JOURNALED.

I've Never Actually Had a Fall I've Never Actually Had a Fall Everything I know about autumn is secondhand. Every fall post I've ever written has been secondhand. I've never actually felt the air change. Everything I know about autumn came from a movie, a playlist, someone else's boots-and-scarf flat lay — an entire season I've been writing about my whole life without once living through it. I'm about to, for real, in a few weeks. And I don't actually know what I'm expecting, now that I try to name it. Something about the light changing. Something about needing a coat for the first time and not owning one that's actually built for real cold, not the kind I've been calling "cold" my whole life. I keep picturing it like the movies — golden leaves, a specific kind of grey sky — and I have no idea yet whether any of that is even accurate, or just the aesthetic version I've abs...

Why We Keep Clothes for a Version of Ourselves That Doesn't Exist Why We Keep Clothes for a Version of Ourselves That Doesn't Exist The dress isn't the problem. What it's waiting for is. There's a dress in my closet I haven't worn in over a year. It still has the tag threat marks from where I cut it off too fast. I keep it because it's "for something" — I just haven't figured out what, or when, or which version of me is supposed to wear it. She has better skin than me right now, a better figure. She goes out more. She doesn't think twice before buying the dress in the first place. I used to think closet clutter was about not having time to sort through things. It's not. It's that half of what's in there isn't clothing, it's a hypothesis — proof that if I just hold onto the right pieces, I'll eventually grow into the person who was already supposed to be wearing them. T...