{"id":506,"date":"2015-07-14T03:43:23","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T03:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michelledevon.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2021-01-02T04:04:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T04:04:01","slug":"braless-barefoot-and-bare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michelledevon.com\/index.php\/2015\/07\/14\/braless-barefoot-and-bare\/","title":{"rendered":"Braless, Barefoot and Bare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over a decade and many more years ago, I was in an on-again-off-again tumultuous relationship with a man, that I would now hardly call a relationship. At the time, he and I were driving in a truck from Dallas back to my home at the time, which was about a 6-hour drive. I was wearing sandals, so I kicked them off, curled my feet up under me, and then slipped my bra off while still wearing my shirt. You ladies know how to do that, right? Right. So anyway, I was just kicking in for being comfortable for the long trip. I slipped the bra into the side pocket of the truck, and I started to read a book I\u2019d brought with me.<\/p>\n

When we got to Weatherford, I told him I was hungry and asked if we could stop to get something to eat. He needed to fill up with gas, so we did that first, and while he was filling up, I searched for a place nearby to eat. This was before the days of smartphones and GPS being so popular, so I had to go into the station and ask about places to eat. They suggested a great place just down the street, so when he got back into the truck, I told him about it. We pulled up to the place, and I got ready to get out, slipped my shoes on, and reached for the door handle.<\/p>\n

He stopped me and said, \u201cI\u2019m not going in there with you without your bra.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Seriously? Wow. I asked why. He said, \u201cI like my women\u2026 I mean, you know, the people I\u2019m with, to look good when I\u2019m with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking 1) we\u2019re at a podunk little roadside steakhouse, 2) we\u2019re about 5 1\/2 hours from home and from anyone we will ever see again, and 3) I\u2019m my own person and if it doesn\u2019t bother me, why should it bother him? Does my appearance really have any reflection on him at all?<\/p>\n

Regardless, while you women all know how easy it is to take a bra off while wearing a shirt, have any of you in public, in a parking lot, ever tried to, with big boobs like mine, put one on while wearing a shirt? Yeah, ain\u2019t happening. So I asked him to go back to the gas station so I could use the restroom and put it on and he said he didn\u2019t want to. He instead pulled behind the restaurant and told me I could do it there.<\/p>\n

I finally refused, and we decided to go to Wendy\u2019s and eat on the road. I fumed the entire way home and basically refused to even speak to him.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said at the beginning, this was a tumultuous relationship. Sadly, off and on this relationship lasted 11 years of my life.<\/p>\n

Looking back at it now, I can\u2019t help but wonder what the hell I was thinking.<\/p>\n

What he thought of me was so important to me. What everyone else thought of him was more important to him than what I thought or wanted or needed.<\/p>\n

It was a stupid bra. Was it really that important? I was still young. The boobs were still perky. I was still well dressed in every other way, even had my hair and makeup done.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this isn\u2019t the point of what I was going to say.<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019ve been sick, it\u2019s interesting how much my appearance has gone by the wayside. When you have only so much energy (so many \u2018spoons\u2019 as the saying goes), then you learn to spend that time and energy wisely. I\u2019ve learned that things like makeup and styling hair takes so much energy that I then have no energy to go out and enjoy myself. Things that you might take for granted now, when you can\u2019t breathe and you feel so much pain all the time, become difficult, like putting on a bra, twisting it around, slipping your arms through (when the straps scrape against the arms and it\u2019s excruciating) then the band pushes against pressure points of your body and that hurts, and you desaturate into the 80s just from putting the bra on\u2026. who cares about a bra after all that? Pantyhose? What the heck are those? Haven\u2019t seen a pair of them in 10 years. Getting dressed the way I used to when I was working and young and active and healthy, well\u2026 that takes so much energy that the only thing I can do is crawl into bed afterward, no energy for going out.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve learned how to change things. I have slip-on shoes, a hairstyle that requires me only to blow dry it, and I rarely if ever wear any makeup any more. I choose clothes to buy that are easy to wear, that don\u2019t require me to contort my body to put them on, things that are loose and flowing, so I can feel feminine and attractive, but still be comfortable and not in pain because my clothes are tight.<\/p>\n

