Costumes

We've now entered the month of October, the spookiest month of them all, and it has caught me quite off guard, as it is prone to do. Halloween is a holiday that I enjoy thoroughly, as dressing up as something strange and different is, for whatever reason, simply something that greatly appeals to me. As I've grown older, I have grown to love this only more, where as so many people around me have let it drift away from them, and consequently I want my costumes to be more elaborate and difficult to make. Unfortunately, much as I am with my writing, I tend to think about these things far too late, and must rush a costume at the end of the month before Halloween catches me without a mask to don.

I am also the kind of person who is not much for the scary costumes. The idea of dressing as a mummy, zombie, vampire, or other such monster has never appealed to me. As a kid, it didn't make sense to me to dress as something that would scare when the goal was to get as much candy as possible. As I've grown older, I've found that I would much rather be original or creative than just dress up as something predictable and boring.

This has lead to many questionable halloween choices, from characters no one has heard of, to characters that I myself made. I have probably spent more time explaining what it is that I am dressed as then I have actually collecting candy. Sometimes this bothered me, having to constantly explain what I was and what what I was even meant. Other times I was more just confused on why so many people felt the need to ask. I have passed out candy to people who come to my door. I have never once asked them what it was they were dressed as. It didn't seem necessary. I mean, it's Halloween - the point is to be someone you are not. I feel like that is satisfaction enough.

However, after a point houses stopped being happy to see me come by Halloween night. Eventually I was deemed too old to be trick or treating - which seems pretty judgmental and wasteful, given how much Halloween candy so many houses I have gone to never even give out, but I digress - but my desire to dress up didn't go away. This also made me learn that I don't actually feel like I need a reason to dress up, however. So I started collecting outfits that I wanted to wear, and wearing them whenever I felt like it.

Some people found this odd. They accused me of trying to hide who I really was away under a layer of fake persona when I would dress in unusual ways. This didn't make sense to me. The costumes I choose, I choose because I feel that they are accurate representations of bits and pieces of who I am. I create costumes of characters that I love from video games or movies that I enjoyed. I create costumes of stereotypical characters, like cowboys or 1940's gangsters, because they represent my interests.

I have learned in time to use my dress to express myself, and show who I am and what I enjoy. Sure, it may be in strange ways. But is that not the point of fashion?