Baby Deer in Leather Jackets

Okay, so I bought this leather jacket at Goodwill a couple of months ago for $14.99. I was so stoked on the find—100% leather, simple front zip with a few fun details like a lapel that has a couple of flat silver studs and it was black, naturally—my favorite color. The Goodwill tag said it was a size bigger than what the jacket tag said which were both smaller than what I typically wear, but with -30 seconds left until closing, I quickly tried it on and deemed it the perfect fit. Just what I was looking for! A leather jacket I was going to love and would elevate any outfit for only $14.99. Score.

In my haste I failed to notice the couple of brown paint (?) spots on the sleeve. NBD. Barely noticeable? I just hope it’s paint and not something else.

I tried it on again a few days later at home ready to pull together the perfect (boring) outfit of jeans and a t-shirt that would quickly become interesting by adding this new-to-me-with-brown-paint-stains leather jacket. In putting it on, it felt a little less comfortable than I remembered, but I still wanted to see how it looked zipped up. You could say it was, um, snug? If “snug” means so tight that I could barely move or lift my arms or breathe? Trust me on this—it looked great. It was super tight but like, in a good way…as long as I wore it unzipped. I kept looking at myself from every angle in my bathroom mirror (the one that replaced the mirror that came with my place and cut my head off because I’m so tall and it was so low). I looked great! I looked…good, yeah...I looked good. Mmmm, okay from that side it wasn’t the most flattering, but that was a weird angle anyway and I now I was just overanalyzing it. Confidence can take you far, so with a little confidence sprinkled in and choosing to not zip the jacket, I could make this outfit work for me.

My $14.99 find was a treasure and I was ready for the world to know and to be super jealous of this killer find.

I decided not to wear it that night. But like, only because there wasn’t really a need for a jacket (or so I was convincing myself). You know, that almost summer weather of 60 degrees was enough to keep me warm. Though just incase I did take a comfy, frumpy sweater last minute. Another outfit choice that would make people jealous.

Real question—do you ever feel like you’re in middle school as an adult and trying to figure out what’s cool and who the cool kids are and organize your life around that so you fit in? 

Yeah, me neither. 

I’ve always envied the people that are unapologetically themselves. What you see what you get. They do what they want. They wear what they want. There is an obvious settledness within themselves to the point of being unbothered. There have been a few friends I’ve had in each season of life that are those people. Or so it seemed. If they weren’t actually those people, they most definitely fooled me. I tried to be like them, but not copying, of course. Copying was frowned upon growing up and nobody likes a copycat. Plus, I pride myself on being unique, so naturally I’d have to do things my own way. 

I’d like to think as I’ve gotten older I’ve become unapologetically myself. I’m getting closer, but I still find myself apologizing sometimes.

I’d also like to think as I’ve gotten older that I know myself better. I really think I do, but then sometimes someone that loves me drops some observation out of nowhere that connects on such a deep level that it’s as if I’m meeting myself for the first time. I mean, how does someone who isn’t me see me and know me better than I know myself? I have no clue, but it’s real and it hits different.

One thing that’s been a place of growth for me since my divorce and also simultaneously invigorating, is doing things and choosing things just for me without having to think about anyone or anything else. I’ve literally never done that until the past few years for a lot of different reasons that aren’t worth noting here, but enough reasons that make this phase of life pretty significant. I’m like a baby deer getting my legs underneath me. I’ve got knobby knees, I’m super wobbly, uncertain on any ground, especially uneven ground, and willing myself upward to walk. The biggest difference is that I’m not quite as cute as a baby deer—no one can compete with baby animals, no matter what you say. 

This might sound ridiculous, but I’m just kind of realizing that I’m an adult. Like, an adult that is responsible for myself and can do (mostly) whatever I want and understands complexities and nuances and recognizes doing things beyond caring what people think. But also realizing that I’m an adult that is still unsure and overly analyzes everything and can’t always trust what I think and feel even though I’ve been working for over 4 years to trust what I think and feel. Yeah, I know. An adult baby deer. Weird, but accurate. Maybe except for the knobby knees.

As much as I want this leather jacket to work, it just…doesn’t. At all. If I’m being honest with myself, I really shouldn’t have bought it in the first place. It was a $14.99 impulse buy that I thought might change everything and give me an immediate confidence boost, a tall ask, I know. But instead it finds itself haphazardly thrown on my pile of dirty laundry. I haven’t event hung it up yet because in my uncertainty of whether I can wear it or not I’m certain that I can’t. I don’t even know if I can sell it now knowing there is paint on it. (I’m still not sure that it’s actually paint.)

There’s something to that knowing in my unknowing. And there’s something to reminding myself that even in my unknowing there is knowing. I think maybe, just maybe, that’s how I’ll keep learning to use my baby deer legs and trust that they can hold me up. And when they falter? It’s okay because they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re just figuring themselves out and can only learn through experiencing new things. Trial and error. Kind of like my leather jacket. I tried. I failed. Now I know. 

I don’t think a baby deer would look good in a little leather jacket either. Who am I kidding? It’d be adorable.