I was walking around the mall downstairs and encountered someone wearing the same shirt. What was my first instinct you ask? Hide! I didn’t want to confront them and didn’t want to see them. I felt a stab of panic, like I didn’t want to be found out.
But I guess that’s the brutal reality of us here, if we don’t make all our clothes ourselves, the chances someone has bought the same exact thing is high. There will be someone walking around wearing the same thing as me, and it threatened me on first instinct. I felt like I was not original, an imposter walking around, a reproducable clone.
Upon coming home, I thought about it a lot more. No one really likes the idea that they aren’t original, that their clothes and look (which for me is supposed to reflect who I am and identify as) is something that others use as well. But that’s also reality. It threatened who I was, my individuality, because I felt reproducable and not original.
And I guess that resonated with me on some level, because I felt somehow like that revelation meant something to me. I couldn’t, and still don’t, know how, but it stuck a pang within me.
But having experienced that, now it’s just something that will rattle along in my head. Has something like this happened to you?