When You Have ADD and Sensitivities, Making Simple Wardrobe Choices Can be Impossible
Clothes, love ’em or hate ‘em.
Love them on other people.
I hate them on me.
It’s not that I want to run around naked all the time, I just want to be comfortable and there is so much women’s fashion that is just not comfortable.
There are several reasons for this. The first being that I am in no way shaped like the mannequins in stores or the fit models for whom these clothes are actually designed. I have very broad shoulders, muscular biceps, and a broad back like a dude. I do not have big boobs. I have never had a perfectly flat stomach and after having kids? Fuhgeddaboudit. My hips are slender and the measurement between my hips and waist is small. Just the opposite of everything that the fashion industry expects.
Because of this and undiagnosed ADHD as a child, which came with clothing sensitivities in the mild range, clothing and fashion has always been a pain in the ass.
My mother seemed to want to have her little girl be in “her image” but I fought her choices from a young age. I just didn’t have the ability to articulate why I didn’t like what I didn’t like. She just saw it as obstinance that needed to be eradicated, or that I was spiteful and ungrateful. I was neither.
I didn’t like fancy clothes that were uncomfortable and I still don’t. I remember being about four or five and having to go to church with my grandmother, my dad’s mom. Lois wanted me to wear tights and I wouldn’t do it. We had an argument about it. She kept insisting, meanly, that we were to wear our best clothes to church on Sunday and I argued back that God should love me no matter what I was wearing.
I’m pretty sure that got me a beating of some sort. I still don’t like hose of any type or tights or even really snug leggings. Anything snug around my body will totally preoccupy my mind until I rip it off and put on something that isn’t so distracting.
Same with shoes. I just cannot deal with wearing shoes that are uncomfortable. I have some look-pretty-while-sitting shoes that I would wear in my younger years when I really did try to conform. I still have a pair of Steve Madden stilettos that are amazingly easy to wear but they are not for all seasons. They are white and strappy and 4 inches high. I adore them … while they sit in the box.
Forget about accessories. Nope. No can do. I have a few necklaces but they have to be just the right length. Anything too short that hugs the neck ain’t gonna happen. Anything too long and multi-stranded that is dangly and in the way? Nope, that’s gone, too. Clanking bracelets, bangles or anything floppy gets put back in the jewelry box. Why do I even have these, you might ask? Because my mother buys them for me. Never mind that she doesn’t notice that I never wear them. She gives them to me anyway.
Scarves are a no-go as well. I was a student for awhile at The Ohio State University and I thought it was humorous that as soon as there was even the slightest chill in the air, the young women would wear leggings and cute boots but then would put on these scarves that were easily the size of blankets. Just all this fabric and mass around their necks. I can see the benefit of pulling your head down inside all of that fabric like a turtle when the wind picked up but for me, it would just be too much to manage. It would be in the way. It would limit my freedom of movement no matter how stylish and warm it was.
Which leads me to winter. Oi. I live in the Midwest so it gets cold and snowy-ish in my part of the world come mid-October and on through to April. I don’t mind winter. I like it, actually. There is beauty in walking through freshly fallen snow, when the sun is brilliant and the sky is an unbelievable shade of blue. I like that. I like playing in snow. I like coming in and warming up. I actually like shoveling my driveway.
I like most things about winter except all of the stuff you have to wear to go outside and not die.
Okay, not everything. I do like boots. I think that is just part of my double X chromosomal make up but I don’t like coats, gloves and hats. I wear a sunhat in the summer while in the yard and I like my baseball caps for bad hair days and actual baseball games. I don’t like knitted hats that are too tight or don’t fit right. I CANNOT STAND HOODS of any kind. If I wear gloves, they are usually fingerless, which I know makes no sense. However, if I am shoveling the snow, I start out with my good insulated mittens and will eventually take them off as I heat up while working.
All of these things and more (there’s more, like tags on shirts? Kill me.) are part of having clothing sensitivities for someone with ADHD or ADD. The arguments I would have with my mom about clothing when I was a kid. For her, I wasn’t stylish enough. I just wanted jeans and tee shirts and I still do. I wanted things that didn’t make me feel confined and trapped.
My mom would buy me clothes that she thought I would look nice in and even though she may have been right, there was usually something about that I couldn’t deal with and no, it wasn’t because she bought it. I had to ask her to stop. She just wanted me to dress nicely, like her. My mom expresses a lot of herself through her clothing choices and I admire that but it is just not that important to me.
I’ve spent all of my life trying to hard to conform to what my mother, my culture and society thinks a woman should wear. Some of it is fine but most of it is not. I am not fashionable and I never will be. I just cannot do it. Most of that stuff is way too uncomfortable for me.
I am sorry that my mother wishes I were different. I am different just not in the way she wants me to be.
