I had a plan this morning on what I was going to blog about. I follow several “Ivy Style” people and stores on Instagram, and I wanted to write about how this has turned into a small obsession with me as I am looking forward to the day when I can put on a shirt, tie and sportscoat and go to work again, or see a play, or just be out of the house.
As I began to write about this subject, I thought back as to when I started dressing in this “Ivy Style.” It was back when I was the number two at a rehearsal studio, and my boss was an alcoholic. He would show up hours late, hungover, would miss meetings that I would have to take over, and when he did arrive, he would look disheveled and unkempt. When his alcoholism truly got out of hand, by which he was sitting in his office and drinking all day in view of clients, I decided that I needed to demonstrate to our customers that I was the responsible one, and I decided to accomplish this I would begin wearing a shirt and tie to work.
And when I thought about working in that studio and with my alcoholic boss, a wave of emotions dropped over me; shame, annoyance, a sort of passive aggressive futile resignment, and anger. So much anger erupted in me. Anger at the owner for ignoring the problem because his business was booming in spite of the supervisor’s dereliction. And anger at myself for putting up with it for so long. For putting up with a situation I hated being in, but couldn’t muster the courage to leave. Eventually I did quite that job, but only after a year of unrelenting stress.
These ancient memories and emotion have washed over me, and my day has now been sidetracked. I tried for about an hour to return to my original blog topic, which maybe I will get to another day, but every time I started on it, I kept going back to that time in my life. Over and over again. I just gave up and put this out. Maybe to let it go, maybe to say that there is still something lingering there that I haven’t dealt with. But something is there, because why would I have such a strong reaction to that period in time from so long ago?
