BAM! I bought the shoes. More like, CHA-CHING! bought the shoes. They were SO expensive. But it was one of those moments. They catch your eye, your heart starts racing, you’re afraid someone else is going to get them so you take out your credit card like you’re Magic Jordan and you dunk, and it feels a little bit like an out-of-body experience.

I left carrying them against my chest, all wrapped in the silk papers, the silk papers wrapped in shoe bags, the shoe bags in the shoe box, and the shoe box in the store’s bag, and I started waiting for it. I walked out of the shop expecting it to hit me right there at the door. I turned a corner and thought, Ah! This is the time. I got home and opened the door cautiously, thinking, it will strike me right here. But nothing.

I waited, suspended in the corridor. It didn’t come.

Where was it? Where was my guilt? I felt nothing but joy. 
Where was it? My familiar, my comfortable guilt? 

The usual litany of reassurance was already playing its repetitive theme in my head, but it felt like a dusty tune : “You deserve it. You’ve worked for it. You’re worthy of it. You deserve it. You’ve worked for it. You…”

It’s like I didn’t even need it. There was no guilt to be found.

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