Do I own clothes or do they own me?
I don't know who I am anymore. In truth, I actually never did.
I hate my wardrobe.
Not the literal piece of furniture, but everything housed within in it. I hate the too tight jeans and the floaty tops, I hate the bold patterns and muted hues.
Turns out, clothes are an important part of identity, and mine is having a crisis.
I could say it started when I discovered I was autistic, when I started following creators who oozed bright, bold colour from every pore, juxtaposed by those who bathed exclusively in head-to-toe black. I could say it started when I looked at these people and thought I needed to be like them, to pick bright or black and stick to it, but in truth, it started way before that.
The first time I became conscious of my clothes, I was about 11 years old, wearing a pink and white long sleeved t-shirt with some faux punky logo on it and grey flared trousers that had pink stripes running down the side. I remember because some kids started taunting me, calling me greebo - which on a council estate in the west midlands in the early 2000’s was the precursor for terms like goth and emo.
Until the name calling, they were just clothes, neither right or wrong, good or bad. Just something I must have vaguely liked and stuck on to go run around the field with my cousins. When the name calling started, it highlighted a wrongness to what I was wearing. Clothes could be bad and that meant not belonging.
Since then, I endeavoured to correct it.
Through my school years I wore whatever was popular, even when I didn’t actually like.
When I got my first serious boyfriend, I bleached my hair white-blonde and exclusively wore black jeans, tops with skulls or other ‘rock-related’ motifs and, according to my mom, ‘too much eyeliner’ - all to match his style.
When I started college and made a group of friends that didn’t invite me to their parties, I started to buy plainer clothes to bridge the distance between us.
When I started my first office job, I bought pencil skirts and shirts, but then struggled to dress casually on the weekend, so wore shirts and jeans.
When I longed to escape London, I ended up buying floaty boho tops that made me feel like I had the ability to travel somewhere far away.
When I moved to Vancouver, I bought athleisure wear and adopted a wardrobe of dark, neutral hues - because that’s what everyone around me was wearing.
When I hit the big 3-0 I bought everything a size too big because Gen Z fashion seemed to lean towards baggy. I wanted to stay on trend and not feel old.
And after I discovered I was autistic, I dyed my hair pink and started buying bright colours and playful patterns because I thought it would make me feel whole again.
I thought I was unmasking with my recent style, but in truth it was another mask and it’s painfully obvious to me now how much I use clothes to hide myself within the spaces I want to be seen as normal.
Adopting the bright colours and bold patterns that are signposted by many in the visible online autistic community helped me blend in, but I never felt any closer to myself. At times, I’ve actually felt further away.
It’s not that I don’t like the clothes I have…
It’s more that I’m tired of them.
When you wake to a wardrobe built for other people just so you can avoid being called names, made to feel different or simply be included, the exhaustion sometimes catches up with you.
I have hangovers of various versions of myself hung in the closet that I can’t bear to part with because of the *memories* they represent and how good I felt wearing them. I did like them once and they are visual and tangible evidence that I can, for the briefest of moments, belong.
But, I also can’t bare to wear them. Despite my clothes helping me mask in the ‘before times’, now I’m in a post-diagnosis world, I know I’m not entirely me when I wear them. Those clothes are old versions of me trying to fit in and even if some part of me does or did like them, I bought them with other people in mind. There’s a quiet discomfort in donning something you know is mostly for other people and so I hate everything I put on, inevitably tear it off before doing the same to another outfit, cycling through my wardrobe until I put the first outfit back on and storm out the room before I have a shutdown.
Clothing has always been a trigger for my shutdowns and meltdowns. And is it any wonder? Not only have I been contending with finding clothing that were the right amount of soft, warm and tight for how I felt on any given day - because, yes, my preferences change with the seasons, my energy and with my hormones - add in the natural womanly changes of a hormonal and aging body with the fact I’ve been trying to figure out who I needed to be…. It’s a recipe for overwhelm.
And now… I wake up everyday, look at the selection of clothes before me and I don’t know if what I end up wearing is something I genuinely like or just a comfortable mask. I’m not even convinced I can ever separate them.
I wonder if this is just part of what it is to be autistic… to be a woman… to never know who you’re truly dressing for… to never get to dress just for yourself alone because so much hinges on being safe and accepted.
I’ll let you know if I ever work it out.