OMG SHOES!

59 Pairs of shoes
16 pairs of heels- 10 of them 4+ inch heels- and if you can't walk or stand in them you don't wear them
2 pairs of wedges- which I never wear because I hate wedges
4 pairs of flats
4 pairs of sandles
5 pairs of boots (one set of steel toed hiking boots which I never wear when I hike)
3 pairs of slippers none of which I bought. Everyone just thinks I need them for my freezing feet that I like to slide onto unsuspecting family members and friends in the dead of winter.
And lastly a pair of water shoes that are strictly for showering at the gym.

Let me be clear. I love my shoes. Feet are not my thing. I like mine enough because they get me where I need to go but I don't have a fetish for anything foot related. About a year ago my roommates at the time started telling that I had a shoe "problem" when my beauties started spilling out from my room into the living room. Their constant taunting of my shoe hoarding forced my confession. Something I had never told anyone before, the origin of my shoe love.

When asked about my shoes I usually just say "I got it from my mama!" to the beat of that song and laugh. The truth is far less lighthearted. When  I was 9 I was at school and I remember I was kicking a ball and my tennis shoe just fell apart at the toe, peeling open like an oyster to reveal my soaked toes. I didn't think much of it figuring my mom would fix it later. The school taped up my shoe and I went about my day. When I got home however, my mother told me that she didn't have the money to buy me new shoes. I was horrified. I placed my hands on what would eventually become my hips and yelled back "but I NEED  shoes!". I can't imagine how much that night hurt my mother. But the next morning she used the masking tape from the junk drawer and taped up my shoes and sent me to school.

Friday soon came and my mom took me shoe shopping, not just for one pair but for five. That's when my mom told me she used to always buy shoes whenever she was sad and that her shoe purchases would make her feel better. I think that day she was trying to buy away both of our sadness. So today when I sit huddled closely to my 118 shoes, it's because I've had a lot of sadness to buy away and because I promised that 9 year old girl that she would never feel the sting of shoeless poverty again.