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I Might be Ending my Relationship with Heels
For years, I always gravitated towards heels. As someone who is barely 5'4, heels made the world seem brighter — and made me able to reach the higher shelves at work.
I loved heels since I knew how to walk in them in high school. One of my favourite compliments is from a great-aunt who said that I walked well in heels. It made me feel like I had accomplished something other women couldn’t master; people would ask how I could walk in heels without falling over, or hurting themselves. I would smugly joke that I’d just put one foot in front of the other, which was all I was really doing, anyways. Walking in a pair of heels isn’t the atrocity to me like it is to most women, and before my 30s I used to find them comfortable and preferred heels over flats, which hurt my feet. Standing all day, working at a shoe store, of course, in heels didn’t bother me — much. Standing all day in flats? Just as, or a little more, painful.
I’d ooh and aahh over the heels I would never be able to afford. You know the ones: Manolos, Louboutins, Jimmy Choo. I, with my 16-year old naive brain, vowed that I would be wearing at least one of these brand’s shoes by my 30s. Spoiler: I’m 32 and I own none of those and have no plans of buying them anytime soon. I’ve now moved onto lusting over some nice Tod’s. Another shoe I’ll, most likely, never be able to afford.
