My purple dress.

I remember the day I purchased my purple dress vividly. The sales guys in the shop whistled all at once when I came from the changing room. It was beautiful. It fit like a glove to the hand. I thought its designer knew me personally for the dress loved me and I loved it right back. I took it. It was my early days of coming back to femininity; dresses and all. I was attending a friend’s wedding in a fortnight hence my preparation for the same. I already knew what shoes and jewelry I was going to pair it with.

The weather did the unexpected on the wedding day. It rained cats, dogs, hippos and all things rhinos. The weather did a double flip from the previous week’s weather. The purple dress just couldn’t hack that weather. I changed my choice of attire ASAP. That in my life is the wettest wedding I have ever attended.

Events came and passed. Weddings, corporate functions, birthdays the works. The dress was too short, too odd, too informal, too formal or too long. There was always something that made me wear the dress and then remove it.  It didn’t fit any occasion I was attending. Two years passed by with me having not worn the dress other than in my bedroom then removing it. The dress was dashing every time I wore it as it had been when I bought it.

On the third year after its purchase I was invited into a purple party. I was excited. Finally I could wear the dress that made my visa card shiver when I purchased it. On that day work spilled into my evening hours and by the time I left the office to go home and freshen up the traffic couldn’t allow me to. It was not to be.

  

Later in the year I decided I was going to wear my purple dress to church. Nothing special, I would wear it as part of my life going on. Wonder of wonders, while the dress fitted it didn’t look like the original dress I bought.  The dress was ill fitting. I hadn’t gained or lost any considerable weight. I tried pressing the sides of the dress –it didn’t work. I ironed it again-it didn’t work. I did anything I could think of but nothing worked. The dress did not love me and my body did not love it back. I felt like crying, a careless cry. How could this happen?

I thought about it in deep thought. How many things in my life had I set aside for the opportune time to happen?  It reminded me of the cutlery Africans set aside for visitors who might never visit or if they did, will not appreciate it. I was chasing the perfect moment only to realize that there was no such thing. It only existed in my mind. I mean three years had happened. And in three years a lot of things change sometimes so gently you wouldn’t even know they did. I had saved my purple dress for nothing. I never wore it other than in my mind. 

I learnt my lesson. I was not going to wait for that moment in the future. I was going to live in the present and utilize what I have now.

Sojourner.

P.S I gave out the dress having never worn it anywhere.