Cambria's Corner

Imagine that you’re wearing a really uncomfortable shirt. It’s made of scratchy wool, it’s poorly fitted, it’s folded over in a couple spots and rubs up against your skin. But you don’t really realize how uncomfortable it is; I mean it’s the only shirt you’ve ever worn. Over the years you have some struggles. You can never really seem to get comfortable and everything you do seems to just feel wrong somehow, like there’s something restricting you. But you don’t attribute it to your shirt. I mean everybody is wearing a shirt, and they don’t seem to be having any problems like that. You figure that there’s something wrong with you, something broken, but you still never think to question your shirt. Not really. When you do, you think, “well, it’s really not THAT uncomfortable. So that can’t really be my problem. And I mean, there’s people who have really serious problems with their shirts and that doesn’t sound like me.”

So, you go about your life. You’re not even really pretending that your shirt is uncomfortable, you don’t even really know that it is. Sometimes you make jokes to your friends about, “wouldn’t it be great to change my shirt?” and they react with confusion and amusement. And then one day, you’re minding your own business, browsing the internet like you do every day. You come across an article that says that your shirt shouldn’t be uncomfortable. At first you don’t think much of it. You’re about to pass it over, not because you think it’s a worthless article, but because you just think that doesn’t apply to you. But then, a line catches your eye. The line says, in so many words, that changing your shirt doesn’t have to be about the shirt you’re wearing being uncomfortable. Instead, it can be more about finding a shirt that’s even more comfortable. The comfort is what’s important, not the discomfort. For a while, you try not to think about that too hard. What that means for you is a bit of a scary thought, so you just try to suppress it. But the whole time you have this nagging feeling in the back of your mind: “what if?”

You try your best to continue on without thinking about it too much. But over time, your shirt has changed a little bit. It’s stretched to fit your body a little more, the color has faded in a way that you actually quite like, it just feels a little bit better. One day, you say screw it, and you cut the shirt in a way that’s different than anything you’ve ever done before. And, as it turns out, you love it. You feel more comfortable in your shirt than you ever have before. But even now, you don’t really blame it on the shirt being uncomfortable. Someone close to you tells you “hey, sounds a lot like your shirt’s uncomfortable.” You kind of laugh it off for a sec, but then you start thinking about it again. You start thinking about it a lot. It takes up pretty much every waking moment, and the moments you’re not awake seem to come further and further apart.

Eventually you come across some silly little website that only has one real purpose. It asks you if you want to change your shirt. You say yes, go through a bunch of confirmations, and then it goes into a fake loading screen. This loading screen gets to about 95% before it says “error! This user’s shirt can’t be changed. They’ve already changed it!” You look down at yourself, at your shirt, and you realize that it’s true. The shirt you’re wearing now isn’t the one you’ve been wearing for most of your life. It’s different. You changed it.

And, most importantly, you feel better this way. It’s not perfect, you still have a lot of improvement you can make. Your new shirt isn’t perfect, it’s got some weird folds in it, and you’re not totally happy with the color. But you’ve accepted that the shirt you’ve been wearing your whole life wasn’t the right one for you. You’ve realized that you were uncomfortable in your shirt, and that you do feel better in this new one, and that maybe, now that you’ve realized that, you can work on making it fit better. And now that you feel less bad all the time for seemingly no reason, you’re able to focus on life more. Able to think about your future, and a career, and what you and your place in the world will look like. And, you’re happy. For the first time and maybe decades, you’re able to not be weighed down by this. The people in your life notice, even before you tell them you’ve changed your shirt. And even though it’s scary, and even if people and the world treat you poorly because of it, realizing that is the best thing you’ve ever done.