If the shoe fits...

As amusing as this might look, I'm awake on a Sunday morning, dressed in my matching flannel pajamas and my never-worn Nine West Begin pumps. It's the animal print shoe with a gold buckle. You know, the kind that is oh, so irresistible in the store but would never be at all useful in real life. My real life, at least, does not involve an animal-printed 4-inch stiletto during my 1 hour commute downtown. Anyway, I have to do the ritual of breaking in a new pair of shoes; it's hard work getting your feet used to the 5.5 cradle.

Such a pretty, pretty cradle...

Told you so! And I got it on sale--clap, clap for me because I have not bought a full-priced shoe in a very, very long time. Maybe not since November.

The shoes are killing me actually. I think there's something about the shape of this pointed toe that makes the breaking in cycle a little more challenging. I've walked around the living room, in the kitchen, lifted a few things... and my feet are screaming.

I put myself through this rigorous pattern of squeezing myself to fit into something that I will probably tire of in a couple of months. Sounds familiar, no?

How are these boyfriends, playdates, fuck buddies, or friends with benefits that different from a pair of shoes that I scour at the mall? They're all so appealing in the fluorescent lighting (as weird as that might sound), I make excuses for why I would need them--when I really just want them, and then I convince myself that because they're not that hard to get (swipe of a credit card... it's on clearance with an extra 30% off the final sale price...) that it'd be just fine to take them home.

Start breaking in.

So I try them on with a bunch of outfits, I walk around the house in them on Sunday mornings when nobody else is up, and I check myself out in almost every reflective surface, convinced that I look good with them. They hurt like hell. I can only really wear them once in a while and honestly, who puts that much value to a shoe that was 30% off and was in a paper bag in 15 minutes?

Another one replaces it the next payday.

But what about the shoe I was spying on for a good few months--the kind you wait to go on sale, or even more, wait for during the Semi-Annual sale? What about that pair? Or how about the pair you've toyed around with for so long? Those patent leather pumps? They're all sorts of nice. And they're always in style. But there's always something better out there, no? And in some instances, the black patent leather is just completely inappropriate and unreliable.

I know it's going to take a while before I settle with a pair of Manolos or Louboutins so I wait. I wait and I try on and purchase the different varieties of shoes that seemingly go well with me. Goodness knows I am not dropping down to a pair of Birks for the sole comfort of not going through a breaking in pattern. No thanks, I'll stick to the painful and the beautiful--it's not like they take up that much time anyway.