When are you too old to dress up for Halloween?  Personally, I don’t think there is an expiration date, I LOVE wearing costumes.  This year I had two costume choices lined up: as a 50’s housewife with pearls, an apron and a cardigan over a cinched waist dress, I even bought a Bump-It to create a bouffant!  My second choice was to dress as a hick.  Not a farmer, not a bumpkin. A hick.  Straw hat, plaid button down shirt, rope as a belt, a stick-on gold tooth and ‘tooth black’ to make two of my bottom teeth disappear.  It was going to be awesome.  I spent two days waffling about whether or not I was going to dress up and wrote four mass emails to my three best friends demanding their assurance that I wouldn’t be the only 28 year old in the bar wearing a costume.  I spend a good portion of my life making sure that I stand out – I spent almost three years dying a section of my hair either purple, red or pink for goodness sake! And here I am getting my friends to dress up so I won’t look like a fool.  So on Halloween day I finally decide that no matter what everyone else does I am going to wear a costume.  And truth be told, I didn’t even really want to wear one, it had lost its fun, but I wanted to prove to myself that I don’t need to fold into a crowd to be comfortable.  Wearing a costume without knowing if any of my friends would do it meant that I was being true to myself and what I believe in: that confidence comes from within.  

At 8 pm Chris and I were heading to an Irish pub where our friends’ band was playing.  My hair was braided, my boots laced up, my plaid shirt tucked in to my rope belt and I was putting the black wax on my front tooth.  Moments from walking out the door of our apartment I received a text from my friend Bethany reading, “DO NOT WEAR A COSTUME. No one here is dressed up.”

Faster than you can say “dental work” I took that costume off and replaced it with my normal (very cute) outfit I had worn all day.  And I felt super confident all. night. long. 

After all that hullabulloo, I guess I just needed to listen to my gut all along instead of trying to convince myself that being different meant I was being confident.  Sometimes I just get in my own way!