On Skeletons and Choosing How We Dress Our Bones

I got my first “adult job” at a big company in 2013. I vividly remember the feeling of my new work clothes clinging to my body like a cross between an armor and a cheap costume that was fooling no one. The stiff fabric of the blazer, the itchy feel of the pinstripe trousers and the swamp of sweat accumulating in the ballerina flats I would have otherwise never been caught dead wearing. Day in and day out, I’d take a crowded, overheated bus in São Paulo clutching my backpack close to my chest while trying not to wrinkle my shirt too much.

I still have the journal I kept during that year – a small black Moleskine notebook, a small luxury I gifted myself after receiving my first salary. Back then, I was obsessed with drawing little skeleton characters, usually accompanied by lyrics of my favorite songs or sassy remarks – the last traces of my rebel teenage years. As I joined the workforce, the drawings shifted with me. The skeletons were still there, but their boldness and defiance was replaced by square suits, boring haircuts and confessions about the pain of being pushed into adulthood. This one still breaks my heart a little: “sometimes I feel terrified that my soul has been blown out of my body and all that’s left is a rattling heart inside a shivering ribcage. When I’m terrified, I am not me. When I’m conscious, I am terrified. How can I be myself, fully conscious, and not feel this way?”

I want to go back in time and hug her. But there’s another one later on that feels like a flash of a forgotten memory, a spark that somehow couldn’t be put out. The skeleton this time is wearing a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, despite having no arms. Next to it, this text: “We’re just bones. Whatever is on top are just layers.” I’m not sure I fully understood the power of that message back then, but at a subconscious level, it was already there. An undying promise of hope and a simple reminder that even when it doesn’t feel like it, our soul is always there. Buried beneath layers upon layers of ill-fitting work clothes, armors, or cheap costumes perhaps, but always there.

Upon seeing this meme yesterday, my mind immediately went back to 2013, and I smiled as the message carried by a badass armless skeleton on a motorcycle finally sunk in. For at least a couple of decades of our lives, we accumulate layer upon layer of garments we feel will suffice in defining who we are. The bands we love or hate as teenagers. The universities or careers we pick as young adults. The tradeoffs we make in our late twenties, when we’re juggling jobs, relationships, finances and our own mental and physical health. It’s no wonder many of us are reaching a certain point now where we feel so small and so suffocated by all we’ve accumulated, that we can no longer breathe.

Many people feel it’s difficult to make friends as adults, especially if you don’t have childhood friends or if you’re an immigrant living away from home. And unless we’re willing to peel back the layers, it most definitely is. When meeting new people and being asked to tell them about ourselves, we usually default to our job, our city of origin, and a relationship or hobby we’ve allowed to become our whole identity because it makes us feel like we belong. We pretend as if those layers are us, and allow them to mold us into whatever will get us closer to feeling like we have a place in the world. And we either continue bearing that weight until we disappear, or eventually find ourselves crushed underneath a pile we’re not even certain we ever wanted.

Unlike my doodles, we can’t just throw away all the layers and walk around as bare skeletons – but we can find our way out as soon as we understand that we get to choose how we dress our bones. We don’t accumulate the layers because we consciously want to feel terrified and suffocated underneath – we choose them because we want to be loved. As Alok more eloquently said, it’s “the pain of feeling like the only way you can belong is by betraying yourself and shapeshifting, knowing that that love is dependent on self-disappearance”. When we don’t force ourselves to remember who we are, but simply allow ourselves to be – that’s when we’re our most authentic selves. 

Header image: Frida Kahlo – “Girl with Death Mask (She Plays Alone)”