The Committee Is Now in Session

If you know me, you know I have three drawers of socks. Three. And it is never enough. I have socks for work, socks for weekends, socks for occasions that have not happened yet. Socks are always a welcome gift in my world, and everyone in my life has been informed of this. Regularly. Adding to the collection is not just appreciated, it is encouraged. Strongly.

Which is why it will surprise absolutely no one that the greatest daily crisis of my life happens at the sock drawer.

I am getting dressed for work.

The shirt is solved. Button-down, different color than yesterday, decided this in grammar school, never revisited, moving on. Some battles you win early and you honor that victory every single morning.

The chinos are on. Fine. Chinos are always fine. Chinos have never wronged anyone.

And then I open the sock drawer and the entire operation comes to a halt.

Match the pants. Always match the pants. That’s the rule.

Who made that rule?

It’s a guideline. Visual continuity.

Visual continuity. You’re going to work, not a photo shoot.

Fine. Match the shirt then.

The shirt is blue. Those socks are also blue but a different blue. A wrong blue. You cannot wear two blues that are not the same blue, that is worse than not matching at all.

How is that worse?

It just IS.

Then, from the back of the drawer, the wildcard. The orange ones. Bright, unreasonable, matching absolutely nothing currently on my body.

Those are fun.

Those are A LOT.

Life is short.

You have a nine o’clock meeting.

Exactly. Nobody’s looking at your feet in a nine o’clock meeting.

What if you cross your legs?

....

What if you cross your legs and someone sees them and thinks you’re the kind of person who wears orange socks and then that is the whole impression, forever, just, orange sock person?

That is insane.

IS IT THOUGH.

Also is it a jacket day.

We are not ready for the jacket question.

And I haven’t even gotten to the shoes yet.

Here is what I want you to notice.

I did not invite any of those voices. I did not sit down one morning and decide that visual continuity guidelines would govern my sock selection, or that crossing my legs in a meeting would require advance strategic planning, or that one small sartorial act of rebellion would need a full legal defense before 7am.

They just showed up. Early, mostly. Some came from people who loved me. Some came from people who had no business having a permanent seat at my table. Some came from culture, from religion, from the accumulated weight of being a woman in rooms that were not always built for me. Some I honestly cannot trace back to anyone. They have just always been there, issuing opinions, interrupting each other, holding formal proceedings over my sock drawer while my tea gets cold.

None of them are me.

Or rather, none of them started as me.

This month we are going to start sorting through the noise. Not to silence the committee. You cannot evict people who have been living rent-free in your head for over 30 years. But you can learn whose voice is whose. You can start to hear the difference between the voice that actually knows you and the ones that were just very loud, very early, and very convinced they had the authority.

You have a voice underneath all of it. You have had it the whole time.

We are going to find it.

And yes, the orange ones made it into the rotation. Eventually.

Inward. Onward. Go.

The Returning Project is a space where women reclaim who they truly are, beyond who they were told to be. New posts every Sunday.

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