1. Name something you lost or gave away that can never be replaced.

Everyone knows my penchant for lists and StumbleUpon, which came together recently (read: this morning) in a beautiful way when I found a link to here: http://www.tomslatin.com/80-journal-writing-prompts/ Since I can never really come up with anything on my own to write, this seemed ideal for me. Now, obviously, I am both lazy and busy, so there's no way I'm doing all of these each day, but I did really like some of the prompts and am looking forward to eventually writing them. But, I'm nothing if not meticulous, so I shall be going through them in order rather than choosing the ones I actually want to do.

So, number one: "Name something you lost or gave away that can never be replaced."

My gut instinct answer to this is, "Nothing." I feel like if there was anything that meant that much to me, it would come to mind very quickly, with a profound story attached to it. But this is not the case. I can think of some clothes or accessories, I suppose. Ah, that does bring to mind something.

When I was 15 or so (just before I could drive, but in high school still), the nearest Urban Outfitters was in Columbus. It seems absurd and foreign now to think that almost ten years ago there was no Crocker Park. I hate Crocker Park out of habit, mostly from those same high school days (and early college as well) when I couldn't go there without running into a bazillion people from my high school that I knew- and didn't particularly want to see. Now that I live in the city, it seems even more like a sham to me, this fake urban environment set up as an island in the suburbs. I really just detest the suburbs so much.

One weekend, we managed to talk Mrs. S into driving us there. Gas wasn't $4/gal, so this was less ridiculous of a prospect- a 125 mile trip for one store- than it seems now. We made it to OSU without much incident (funny also to think of how familiar that stretch of 14th and High is to me- why, I was just at that Starbucks last weekend) and got our shopping on (we were such hipsters in the making) and made it back to Cleveland with similar lack of incident. (although we were cutting it a bit close on gas between Polaris and Sunbury) My only major purchase was a pair of pants. Keep in mind, this was during my "punk" phase, where I use the term "punk" in the loosest possible sense. I wasn't listening to the Sex Pistols or The Clash, I was listening to Story of the Year and My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park. (All of which, I hate to admit, are still really great for running.) So the pants I bought were this green baggy deal, but made of this really light, almost linen-y material. They also could be rolled up into capris. (Oh god, just recounting this makes me realise how awful it was) Most impressively for pants, they fit me decently well and were incredibly comfortable. All these things helped me justify paying whatever exorbitantly high amount Urban extorted from me (as it always does.)

Well those pants, for whatever they lacked in style, were some of my favourite pants ever. Their baggyness helped detract from my obesity (which I compensate for these days by only wearing flared skirts) and added to my comfort; the roll-up style allowed me to (ahem) perfect my skateboarding skills (punk, remember?); their green-ness and general un-jean-ness identified me as the rebel I was. I loved those pants, and wore them at least once every weekend (recall: uniforms, no need to wear them on the weekdays!) even through the summer and fall.

For maybe two years or so I continued wearing these pants. Part of the way through my Junior year I had an emotional crisis (these weren't that uncommon to me in high school. Please see: pretty much anything in this blog dated prior to 2006) and felt fat in everything and stopped wearing them for whatever reason. They were relegated to the back of my closet (where many old high school things still rest- I love going to Cleveland and finding something that is still considerably "in" and being able to wear it again) and lost for however many months.

I broke them back out again, but they were old, and I was heavier than I had been (recall: employment at Malley's) and they soon ripped. It wasn't a tragic rip, though. The part of the pants that could roll up had split along the seam, probably just because they were worn so much. I was going to repair them myself, but Susan insisted that she would, so I handed them off to her.

Now it's important to point out: as far as I know, Susan had no fundamental problems with the pants. They might not have been terribly stylish, but they were comfortable, not slutty in the least, and had cost enough money that I definitely deserved to get my wear out of them. She never once said anything derogatory to me about these pants in any way (and Susan would generally speak up if she had any major issues with clothing) so I have no reason to believe she did anything to them on purpose.

However, it still stands that the pants were lost. It took me quite some time to discover this- I had been easing out of my "punk" phase for quite some time by now- but they were gone. I don't remember exactly when I figured it out, but I know that I really wanted to wear them for some reason, and suddenly they had disappeared from the house.

At first I was rather distraught about this. The weird thing about clothes is that I get rather attached to them- link them with times and memories in my life, so they have this special meaning to me. It's why so many clothes never make it out of my closet and into donation piles- whenever I go to throw them out, I'm suddenly reminded of a time when I wore them that was meaningful to me. Of course, whenever stuff is lost or donated, I don't ever go back and think about it or miss it. Maybe that's why the people on What Not to Wear have such an emotional breakdown when Stacy and Clinton throw their old clothes in the garbage, but seem to more or less get over it by the end of the show.

So those pants, awful as they were, bring back lots of memories. I wore them when I felt like being either "punk" or adventurous. So here are some of the things that, upon reflection, they make me recall: laser tagging, adventures at the Alps (not the real ones last summer, obviously), skateboarding in Avon Lake, playing frisbee in the metroparks. Okay, that's not a huge (nor, probably, comprehensive) list, but those are all very positive memories with some really fantastic people. The pants don't matter, it's what they represent that matter. But I have those memories in lots of other ways, and now that the pants are gone and have been gone for a while, their disappearance doesn't really matter that much to me.

Sorry this started to sound like those awful Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants books. I'm not really sad any more that they're gone, and I realised even at the time that I wore them whenever I was trying to be a certain version of myself. I still sometimes have clothes like that, or really outfits as a whole. I think those pants gave me a "teen runaway" vibe that I really liked for myself, and which I still sometimes evoke. The pants are just a symbol, a stand-in, for whatever I was really trying to be- and that version of myself is now outdated and unnecessary. It doesn't mean, however, that I don't still have some clothes that help me emit a certain vibe or capture a certain feeling. To this day, and probably forever, there will always be certain articles of clothing that have meaning not because of where exactly they've been, but because of what they represent.