One year ago, my little sister and I were prancing around Copenhagen going from store to store, doing the one thing we both love shopping. It’s not the most exciting thing to do, but for a couple of twenty-something-year-olds, it was quite a day. We enjoyed it more than we probably should have, and to continue our joy we switched to another love we both have.
Thrift shopping.
We love finding hidden treasures within our own city or those we travel to. Ones that fit our own fashion or each other, it’s something that has managed to bring us closer together than I think anyone would have expected.
I didn’t just love thrifting for the two of us though. No, I loved finding things for the boy I was in love with at the time.
So when in the third little vintage store we had walked into that day, I couldn’t help but jump at the vintage 49ers jacket that was just sitting in the shop. I thought I had found the first truly amazing item for his birthday surprise in a few weeks and I couldn’t help but get it.
I teased him about how amazing the item I found for him was for weeks when I got back. I knew it would be the coolest thing to ever enter his closet.
We broke up of course before I could give it to him.
So there I was heartbroken and wondering what to do with this jacket.
This one god-forsaken jacket, that I couldn’t get rid of, because if I gave it to him then what. I’d be the girl who had given him one more cool piece of clothing for his closet, or I would be the girl who held on to his birthday present a bit too long before mentioning it.
Either way, couldn’t be me.
So there it was for months just sitting on my clothing rack collecting dust. My other thrifted pieces found their love and way into my closet yet this little 49er’s jacket just couldn’t escape. It’s not like it didn’t fit my style, which was its worst part. it felt like this constant reminder of what should have been a great moment for me and my ex turned into a sour memory I was never going to escape.
Until I started dating a boy who worked in sports, and god did I do the one thing every girl hopes they won’t do.
Try and make herself look cool in his eyes.
Not that I wasn’t cool to him. I liked sports understood baseball and would tolerate watching basketball, but I never got into football. I was a tennis player after all (and our high school football coach gave me a sour taste for the game when he got petty because we won more games in tennis than they did,)
So here I was with the football season beginning, being pulled to be a Sunday morning football bartender. talking to a boy who lived and breathed sports with a jacket that I had deemed not my own but stuck in my very happy place.
And what did I do? Well, I wore it, and it was one of the fastest days I had ever actually been complimented on an outfit. Even by the boy whose attention I was trying so desperately to get. I felt guilty still justifying not showing the jacket I had bought in January until that very day in August, as it wasn’t supposed to be mine.
It was mine though, it never was supposed to be anyone else’s. at the end of the day, I found a thing that brought me joy because it was me, I just hadn’t let myself be me in so long that I didn’t understand.
You see, I don’t get football but I do get fantasy football. Yeah, I know that makes no sense to literally anyone, but it is the case, and in all hon,esty I started loving the actual game by following the 49ers, especially over this season,
It not only makes me sad to see the season ending but with it ending and me finding my way to New York next month. I know I have one hell of a memento from living here in the bay for the last eight or so years.
I just didn’t know it when I bought it.
Sidney Donna 