The Purple Dress

I'm not really a sentimental person. I've said that before. Especially with clothes.

Well, I am to an extent with my babes. I have the first little hats ever put on their heads. Their first shoes. Their baptismal outfits. And a few sleepers that I just adored. And I will cherish those things forever.

But for myself - no. The only reason I still have my wedding dress hanging in a closet is because, before my first big purge, I read about a cool idea of using the fabric from it to make my daughter's confirmation dress. So I'm keeping it for that because I think it'd be kind of neat.

Otherwise, clothes, sentimental? No way, Jose.

Except.

Except, except, except.

There is always an exception right?

I have this purple dress. Every time I go through a purge, I always bypass it. I never even considered tossing it.

Until today.

I don't know what makes today different. Because the dress is still the same. The memories are still there. And yet, today I pulled that dress right out of the closet, looked at it, thought about the boy it was associated with, and finally said adieu.

Before your mind even goes there, I'm not hanging on to lost love or anything. It was something far more innocent than that. But I was still hanging onto it.

I went to a school where everyone knew everyone. It was one school, k-12, for the whole town. Good, bad, it was what it was. And the people were who they were.

Simply by default, you were friends with everyone. Some more than others, but nonetheless.

There was a boy. We'll call him C. He helped me with my math. A lot. He was going to be the next Bill Gates. He agreed to be my 1st husband so I could have half of his worth someday. This was a lifetime ago before I realized that people married for love, not for finances. A time before I even knew that there was such thing as love.

He was the first boy who ever told me I was beautiful, and not with the intent of gaining something more from me. He was the first boy who ever told me I was smart.

He asked me to the military ball, and I attended, shortly before I moved away during my freshman year of high school. I wore the purple dress. I loved the purple dress. And I loved that night. And I loved how genuinely good C treated me, for no reason other than he was a genuinely good person.

But I left just a few short weeks after that dance. We weren't close enough where we ever talked again.

And then at the beginning of my senior year I got a phone call from a friend that C had committed suicide.

For some reason, it hit hard. This boy who had become nothing more than a memory at that point of my life, was gone. Forever. And by his own hand.

I battled some pretty severe depression the months following that. A good chunk of my senior year I don't even really remember. It was like a foggy haze.

And all because a boy who had once told me I was smart and beautiful had chosen to end his own life.

So the dress stayed. I never paid it much attention, but I was never willing to get rid of it either.

I don't know why. I'm sure a therapist could have a field day psychoanalyzing this, for sure!

All I know is that today when I looked at that dress, I knew it was finally time to let it go.

So I am.