Setting It Free

Do you want to know a secret?

There is a bin, in my garage to the left of the lawn mower and mulch, that houses an entire wardrobe of decade-old clothing. It has been sitting in the garage, untouched, for years now. Sometimes I scoot it over, out of the way, next to the Christmas decorations and old cans of White Heron paint and I think to myself, I’ve gotta get rid of this stuff.

I wore this stuff when I had just moved to Los Angeles, when I’d landed my first grown-up job at a music production company. I wore the tweed pencil skirt the day my job was downsized, I wore my patent leather pumps the day I became a copywriter, I wore the silk blouse with the now-missing button three holes down on the day I quit the corporate rat race for good. How long ago had that been? Seven years? Eight?

I had carried the Marc Jacobs quilted Stam bag into my boss’ office first thing in the morning and asked for a meeting, and she closed the door behind me. She’d said she wasn’t surprised, she saw great promise from me, that the office would miss watching me trip over my power cord every.single.day. She’d wished me great luck, great success.

And two weeks later, I boxed the Stam bag, the silk blouse, the tweed skirt into a bin marked in a Sharpie: “L.A. WORK”.

I don’t know why I’ve been holding on to it all for so long. Perhaps there was a small part of me that wondered if I’d ever return to the corporate world, if I’d ever again be driven by the energy and the frenzy and the demands of an 8-5.

Perhaps there was a small part of me that feared I would.
Perhaps there was a small part of me that feared I wouldn’t.

But my life now? It doesn’t call for a Stam bag of any sort.

It calls for a leather tote with cashew crumbs and squished raisins embedded in the bottom lining. It calls for denim and denim and denim, for flats and a watch, for simple, for minimal, for easy.

Gone are the days of Dry Clean Only, of hosiery and patent, of lip liner and Starbucks to-go. There is no 405, no morning commute, no smog checks in the city. There is no pebbled leather day planner, no Office Depot expense account, no green tea from the Keurig, no need for it all.

It is, simply, me and cornfields and the ones I love.

The bin doesn’t fit anymore.

(No really, it doesn’t fit anymore. I couldn’t squeeze into that tweed skirt if I juice fasted and cayenne peppered my little heart out.)

And I suppose when something no longer fits – your waist or your life – you get to set it free.

So I did. I filled three Glad bags with artifacts from a former life, pulled the strings taut and dropped it off at my local donation center.

The tweed skirt, the patent pumps, the crocodile leather brief case, the smart yellow cardigan with embroidered daisies from Anthropologie. The pinstriped blazer, the houndstooth pants, the wool A-line skirt, the peter pan collared blouse.

Folded, stuffed, strings pulled taut, set free.

It will forever be therapeutic for me to give things away. I’m not sentimental in the way that I feel the loss as a great expanse, a missing piece. It feels instead like making space for something else, for something new, for something that closely resembles acceptance.

For the embracing of my life, today, and the celebration of my life ten years ago. The acknowledgement that someone else, somewhere else, is beginning that life. Someone else is embarking on her first job, her first Keurig green tea, her first 3am conference call with manufacturers in Japan, her first team brainstorming over Greek pita wraps.

And I don’t know. It’s just that she might very well need a Stam bag to accompany her in that wild, beautiful ride.

Something big enough to hold her dreams for a decade.

Or longer, if she’d like.

 

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This essay was written for Glad as part of their Glad to Give program. If you’d like, visit GladToGive.com to schedule a local pick-up of your unused, previously loved belongings!