Not a Perfume. A Memory.💌

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. The jeans one size up aren't waiting for my body. They're waiting for a version of my life I haven't lived yet, and won't, by wearing pants that don't fit.

The uncomfortable part is what it means to actually get rid of the dress — you're not just decluttering, you're admitting the night it was for might not be coming, or already came and went without you in it. That's a small grief, and it's easier to just close the closet door than have it.

the closet isn't storage, it's a waiting room

I think that's the actual function a lot of "aspirational" clothing serves. Not aspiration exactly — deferral. As long as the item exists unworn, the version of you who deserves it still technically might show up. The second you give it away, you've quietly agreed she isn't coming. Nobody wants to be the one who closed that door.

I gave the dress away last month.To myself- the now version of me. The closet's smaller now. It's also, somehow, more honestly mine.

The clothes were never really the clutter. The waiting was.

xo, journaled