Shedding the Closet...

I cleaned out my closet today.

Generally I just grit my teeth and do my best to give away things I don't feel like I'll miss too much. I think this is mostly because I've always been strangely conscious of the fact that once I let something go, it's never coming back. The finality of it bothers me a little. That and I never really know how something will play into fashion in years to come. Or maybe I've got a mild form of hoarding, I don't know.

This year however, as I sat amongst the piles of clothes from past years I found that it wasn't really hard to get rid of anything. For the first time it didn't feel like a chore. It felt really liberating, like shedding the person that I've been for the last few years to make room for something new.

It was nice.

Fashions always been a touchy subject, mostly because it's been one of the hardest parts of life. Mostly because I never really had much sense of it. For most of my life I was content to just be "that girl". The one who marched to her own drum, wore boys clothes, and never really cared much about what anyone else thought. And that was fine, I loved being that person, but it also marked some difficulties I was having finding myself. My entire adolescents pretty much sucked. Then I went through the black goth phase, and then the baggy jeans and tank top phase. I have the clearest memory of standing in Target with a black shirt in my hands and having my mom tell me "Well, it is a cute shirt, but I don't want you turning into some punk goth kid".

I don't know why I remember any of these moments, it's not like they were the proudest moments of my life or anything. Contrary, they were some of the worst chunks of life. It was the years where I was so sure I knew who I was until, all of sudden, I didn't. It was like every other adolescents out there who spends so many years pretending they're fine while struggling to find some rhyme or reason to life. Trying to carve out who they're going to be for the rest of their life. Trying to make sense of things that seemed so insignificant until that point.

It's hard.

It's hard and it's scary and for a good year or two you're fairly certain this is the way it's going to be for the rest of your life. Inevitably though, something will come along that will snap you out of it, something that will help everything to start to fall into place. There will still be a long way to go, but you have a sense of where things will fall. You stop feeling so unsure.

Cleaning out your closet is a lot like shedding a layer of skin. You brush off the black shirts and torn up pants of yesterday to make way for the neon colored jeans and sweaters of tomorrow. You throw out all the mistakes and insecurity for something better, a more comfortable fit.

I'm happy to be entering the new year like this, getting yet another clean start to continue the journey to finding out who I am. I'm a lot more sure than I was five years ago, but no where near where I'm going to be five years from now. Just as I look at the dark clothes of years passed, I know I'll look at them again someday and be reminded of those terrible and confusing years, but also of the growth and change that I've been able to make as an individual.

I welcome this next chapter of my life with open arms.