And yes, sometimes, I do not wear a bra.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still very uncomfortable doing this, but I think as I get older or get sicker, either\/or, I will likely get more accustomed to that too. I can become that \u2018crazy old lady\u2019 and I\u2019m okay with that. Why am I okay with it? Because it\u2019s being that \u2018crazy old lady\u2019 that lets me enjoy any time out of the house.<\/p>\n

I was talking to my mom the other night and I told her, after all the medical stuff, I have no pride any more. I have no shame. So many people have seen my boobs and my ass and, heck, even my insides. Shoot, the folks at the hospital have probably seen more of me than some folks I\u2019ve been intimate with have! Sometimes a tech walks in during a minor procedure and a boob is exposed, and he\u2019ll blush and apologize, and I\u2019m like, \u201cCome on in\u2026 I have no shame! It\u2019s just a boob!\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, they\u2019re just boobs. And braless or not, who cares?<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re one of those who are sick, who lives with a chronic illness, save some of your spoons. Makeup and hair and clothes are all trappings. You don\u2019t need them to be beautiful. Love yourself for who you are, saggy boobs and barefeet and pale face and all. You\u2019ll feel better for it, and you\u2019ll find you have more time and energy to be you!<\/p>\n

The one biggest lesson I have learned from being sick, in so many different ways, is this: Don\u2019t judge.<\/p>\n

You never know. You don\u2019t know a person\u2019s situation. When you see me braless and wearing my slip on shoes and I\u2019m in my wheelchair, overweight and on oxygen\u2013you might assume a lot about me. Most of it would probably be wrong. I\u2019m not in the wheelchair because I\u2019m fat or lazy. I\u2019m not on oxygen because I have COPD (which I get asked a lot for some reason\u2013it\u2019s like people think you give your COPD by smoking and being unhealthy or something, which isn\u2019t always true). I\u2019m not sick because I\u2019m fat, but I have gotten fat since I\u2019ve been sick (fluid retention is such a bitch, let me tell you\u2013but I\u2019m successfully though slowly working on that). And I\u2019m not not wearing a bra because I\u2019m lazy either. It\u2019s because if I put the bra on, I might have been able to leave the house!<\/p>\n

And maybe there are people out there who would be mortified to ever leave the house with a bare face and a bare chest\u2026 hell, ya\u2019ll, I was at the grocery store one night straight from the hospital in a nightgown, with a scarf on and bright red fuzzy house slippers in my wheelchair, because I wanted to stop by the grocery store on the way home from the hospital, because once I got home, I wasn\u2019t going to be able to leave for several days.<\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t judge any more, or at least I try not to. It\u2019s also been interesting for me as a writer, because even though I\u2019ve always been a people watcher and I\u2019ve always written stories about people in my head, my own new experiences now have given me a new avenue for writing those people\u2019s stories. We don\u2019t always think about what motivate people.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of a story Robert Fulghum wrote in one of his books about some kids on a bus with their father, two kids, acting up and being total brats on the bus, jumping up and down, running up and down the aisles, making noise and being a nuisance, and the father sat there, staring ahead and did nothing. When a woman finally said something to him, very judgmental about him not doing anything to control his kids, the man told her that his wife, their mother, was at the hospital and was just told she had cancer and was going to die, and he didn\u2019t know how to tell the kids\u2026<\/p>\n

Or like the sentiment in the\u00a0Unsent Letter To the Man in the Blue Truck,<\/a>\u00a0where it says: \u201cIf every human being stopped for a moment and asked, \u201cIf I knew XXX about this person, would I still respond this way?\u201d I think the world would be a kinder, gentler place.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we all knew everyone\u2019s story, their personal story, there are a lot of things we might accept differently. And possibly even some things we wouldn\u2019t and perhaps shouldn\u2019t accept too.<\/p>\n

But we can\u2019t know everyone\u2019s story upfront.<\/p>\n

So why not err on the side of caution and treat each person kindly, regardless of their story? Who knows the difference it might make.<\/p>\n

And if you see a middle-aged, chubby woman with reddish hair and oxygen tubes up her nose, braless and barefoot, in her powerchair at the grocery store, smile and say hi. I might not have much pride, but I\u2019m pretty friendly.<\/p>\n

Love and naked boobs stuff,<\/p>\n

Michy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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