The Deal with Dresses

I don't own a pair of jeans anymore. I used to have a lot of them. And lots of tee shirts. And lots of 'regular young person' clothes.

Then I spent a good three plus weeks in just pajamas. After surgery, my right hip hurt from laying on it so long, and I couldn't imagine wearing a jeans waist-band on that irritated skin. Plus, most of the first month post-op was spent either in a hospital bed or sitting in a recliner at my parent's house, so there was no need for real clothes. Pajamas are lazy and comfortable.

I can't really remember at what point I started the dress thing. By the dress thing, I mean wearing mostly to only dresses (aside from the scrubs I wear to work or the pajamas I wear to bed). I've always owned dresses, but they weren't necessarily the kind of thing I'd wear routinely. Like most people, dresses were for special occasions or times I wanted to look especially nice. Dresses are cool in that they make the wearer feel pretty. Dresses are fancy and swing around and for the most part accentuate the positive more than jeans do (ugh, muffin top).

It's hard to feel pretty with a messed up face. Your face is what most people look at first, and what they see the most of. Faces also communicate a lot. Not just in the words coming out of their mouths but in expressions and imitations. It's hard to explain just how devastating it is to look different and to not have that function of expression. It sounds so superficial. People are like, "hey, it's not that bad, at least you're alive." Which is true enough, but sometimes little consolation. The problem's not so much that the partially paralyzed half of my face makes me look different from other people, as it is that it makes me look different from myself, the me I grew up with and knew. And honestly, I really hate that. It just really really bothers me.

Anyway, about the dresses.
I've had moments in the past where I've thought, "wouldn't it be fun to just wear dresses all the time". Dresses are easy. There's no matching of shirt and pants. They're comfortable, and they're classy. Getting dressed up is fun. But I was never serious about the idea of no pants until after Gary. After Gary, I need a pick-me-up. Clothing affects your self-perception as much it affects the way others perceive you, and a month in pajamas could make anyone feel pretty slobby.
At some point I decided, "I'm not buying pants and shirts anymore". As clothes wore out or didn't fit I just gave or threw them away, and only replaced them with dresses.

At first it was kind of tough. There weren't a ton of casual dresses I liked to be found in stores. But the fun of getting dressed up every morning was worth it. Luckily, this year the stores have had a ton of dresses in all kinds of styles (maybe I'm a trendsetter? haha), and it's been more difficult not to over-buy. As it is now, I have close to 50, and the closet is about to burst.
Now the challenge this season comes in making it through the winter. Last year I resorted to sweatpants or pajama pants a fair bit on colder days. I have to figure out how to make pantyhose a more-than-single-use item.

To certain extent I feel like everyday dresses have become my 'thing'. Maybe most people don't notice, and that's okay, but I feel like there is enough connection between vestibular schwannoma and dresses that I needed to attempt an explaination. My quick answer for those that do ask, "Oh, you look nice today. Are you going somewhere?" is simply, "no, this is just how I dress."
In the end, the deal with dresses is simple. It's about those little pleasures. I like them, they make me feel pretty, and just waking for another day is reason enough to warrant getting dressed up.