I've touched on my being disabled briefly before, but in this post I'm going to go a little more in depth about one facet of my disability in relation to Lolita : Generalized Anxiety Disorder. GAD is one of my many diagnoses and, in short, is extreme, pervasive anxiety over normal, daily things. I'm constantly worried about things like misplacing my keys or my phone or doing something, anything, wrong. It's really stressful and impedes on my life in a lot of ways.
One of those ways is, it's really difficult for me to go out and do new things. This is where Lolita comes in. I am unbelievably passionate about Lolita and the more I involve myself in the Lolita lifestyle (such as it is), the harder I work at getting outside my comfort zones to achieve my Lolita goals.
Way back when, before I embarked on my Lolita journey, I did almost all my shopping in person. I had made a couple of purchases on Etsy and Sock Dreams and that was the extent of my online shopping experience. My biggest obstacle on the road to becoming a Lolita was my extreme discomfort with ordering things -- especially clothing -- online. What if I got my measurements wrong? What if it got lost in the mail? What if I ordered from someplace disreputable, despite all my research? Thoughts like these would (and still do) race through my mind.
I finally took the plunge when I fell head over heals for Clockwork Rose's Twinklebat JSK. I saw it and I had to have it. Hands shaking and heart pounding, I put in an order. Then I had a whole new set of worries to deal with : Are my outfits with this JSK Lolita enough? What if I spill something on this really expensive (compared to my usual thrift shop stuff) piece of clothing? It wasn't just purchasing Lolita I had to worry about, but the wearing of it too.
I tackled things one at a time, as they came up, reassuring myself that it was okay to wear Lolita items in non-Lolita outfits, that I knew my measurements so things I ordered would be almost guaranteed to fit. I ordered a skirt from another US based indie brand easily, thanks to it having the same sort of ordering system in place as Clockwork Rose did. Then, I branched out.
I moved on to the taobao reseller Qutieland -- little on the pricier side for a reseller but easy to navigate. This had me tackling multiple anxieties : ordering something from a new site, ordering something custom made, and ordering something from over seas. Everything I ordered was stuff I had been eyeing for ages, so I survived the ordering process but the wait for my order to be completed was awful. I was prepared though; I knew that Classical Puppets made things to order so it would take about three months to be completed, so at the very least, I was able to sooth my mind's worry for that period of time. Not that I had anything to actually be worried over, of course. Just after the three month mark, I got my shipping notification. All I had to worry about then was my package going through customs and customs was a non issue.
Bolstered by my success with these purchases, I went on to order more things online -- accessories from Etsy, Christmas presents, a Kickstarter project. Each was less stressful than the last. Then I made a Bodyline order and bought shoes. Then I made a second Bodyline order and it hardly phased me at all! I'm never not going to an extreme worry wart, but I was successfully dealing with my GAD.
Getting a real job recently has been a real game changer. All of a sudden I'm in a place where I can buy things without deliberating them to death. I've learned that it is absurdly hard for me to impulse buy things, even more so than I anticipated. At the same time, I'm in a better position than ever to continue working myself through the worst of my anxiety issues. After all, if I can spend fifty dollars on a head bow and play card games with a bunch of strangers with a common interest, I can totally make that call to my doctors office.
No comments:
Post a Comment