Incompatible patterns lining feet found rather cold. Different colours and designs found on each foot. Mismatched socks have been a delicate yet tumultuous flaw of mine according to my mother. Pointing out the clashing fashion of my socks when I remove my worn out shoes on my returns to my adolescent home. I have become known for this imperfection upon friends as well, some wondering if I own a single pair that is the same. Under the dim lighting of youth acting as adults over wine and dinner I find myself perfectly mature in a satin black dress. My face proudly done up correctly, red lipstick and my other blemishes concealed. Until I find myself staring down to the hardwood floor, nothing to add to clever conversation, looking back at me is my immaturity found woven into wool panda bears on my left and small rabbits on my right.
The issue of mismatched socks could be solved so easily with a trip to the store, yet I cannot let go of all the half pairs in my wardrobe. Socks left over from friends and past lovers who forgot of their existence, I have housed as my own. Orphans taken into one large drawer to find others unremembered. Truthfully the issue of my immaturity is not the socks, It’s the forcing of two things that simply don’t belong to one another.
“We just clicked” was a phrase uttered to me more than once from friends who find themselves in their seamless pairs so effortlessly. For me I never understood the idea of just clicking with someone, in fact it sounds like nothing less than a ripoff rom-com line used one too many times. Begging to be shelved and forgotten like the rest of them. It reminds me of cards found in little homemade shops with puzzle pieces connecting on the cover, something gifted for anniversaries or Valentines day. I have never just clicked. I have always forced, shoved and cut pieces to connect. Fragments of myself hidden away or donated in fear of being told once more I am simply Too much. Too much stuff, too much patterns, too much damn fucking socks that don’t match. There always seems to just be a bit too much of me.
Yet as the sun started to form into the most handsome orange shade I’ve ever seen, dripping it’s way past my curtains to pour its body over my cotton sheets, I caught myself clicking. We had been on the phone since I let off work at 2 in the morning and now the sun was starting to rise and I haven’t yet been to bed. The sound of his voice carried into the empty halls of my new apartment and filled it with something that wasn’t just cardboard boxes and footsteps. That night so simply engraved ignited fear within me as I realized how easily I let him see parts of me rejected countless times. Yet he kept calling, and I waited not so patiently to answer.
Eventually he found his way to my new place down deep in the south of the city. Cloudy and calm was the night in which he showed up at my apartment, a bottle of rosé in his hand for the first thing we shared. I lit my new candle in the kitchen so we could sit in its light. There were many things we agreed on including our love for rainy days like this, yet disagreed on the simple things like movies and his love for spiders which I truly hate out of nothing but fear. We were fundamentally different yet I adored that about us, how conversation never seemed to pause. Arguing our own points of disagreement. He made me laugh, a laugh I used to share with my childhood best friend. Feeling sick to your stomach trying to catch your breath. Honest was the shirt he wore, I never met anyone so freely honest about their feelings as he whispered I have a crush on you in my ear and I giggled like a schoolgirl. I wanted to return his favour of honesty with my own, so I laid all my hidden jacks on the table, allowing him to read my cards for what they were. I wanted him to see me fully and he did. Questions asked about stories I told, it felt as if for once my past wasn’t being pushed into the corner of myself. Then we finally ran out of words. I looked down to the floor and there they were the mismatched socks that for once didn’t belong to just me. A deep-formed smile fell upon my face as my cheeks turned pink for knowing how silly I would sound if I tried to explain this all to him. So I simply said with an understanding smile,
“ Your socks don’t match”
“They rarely ever do” he responded with a smile back.
I hadn't heard from him since that night and when he left I had that overwhelming feeling you get when you think it might be the last time you see someone. I’ve been staring at the unused toothbrush I got him which now sits hauntingly in my bathroom, mocking my quickness to assume he would want to come back. Yet I am still grateful for a kind yet quick moment in which I had someone to boldly mismatch with.
You really have a lovely way with words.
the ending is gut-wrenching but this was so beautifully written.