I Like Dressing Up

I’ve played dress up all of my life. It started as playing with other children, then it began to evolve into a way to hide my identity and transform myself into whatever I wanted the world to see, whether it was good or bad. I had a child and it became play again and as we grew together it remained play and also helped us grow our self esteem together. After she died I stopped playing in my clothes. I put on anything to cover myself and was done. Someone sent me a bunch of beautiful clothes as a gift and I played again like I did when I was happy. I’m trying to love myself again and playing dress up helps, but I have moments when I am very disturbed that one of the only things I have found joy in is my appearance, and more specifically that the only reason I got the gifts is because someone valued me based on my looks and that nobody really cares about who’s inside the wrapper.