Tuesday, December 30, 2014

The Donation Box

The big bold black letters scrawled hastily across just one of the many cardboard boxes my hands had come across in the past month of moving caught my attention. "DONATION". I'd found myself gently placing old items in the box almost every day of the move, only to remove them later with some excuse as to why I needed to keep them. Being that it was the last day we had in the apartment, I finally had to come to terms with it and what I was really letting go. I peered inside the box at the forlorn objects that I had finally agreed to part with forever.

It wasn't the fact that I had to part with some material items; I'm not a hoarder. It was these particular items in the donation box that really made me think. I saw my early 20's flash before my eyes in a blur of pink. You see, growing up, I never had my own room or my own decorations. I shared a room with my sister and several boxes of my mother's possessions. Okay, my bedroom was a storage room, simply put. So when I moved out on my own at 17, I began to grasp the fact that I could now decorate my apartment EXACTLY how I wanted. And, at 17, all I had eyes for was the color pink. I suppose you could say I was acting out my suppressed adolescent desires.

There were all of the regular items you'd think of that would be pink: curtains, rugs, pillows, bedding, knick-knacks, wall decorations, chairs, candles, and every picture frames. Then there were all of the items that people thought I was crazy for painting pink: the walls, furniture and even my dog's water/food dishes. It was like Barbie had one too many pink panty droppers at the bar and puked pepto bismol all over the room. But you know what? I loved it. Every day I loved coming home to my overly girly apartment, knowing it was just mine and that I didn't have to give a crap about what anyone else thought about it.  It was defining to go out for a drink in my early 20's, have a blast without a care in the world, and drunkedly stumble into bed under my hot pink hello kitty sheets That was the beauty of it all; My pink pepto bismol paradise.

Now, these items that had been so special to me a short time ago, were folded, stacked and placed lovingly in this big box to be gotten rid of. So, just as my early 20's were slowly coming to an end, so was my tacky sense of style. And naturally, just as my late night drinking fests had become fewer and fewer, so had my purchases of hot pink maladies.

Also, I noticed as my boyfriend and I were moving into our first home together that I was taking less and less of these pink items into our new home, and was furnishing it in a much more vintage fashion. When did my tastes suddenly change? Was it with my 24th birthday? Is that the sudden age of maturity? Magical number 24? Is 24 the age of comfortable clothing and shoe choices over fashionable ones? Reaching for the simply adorned socks instead of the zebra print ones? Purchasing white bed sheets instead of pink ones? Though our white sheets are extravagantly comfortable and tasteful, putting those pink ones in that donation box pulled at my heart strings a little bit. There it was, my youth, in a box with 4 walls, all heading to new homes. Even though it does make me uncomfortable, relinquishing my past in the form of donating all of my pink items, I'm open to the future. I'm open to the white bed sheets, the polished decor and whatever else life brings me. So, with love, I closed the box with duct tape and with it, closed my early 20's.


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