I love the fall. I don't quite know how to explain it but that little shiver/chill you get on a crisp fall morning when you first step out of your house and you can smell the leaves and frost outside and the sunshine is warm on your skin...that's one of my favorite feelings. I love all things harvest. I love a little spookiness. I love seeing people's costumes. But I've never been huge into dressing up for Halloween. Most of my life I've half-assed a costume.
This is the story of the mouse costume. This is little me. kindergarten aged. In my family I was the only daycare and started preschool at 2.5 years old. This meant that I learned to speak English pretty quickly. This was probably around the time where I started to experience embarrassment and shame. I recognized that I was poor and that grew up culturally different. I felt like I just wanted to belong and be like a normal kid. Every year of daycare and preschool up until that point (I understand it really is just 3 years but as a kid that's was a lot of years) I never had a Halloween costume to do the costume parade. I remember my teacher would ask if I wanted to pick something out from the costume closet and wear it for the parade so I would feel included with the other kids who came to school in a costume.
I remember going to Walmart shopping with my mom and saw all of the Halloween things and was reminded that Halloween was coming up and that maybe this was the year that I could get a costume and show up to school. Maybe that it would be the year that someone told me I had a cool costume instead of a teacher scrambling to find me a costume so I would fit in. In the Walmart aisle I asked my mom to buy any costume for me. I pleaded that it would be so nice to have a costume because I never had one before. I told her how I wanted to be like the other kids. I begged and begged for one. My mother told me I didn't need it. She said that we didn't have the extra money for something like that. We left the store without a costume. I was so sad. Some time later, my mom had picked out this mouse costume for me. When mom showed me what she had bought I was ecstatic but it came with contingencies. She asked me if I understood that this was a lot of money. She wanted me to understand that the bigger size was so that I could wear it over and over again. I don't think my mother understood that what she said made me feel bad about myself. I had no concept of money at 5 years old, so it could've been a lot. I regretted begging for this thing that I thought was so innocent but it was something that was so simple that I knew would make a huge difference and make me feel like I fit in. I'm pretty sure five year old me was spiteful and I wore this damn costume for many days in a row because I had a lot of feelings.
I know this is a silly but I didn't realize the lasting impact that that experience would have in my adult life until I randomly recalled it during a therapy session. My mother isn't a bad mom. We were poor so I understand that this costume wasn't a necessity and my mom had to be particular about what money was going to be spent on. She did all that she could and I'd like to think she did the best that she could, especially cause I was the child that pushed my parents' understanding of parenting.
In this therapy session we discovered that was my first known experience of wanting to fit in and that there would be many more to come but it hurt a bit more not because of it being so new or that I was learning about fitting in but more specifically that my mom...my family who is supposed to have empathy, supposed to care and love me and provide safety for me didn't give me enough to feel validated in my feelings and experience. I learned to appease others so I wouldn't be a burden. I learned that spending money on Halloween costumes made me feel embarrassment, maybe even shame. I couldn't fully enjoy having fun because I felt like I shouldn't have spent that money on a costume. It reminded me of my memories of feeling left out. There's a lot more to this too but over the years I've been working on healing and creating a new narrative for myself. A cute outfit or Halloween costume that I want that makes me happy is worth the money. The experience is worth the money.
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