It caught my eye as I was passing by. An everyday indulgence. A nice, soft bra.

Getting lost bra shopping

It was a chaotic, banal mind I was in. I hadn’t any money and I was shopping, fundamentally psychologically disturbing. I was driving the event under the heading “need”. I was really just pretending to myself, I suppose successfully, though there really wasn’t any beauty to it, and is anything without beauty a success?, Pretending the pretense was a seeking of a higher order, that the game was for big spiritual earnings, outside and above the brick and mortar “I have no money so I can’t shop” idea. It was totally lame. I think I was actually wondering if god wanted me to buy the bra. Anyway, I made the decision, I went in the store.

Mind you, this all comes with a steady stream of distressing, chaotic thought.

i tried on the bra, it was alright, but why oh why, I couldn’t stop there. I decided to rummage through the sale bins. After I started I justified, “I have no money, I should buy from the sale bins”. I actually found the same bra in a different color 60% off. But no, it didn’t end there. The bra, I feared, was too dark, and trying on a shirt I had bought, wondering the whole time if I should return the shirt, I saw that the dark blue showed through. Trying on the original bra I had caught, it also showed through. So I had to get a new color. I went out to the rack. The nude color I had discarded from the beginning, at the initial choice, as too boring, being the practical sort of color I am used to get. The white was nice. I tried it on, it was perfect, but the bra had a flaw. A little bunching of material along the edge of a cup. I couldn’t get it. I went out, they had no more whites, they had no more of any color that could be expected not to be seen but the beige. This is when things got bad. They weren’t great before, but I had self possession. Now, I was trapped.

The world closed me out, shut me down. There were no options for me. There was no choice to choose.

The sales clerks had started noticing, had started giving me funny looks. I had at this point tried on maybe a dozen bras, mostly the same bra, I had gone to the cash register and returned again to the rack, I had spoken my dilemma and rejected all their solutions. I stood still, trying to think my way through, breathing heavily I tried to find a clear idea, something I could trust, that gave me the experiential marker of something I could trust.

I walked away.

Back at the car,

I decided I had rejected my own self image when I had rejected the beige bra.

I went back in and bought the bra. It came with a free pair of panties. I asked the lady which one she liked and she was nice, she gave me a clear answer. I don’t know if I’ll like the panties, but I feel good about the choice because of the way I made it.

End note: I got home and tried it on and the bra was too small. How did I not notice the bra was too small in the store? All that, for something that didn’t fit right.