When you love your shoes too much...

I have a confession to make. I'm not really a shoe person. I'm one of those people that would walk around bare foot or in flip flops most of the time if I could. This works out great for me because I am not tempted like some people to spend an inordinate amount of money on shoes thus breaking the budget. I have other vices but shoes are not one of them.

Mainly I hate shoes because they tend to hurt my feet, especially heels. I've never gotten used to walking in heels and I always look ridiculous when I do. Just today, I tripped and nearly fell on my face 3 (yes three!) times because my heels got stuck on something or I twisted my foot the wrong way. Its fine as long as no one notices. I usually do a quick look-around to make sure no one saw and if I don't see anyone giggling then I'm cool. But its hard to play it off when you are trying to carry on a conversation with someone and all of a sudden you are immobile and your shoe flies off of your foot because it has gotten stuck in the floor (and yes, this did happen to me today).

I'm just not one of those girls who freaks out about shoes and wants to own 100 pairs of Prada or Jimmy Choo shoes. I have a hard time getting excited about shoes because I know that my feet will hate them and its hard for me to care how cute the shoes are when I'm in excruciating pain and falling all over the place. Even tennis shoes are hard to buy because it is so difficult to know whether or not they are going to be comfortable because they have to be broken in before you can truly know the nature of the shoe.

But alas, there is one pair of shoes that have always done me right. I bought them about 5 years ago and never regretted the $80 I spent on them. They carried me across Europe on a backpacking trip and I wore them just about everyday when I was in school and didn't have a car and walked everywhere. When I wear them I feel like I'm not wearing anything at all and they provide great ankle support so I can really hussle when I'm walking somewhere in a hurry.



They have looked terrible for a while now but I can't bare to part with them. I've washed them but they still look dirty and there are little plastic things that are falling off left and right.



I've bought other shoes since then but they don't compare. I feel like every time I buy another pair of shoes I am just wasting my money because I won't want to wear them. On the other hand, I don't want to wear the old shoes because they look beat. There comes a point when frugality must make way for fashion.

So what is a girl to do? I either buy new shoes which could be a waste of money (and money is tight) or I can just keep the old shoes and look, how do you say, ghetto.

I did have one other brilliant idea. I could just try to find the same old shoes for sale on the internet. Unfortunately, these shoes seem to be a rather rare find. I searched through tons of shoe listings on ebay but didn't have any luck finding the shoe.

I'm not sure what they are called but the bottom of the shoe has the words "Turbulence," "Duration," and "Max Air." Most of these brings up tons of shoes, not one of them being my shoe. The tongue of the shoe has the number 302308 which seems to be a product number because when I type it in I get results from some Asian website that has a picture of my shoe in red and gold. If only I knew what the heck the website said and they had it in the right color my life would be one step closer to being complete.


Oh mighty shoe gods...please help! These shoes must exist somewhere.