Hiding in Hats

In the last few months, I've learned why Cory had such an attachment to her grandpa's old slouchy knit hat.  It was a comfort object, yes.  But it also cocooned her, and brought vague feelings of safety. When wearing it, she felt a little less conspicuous to those around her.   I know this because I recently spent a couple months wearing a hat all of my waking hours.  It was extremely comforting, and on the days, I didn't feel like styling my hair...I didn't.  I just pulled that sucker over my head and walked on.  That was the best I could do, and people just had to accept me as I was.

A few weeks ago, I was laying down to toss and turn for the night when I was struck with an image of Bob when he was maybe 20 or 21, and we lived in the apartment at Elm Street. 
 I could see him, in my mind's eye, wearing a pair of baggy navy blue sweatpants with a fine purple pinstripe, elastic at the ankles.  Looking back, he was obviously going through a period of depression because he wore those same pants like a uniform day in and day out for weeks.  He rocked them barechested when sleeping, but took the liberty of topping them with a dirty tee during his waking hours. 
I remember feeling a little embarrassed when he came to pick me up at work looking so disheveled and in obvious need of a shower, a shave...deoderant.
As I called up these baggy sweatpants that hadn't crossed my mind in twenty plus years, I was struck with another image:  Bob stolidly climbing the rickety, dark wooden staircase of the Elm Street house, brown bag in hand, wearing the baggy striped sweatpants, a dirty tee...and a slouchy knit hat pulled down over his unruly brown locks.  He had taken to wearing a hat when he didn't feel like combing his hair to leave the house.  If he had a burst of energy, he might bother to pull his hair -perhaps washed, perhaps not- back into a ponytail.
I laid in my bed, twenty-odd years later, and thought about the significance of that hat.
I thought about Cory wearing her hat, I thought about my own hat wearing fetish during the worst of my depression, and then I thought of Bob with his hat, and all those hours he'd spent sleeping in bed, while the sunshine beat in through the bedroom windows.
At the time, I had chalked up his sleeping too much to simple hangovers.
 It was easy to blame some or all of his behaviors on the alcohol...afterall, the bottle was plainly visible when he took it out of the brown bag.
 But that was just the tip of the iceberg- underneath the surface lurked a complicated and massive mental illness that he couldn't satisfy no matter what amount of alcohol or drugs he fed it.
Substances were on top; mood swings were underneath.  He was self-medicating his little heart out, and sleeping any of the remaining hours of the day away. 
 And he wore a hat a great deal of the time, as if he wanted to hide from the world.
After all these years, I can now say I partially understand how he felt, and I know Cory understood a great deal, although she never had to turn to substances for relief.  Thank goodness her illness was identified before it came to that.  That is one thing I am truly thankful for everyday.  But I know there were days she felt like hiding from the world.  And there are many days now that I do the same.  After all, hats are good for hiding.