"Hold your proud mama speech until after I've actually had any interactions with a human other than you," I said as she released me from the hug.

"Speaking of human interactions," she said, pulling her wallet from her back pocket. After handing me a few dollars she continued, "I saw a craft store on the way here, you can go pick up a few supplies for your projects."

I smiled, thanking her before giving her a quick hug. She then left the room to unpack some more boxes. Looking around at the boxes labeled LOREN that were stacked in the middle of the floor, I debated whether I should do some unpacking or check out the craft store.

Definitely the craft store.

I changed out of my sweatpants into a pair of distressed jeans and long sleeved black and white striped top. My hair was done into two strand twist I was too lazy to unravel, so I just untwisted two in the front for bangs and hid the rest under a back beanie. After grabbing the car keys from Mom I left for the store.