Shoes

I can’t bring myself to replace the shoes, let alone throw them out. The once radiant blue laces are now blackened with dirt and kitchen grime, the navy blue fabric stained and covered with flour and sauce from many shifts at the pizza place. The soles worn through from 15 months of daily walks through the foothills of Tucson. They’ve long been my work shoes. The ones I don’t mind getting dirtier and grimier. But increasingly I cringe when I put them on. They’re pretty gross. What will people think if they see me in these? But I can’t throw them out. I won’t. These shoes are a daily reminder of the most important commitment in my life.

I’ve long been a believer in the transformative power of writing, in the written word’s ability to help us untangle the stories lodged deep in our psyches, shine light on what’s hidden below, and begin writing new stories into being. That’s why I’ve been so drawn to manifestos as a genre. The deeper I get into my own life, the more I can feel the weight of the stories I inherited, about myself and about the world, pulling me down into a darkness that is always threatening to consume me. The story of shame lives in my bones, and the more pay attention, the more I see it for what it is. A story. One in direct opposition to the more beautiful way of life my heart knows is possible. For me, a manifesto is an alchemical document, an artifact of intentional transformation, a commitment to keep metabolizing the darkness and light contained within each step we take, a living reminder of what no longer serves us, and who we’re becoming.

As things fell apart with my mom in the fall of 2024, I began writing a manifesto about perfectionism. I’ve spent the better part of a decade battling my perfectionism in one way or another. In the recent months I came to see how intimately connected it was to my relationship with my mom. When she left town, commanding me to water her plants, I remember feeling deeply afraid that I would do it wrong, that her plants would die under my watch and that I would then suffer her wrath. I could feel my body tensing as I turned on the hose and started watering the flowers which had, in spring, been bright red and beautiful, but now in the Sonoran summer heat have begun wilting, drying out, dying. I watered them how I was instructed, but clearly I did not do it perfectly. I’ve failed. I deserve the shame I feel. I catch myself spiraling about the flowers, and realize how similar it feels to the perfectionism I’ve long struggled with in my creative work. Interesting.

I start writing a manifesto with the intention of purging my perfectionism. But I fall into the same trap I often do. A sort of performative intelligence, where I’m explaining something from my head rather than letting it flow from my heart. I can tell what I’m writing is empty. A cheap party trick. I nearly give up on the project, and then some voice whispers up from within me, and says “write a letter to yourself. Tell yourself what you need to hear.” For the next six weeks that voice kept showing up with instruction, and I followed into the unexpected places it led, penning the first draft of the letter by hand, day by day, while my relationship with my mother deteriorated beyond the walls of the RV. Two days before Thanksgiving, I was working on the piece when she walked in and handed me her eviction letter, telling me that I was toxic, and that I should be ashamed of how I’ve failed with money. I read it, and just kept writing, using the manifesto to process it all in real time. It became an artifact bound up within a moment of pain and confusion and transformation.

The waters that flow from Patagonian glaciers are the core memory and metaphor in that manifesto. So in the week before I hit publish, I buy myself a new pair of shoes. A pair of navy blue Atoms with bright blue laces. For a guy who’s only worn black shoes for the past decade, these feel like quite a departure. But they represent a commitment to stay grounded in my humanity in the weeks and months and years ahead. To remember the nourishing blue waters of Patagonia. To not forget this moment of catharsis, this moment of healing, this new story of life.

I wish I could say the day I hit publish on that piece was the pivot point, after which life started getting better, and I became increasingly free from the shame underlying my compulsive perfectionist tendencies. But life is rarely that linear it seems. Six months later, I reconnected with The Girl after one of our prolonged periods apart, and all the progress I’d made unravelled within weeks, as I once again felt the crushing weight of my imperfection and shame, and my seeming inability to solve my money situation. Down down down into depression once again, deeper than before. The Girl and I part ways. Again. I go into hiding. I wish I were dead. Were it not for my new job delivering pizzas, I wouldn’t leave my apartment, or talk to anyone. It’s always darkest before the dawn, they say.

Through it all I keep wearing my navy blue shoes. Increasingly scuffed and dirtied by the flour and the dishwater and the combination tomato, buffalo, and ranch sauces that spill across the kitchen. These shoes are the only tether to the moment of triumph and grace I’d experienced a year before. They’re disgusting now. Any sensible human would throw them out, a voice in my head chides. But no. Not these shoes. Because I made a commitment to live a new story. Because there’s still so much more to write. Because you can be scuffed and dirtied and stained by life, and still be loved beyond reason. I am these shoes. These shoes are me. It’s only fitting that I keep wearing them as I begin again.