I have a pair of old yoga pants and while putting them on tonight I thought about just how long I've had them. And comparatively thinking just how many boyfriends have seen them. Once, for my ex husband, once for my lover... and then when both of them were history... once more for my FWB.

Now they reside with me and my fiance. I've noticed they resemble me on the inside. Worn down a bit, lost their color;
and their elasticity, a bit like my ability to bounce back... quite frankly,lacking. The words "knock out", still bold and written on the fold over waist gets
double and even triple folded into oblivion just so I can keep them from falling off. These words are cracked and faded but not quite as aged as the rest of the material.

It's funny really, I'm not sure why I keep them. Comfort? Not really, I'm constantly pulling at them to keep them up and more than once, in fact just tonight, I've stepped on the pantlegs and nearly face planted myself into the carpet.

Still, I do love these stupid pants and I really do love the worn out, worn thin person that I have become.

I want freedom from them sometimes, or maybe moreso from myself.

I have this piece of my soul that cannot be satiated unless it is free to roam. It wants to fill itself with artistic things like paintings and black and white photography. It wants to dress up like a flower child and listen to The Doors. It longs for poetry and words that bite so fiercely that it rattles the bones.

Yet,I find myself clinging to concrete, finding comfort in routine, choosing level-headedness.

I guess what I need is balance.

Two very different lives that I walk the line in between.

And this is why those pants stay around. I've been all kinds of different people in them, and all of them are a piece of me.

I'm becoming the woman who is in my soul...slowly.

It is taking me years of quiet reflection, but I am finding her...

09/01/2014

Author's Note: Soul Searching on a Sunday Night.

Posted on 09/01/2014
Copyright © 2024 Britt Zimmerman