painful gain?

A couple of months ago, after a particularly rough night out, I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to stop drinking. That following Friday, however, I was invited to a pretty fancy party. I had nothing to wear and I was trying to resist the temptations of liquor. But then I found a nice shimmery gold dress in a local boutique and so I did my hair, put on my make-up and decided to go. Then it was time to choose the shoes. This part was not difficult. I only had one pair of heels, and this outfit and venue demanded heels.

So I wore my gold dress with sparkly blue heels. No-one looks at your feet anyway, right?

Maybe so, but my feet were the only thing on my mind that night as I danced away, alcohol-free, and the pain in my feet steadily grew worse and worse. Here's a few things I learnt that evening:

1) Dancing in heels hurts when your nerve endings are not numbed by alcohol.
2) Drunk people do not have the courtesy to avoid stepping on your toes.
3) Drunk people are not funny when you are sober.
4) The ground is actually really cold if you try to walk home shoeless in October, sober.

After that night, two things happened:

1) I stopped wearing heels.
2) I started drinking again.

So for the past few months I have been stomping around in boots and brogues, happily dancing away while still painfully conscious that this outfit would look a lot better with heels. I have spent hours scouring internet websites and sale racks for a suitable pair, but with feet that hate heels as much as mine, yet a mind with a taste for spindly stilettos, this search has been fruitless.

Finally, I found the perfect pair. They were approximately double my budget, and they were in the sale. But they were also beautiful and I bought them. The shoe gods must have been getting fed up of my unladylike footwear, because they blessed me with a sales lady who is not very good at mathematics, and further reduced the shoes' price.

I love them. And they are called 'Carbonara'. Be still, my beating heart.



There's just a slight problem. A problem entitled 'the bunion and extra half size of my left foot'. A problem which squishes and cramps my abnormally long left toes. But, I've done my research, and the luxuriously soft leather of these shoes seems perfectly suited to a shoe-stretching spray. I could also use the spray on the slightly too small toebox of my other beautiful left shoe. If that doesn't work, I will fill myself up with some vodka and brave the pain.