you're welcome, preppy turtle

perhaps it is because i am forward-thinking & college-bound, but when my family performed the weekend-long task of "switching over our closets" from winter to spring, i willingly parted ways with articles i have not worn in years but have been hoarding out of guilt.

i have long been waiting to go through & rid myself of quite a few t-shirts i no longer wear, but i wound up being far more destructive to my collection of sweatpants that have been permanently residing in the attic. i easily purged my closet of over one hundred items, as miraculous as that may sound. four gigantic shopping bags (& one garbage bag) carried clothes out of my room this year. long-sleeved abercrombie tees, plain tanktops with built-in bras, bat mitzvah sweatshirts, & dusty pairs of ill-fitting jeans have all been given chances for rebirth in the form of donation to my neighbors' daughters &/or consignment shops nearby. perhaps a few pairs of shoes will make their way onto ebay because they were rarely worn. i had more difficulty parting with shoes than clothing because it meant that my grand total of 70-some-odd shoes was decreasing. (i don't know what number i stand at currently.)


i do have an overarching point here. i have been holding on to a pink wool juicy couture skirt, seven ralph lauren polo shirts, a floral button-down guess top, & a pair of gold dress shoes that a shop owner gave me because he liked my style all for one reason: i felt bad getting rid of them. these are expensive items that were worn maybe three times each, at most. but my inability to part with material possessions has always restrained me from saying goodbye. i have now accepted, though, that as i am moving on to college where my life is essentially beginning again, i should give these mindt condition clothes a chance to be appreciated. as anna wintour of vogue says in the september issue, "fashion is never about looking back. it's always about looking forward." of course i did keep some things purely for the sake of nostalgia - a pirates of the caribbean tee from hot topic circa my band shirt phase, for instance - but i embraced maturity in saying goodbye to others. (lolz so serious -n- heartfelt)

of course, i had also had to keep the pink t-shirt that reads "pretty in pink, wicked in uniform" across a lacrosse stick head because i am going to johns hopkins where lax rulez. how is it that i managed to pick a school where the one sport i ever played reigns king? how did that happen? (if you're wondering when & why i played lacrosse, i have only one answer: seventh grade.) hopkins, you're the right place for me.