THE LOOK!!
Sometimes I notice people who seem just a little different; maybe an odd way of dressing, a home made hair cut, maybe just that little bit too brightly and erratically adorned or a little bit too much like someone from the streets. Just, well, slightly out of kilter and slightly odd.
It makes me wonder. Recently we were filling in my PIP claim form and when we came to dressing, we realised just how much, in tiny ways, Wendy plays a part in dressing me. Left to my own I would buy trousers that rode up my shins or else which dragged on the ground. I would have shirts that strain uncomfortably across my chest or more preferably hang round me like some terrible sail. I am as likely to buy bowling shoes to walk in as any other shoes; to wear a far too large suit or clothes that no one my age should ever be seen in.
I have learnt over the years. I now have a standard wardrobe. I try to buy shirts that are plain with no stripes but sometimes remember Wendy’s horror when I buy bright pink shirts or those glowing red trousers she says are only seen worn by posh Tories on television.
I have never had a clue how to dress or what is fashionable or even respectable or at least what clothing it is that I should wear that would not make people laugh or look at me uncomfortably. I don’t know if I am generally smart or generally dishevelled.
Somehow clothes just seemed to all happen. When I was married, all my clothes were gifts from relatives or from my wife, I don’t remember buying anything without support. When I left my marriage, I didn’t have a clue how to buy clothes or understand waist or neck measurements. New friends taught me how to navigate shops, how to find a changing room, how to have the confidence to riffle through a rack of clothing. How to distinguish which clothes racks are meant for women and which for men.
At first I was very cautious. I remembered that once someone said that a pale linen jacket looked good on me so any jacket that was white or faun or pale brown became my go to work clothing. The same applied to trousers. I knew jeans were not really meant for work and to be honest was a bit frightened of making a statement by wearing jeans. It meant that my wardrobe for some years was a series of pale off white versions of everything that seemed safe and not frightening, as long as I could find them in my local charity shops.
The same applied to other areas of dress. My hair? I have never had a style of any chosen sort. If I go into a hairdressers, I just ask for them to cut it shorter and always agree with whatever they do; shrinking from giving any opinion about how it should look saying, ‘Just do as you wish.’ Sometimes they ask me if I have a parting and I say no that I just wear it straight down because that means I will not need to comb it, which is helpful as I have not possessed a brush or comb for decades. Sometimes I leave looking smart and as soon as I get outside the hairdressers I muss my hair up for fear that someone will notice. I have had bottles of after shave in my bathroom cupboard for decades. I only get them as presents and would never dare to choose one for myself.
It puzzles me. When I was growing into a young man I found the idea of shaving humiliating and embarrassing and for many years coped with my facial hair by using scissors to give myself the closest I could to a shave. Going into a chemist to buy razor blades would have been unthinkable. At the same time making a statement with my clothes happened by accident. I wore big shapeless coats that gradually got more and more raggedy and threadworn, which I wore whatever the weather, I felt safe in them. I talked in a whisper, would never have asked a girl out, couldn’t conceive of dancing.
Maybe young eighteen year olds can be excused this; so many of us fear without necessarily being able to express or understand it, the approach of independence and adulthood or the dawning of sexuality and sensuality. For me such ideas were anathema, I avoided anything to do with it without quite realising I was and felt comfortable in my own non ness; hunch shouldered, walking silently and fast, staring at the ground often with a far too heavy bag slung from my shoulders.
I wonder what this is and where it comes from and whether it applies to a lot of us with a severe mental illness? I see that mental health state examinations look at our appearance and that some indicators of schizophrenia are around the wearing of ‘redundant clothing’ and I know some of us do conform as can I, to an old stereotype, and equally that many of us don’t.
What I do remember is the resentment and alienation that occurred in a drop in group I was running when a very smartly dressed woman, recently out of hospital, turned up for the group and how the other members couldn’t believe that she wasn’t actually one of the workers and almost visibly excluded her.
Our appearance: Illness? Maybe. Poverty? most probably. Culture? possibly or something else? Like many people growing up anxious and insecure I can see how we can avoid adulthood and identity in a myriad of different ways. I think people see this in young women more than men but I think us men or at least us callow men can also find it hard to grow into our bodies and into our new world. I remember I felt so jealous and bemused by my peers who shone with the vibrancy of their youth and the joy of their appearance and seemed untroubled by the world.
I wonder where we went wrong? We say we cannot and should not stereoptype; that there is no such thing as a ‘community care’ or ‘mental illness’ ‘look’ but there sort of is, for at least for some of us; just as there sort of used to be for some young women with learning disabilities, dressed in their pudding bowl haircuts and old matron clothes.
In many ways I have led a vibrant and active life and in some ways I have been engaging and spontaneous when I am at work but sit me down in a group of friends and I go mute, I do a lot of smiling, conscious that without the smiles I will be odd but at these times I sort of withdraw into nothing.
Is this a part of our impairment? Maybe a part of our culture? Is the indignation some of us feel when people mark us down as poorly presented and untidy and therefore ill justified? Or equally the despair some of us feel when walking into a consulting room looking attractive and smart which means the clinician thinks we must be coping fine, when we are far from that?
I am now sixty; as clueless and ignorant of clothes and fashion and all the attributes of fashion as I was at eighteen. I remember my anger when my Mum would constantly ask me to dress nicely, stand up straight, speak clearly, smile at people and circulate to chatter in a room of people and how I am still pretty much incapable of this a good forty years later. Did I go wrong? Did I never grow up?
I often feel that it is only in recent years, having met Wendy that I have at last crossed from the threshold of adolescence to adulthood. Just as I might be gaining that understanding, Now I will likely need to look for the approach of whatever old age implies, which I already know I am nowhere near prepared for.
I saw an article that said we may have a shaky sense of identity and that we sometimes react to that with attempts to change that identity into something we feel suits us. Although I struggle to believe that I have schizophrenia, I can sort of see that. However in my case, I think I have little idea what that identity might be. In many ways I feel I appear in many situations without a sense of identity and where I do create one for work I instinctively distrust it.
And what should I or you make of this? Some of us look odd, behave odd, does it matter? I suppose your average idealist like me would like to say it doesn’t matter at all and we should not be judged for it: we certainly shouldn’t be encouraged to be what we are not but at the same time at the back of mind I think;
“Wouldn’t it have been amazing if, only for a small part of my life, I had felt ‘normal’”
Yes ‘normal’ is a misnomer but we know it has some meaning. I would like to feel accepted; never have to work at belonging. If who I am was just taken for granted it might been nice: just a few moments where I did not feel different even with the poverty of how I can dress, not to be seen as different by those around me but also by my own self. To accept myself and to be accepted; I find it slightly sad that that is the limit of my ambition.
(photo: Graham - Ardmore 2022)
留言