Love Letter #009: Oh, I remember you 🌀
A reflection on February, reunions and thoughtful closet cleanouts
I’ve been spiraling, but in a good way.
For February, the word, “reunion” felt like an appropriate term and feeling to dive into. I wanted to pick something that implies romance and connection, but also a sense of returning. Because that’s just genuinely what I’ve been feeling lately. Even at the beginning of the year, I titled my yearly playlist, “2023: Welcome Back.” And I’ve been exploring what I’ve been exactly welcoming myself back to.
A brief list chronicling my recent reunions:
My ambitious self. But this time I’m trying to make peace with her. Trying to tell her that we can desire big things without letting it turn into stress.
Fantasy books. The first books I found solace in, the first stories that showed me the power of imagination.
The color gray. A color that I’ve always loved, always gravitated towards and always felt safe in. It never failed me in any way. But I was told that it was too sad of a color to wear growing up.
Reunions occur all around us, whether they’re with loved ones, old friends, our old selves, or a dress gathering dust in the back of a closet. And a spiral in a weird way signifies that; coming back around to the other end, a reunion with a beginning.
This whole month I’ve been thinking about reunions and how they tie in with patience. Do we make enough space for the reunions in our lives? Or are we quick to strip ourselves of things that “don’t serve us” without allowing the complicated truth that we may want to return to them once more? This can happen a lot when we find the desire to clean out our closets — and thus, ourselves. We rip out the insides of our wardrobes to try and cleanse the parts of ourselves that don’t fit us anymore. A lot of times this can feel like renewal, but I’ve sometimes felt that it fed into that same impulsiveness that caused the problem in the first place.
One of my favorite style creators on TikTok, @lilpuj, captured this sentiment perfectly by adding a fresh and necessary take on the “maybe” pieces in our lives. There’s no shortage of content, advice and blueprints telling us how to decipher the “yes” and the “no” pieces. But what about the gray areas in between? This nuanced feeling she described is such an important reminder that sometimes, we need to allow ourselves the space to grow and change, and then we can really return to a version of ourselves we thought we were ready to throw out.
I realized how much this resonated with me while looking through old items in my attic to give away for a closet swap I planned this month. At first, I felt frustrated with myself that I kept finding things that I wanted to keep, not give away. “This is not the point, stay focused!” — I told myself. The whole point of cleaning out your closet is to throw out as much as possible. Right?
But as Pooja so eloquently put, there needs to be space for both awhen auditing your closet: intentional input and output.
“You have to give your clothing time. Be patient with it. Some of my favorite things that I wear all the time right now, I hated three years ago. […] Be patient with your clothing. Because you as a person will change. You have to allow for that change.” — Pooja (@lilpuj).
As I was digging through my own items, I felt excited that my perspective on certain pieces shifted. I found myself being inspired by them in a new way. An old thrifted asymmetrical Zara dress that I had bought originally three years ago just for photoshoots, suddenly seemed like something straight out of my spring wishlist folder. An old vintage graphic T-shirt that I had (probably) tucked away last year because of the rips and imperfections along the collar, now seemed to fit in perfectly with my newfound love for small rips, creases and folds. And a pair of oxfords that I bought while I was in college, only wore once, and put into storage because I couldn’t’ figure out how to wear them, now ended up being the perfect puzzle piece to my shoe collection.
I tried to explore this further this month with a couple style prompts around reunion. And the responses I got were similar to what I was feeling — forgotten pieces, jewelry, even ideas about how we dress, found new purpose in our wardrobes simply because we let ourselves wait a little longer.
What’s an item that you fell in love with all over again?
What’s a color you were told to never wear, but actually secretly loved?
What’s an outfit your inner child would put on their moodboard?
That’s why it’s so important to make space for reunions in many ways, not only the ones that happen but also the potential for the ones to happen in the future. This is a hard thing to hold space for, because I know from experience, that sometimes, we want to have everything all at once. Patience (my theme from last month) ties in with this a lot.
I’ve also realized that without the hope and belief in reunion, I find myself relying too much on immediate replacement. I would find myself giving up on finding certain items — the perfect pair of pants or even my own long lost jewelry that may never come back so I search, and search, feverishly for a replacement. Often, this clouds my judgement, leading me to take shortcuts to find the pieces that really and truly feel like me.
I’m someone who gets very emotional when I lose items. And I find a lot of times that the things I wear and love the most, are the ones usually at risk of becoming lost. And sometimes, we cant’t get a chance to reunite with certain items that come away form us. Especially when it comes to special vintage items, thrifted pieces, family heirlooms — all things that are becoming more and more scarce in this world — it’s a punch in the gut to realize you may have misplaced it.
But my good friend, Shelly, had a beautiful view on reunions and finding ways to intentionally replace the things we lose. She told me that she’s found that many things find their way back to her — even a bag of costume jewelry she thought she lost in a recent move, returned back to her out of nowhere.
But sometimes, not all the items find their way back. I know there’s still old sweatshirts from my dad and old jewelry from my high school days that still keep me up at night. But I liked Shelly’s view of it — how we don’t have to rush to find a replacement, just trust that something similar and with the same spirit will simply find its way back to us.
I recently had the strangest experience of finding a lost earring that I thought was for sure gone. It was my first pair of earrings from one of my favorite jewelry makers, Junk Party Jewelry — they were unique, one-of-a-kind (made with recycled cables) and they looked like twisted white and black licorice. They became my go-to statement earrings — eccentric, mismatching and conversation starters. Until, about a year ago I came back from a night at a bar with friends and found one of them to be gone. I went the next day to the same place and they were nowhere to be found. Then almost exactly a year later — while writing this essay — I came across them on the other side of town at my boyfriend’s studio.
There’s probably a logical explanation of how they got there, as I’m known to chaotically switch between purses and lose earrings while taking off sweaters. But someone left the other one for me in the stairwell, hanging on a nail, like it was presented there as a beautiful reunion for me. And I guess I’m going to just choose to believe that it chose to come back to me and show me that with time and patience, everything comes back around in one way or another.
And I love this sentiment that we can find an idea of reunion in the new as much as the old. Because it’s all about balance — not allowing what is lost to take over us, but also not allowing the desire for the new to do the same. We are constantly getting to know ourselves all over again, through our style shifting and changing, our wardrobes getting bigger and smaller, through gifts and hand-me-downs, through inspiration and art. I think the most beautiful thing is when I’m at a store and I see something that I don’t have, but it feels like it belongs to me. Like I alway meant to have it.
And here’s the thing. You can’t have a reunion without oldness. Without time passing. Time passing and change and distance; these are all things part of our lives that sting and feel sour in our mouths. But reunions — they add a dash of sugar to those difficult moments.
Because you know that the return will be so sweet.