Blue Sweatshirt
My favorite sweatshirt is the ugliest thing I own. I don’t know where it came from exactly. I found it in the basement after my brother had a party I had promised not to speak of. I guess I was helping him, taking this piece of evidence and claiming it as my own. It’s gross. Somebody at some point left it in the basement, ready for my taking. I planned to give it back, I promise I did. No one ever came looking for it.
Every person I know hates this sweatshirt. It’s faded and stretched, clearly meant to be a memory for someone else. I guess I stole that from someone, a keepsake to tell their children about. The color can only be described as blue vomit with greenish and yellowish stains, and it’s very possible it has been the cover of an inebriated teenage boy before me. I like to imagine it as magical, being passed between different generations and complexities of people. It comes when you need it most, and eventually lose it, and the cycle continues. Then I wonder why it chose me.
Anyone else would have given it to a Goodwill years ago, but I kept it. Maybe it was greed, maybe it was because of its comfortable slouchy covering, maybe it was something deeper compelling me to hold onto it, but I wanted that sweatshirt.
It’s very thin, thin enough to wear it as a shirt with another, better sweatshirt overtop. I think that’d look quite ridiculous, two sweatshirts on at once in public. I’ve never done that, but it’s crossed my mind. I rarely ever wear the ugly blue sweatshirt in public. I know people will look at me, let their gaze linger just a second longer when they see the sweatshirt. I don’t know why this freaks me out so much, the idea of my ugly outfit being a memorable part of someone’s day; the idea that they’ll return to their roommates and say “I saw the grossest looking sweatshirt today”. I think that’s why I kept it, to get past that fear.
I relied heavily enough on the opinion of others that someone like me needed an ugly sweatshirt. I wear it all the time in the dorm. It’s like wearing a blanket stitched together by memories that are not my own and experiences that I might never get to claim as my own. The sweatshirt is hopeful for some reason. It’s a familiar face, it’s a nostalgic song or hair in a ponytail or friends who know your family. The sweatshirt is a comfort zone, and not all comfort zones need to be pushed.
A larger part of me knows that it’s just a sweatshirt. It’s probably from Target or Macy’s or something like that. It doesn’t need this build up, it definitely isn’t worthy of high praise or memorabilia. Still, it means something to me. It’s a presentation of myself, an outward reflection of my innermost qualities. The sweatshirt feels the most me, but what does that say about me? Can I not push myself to be more than a stained sweatshirt; lost and tossed around as easily as any memory? I love the ugly blue sweatshirt because it is exactly how I feel, but I never wear it in public because I don’t want anyone to know that. My sweatshirt is a secret and that’s why no one claimed it.
Leather Jackets
I had bought a leather jacket. I’m not the type who can pull it off, the leather jacket look I mean. I didn’t have the bold attitude that accompanies a leather jacket. I don’t have the vacant stare and eye rolls that rock stars who once bore this same style called their trademark. I was not enough to fulfill the leather jacket. Not to say I didn’t want to. The opposite actually. If I could have been anything, I would be a Leather Jacket kind of girl. But I wasn’t, and I am not. That jacket currently sits between letterman jackets and bohemian wraps, all bought with the matching intention of deceit from a Forever 21 in eastern Pennsylvania.
I recall a winter in town. With risk and regret, I wore it out for a night of promised adventure. I had my doubts about the look at the very last minute. I remember Abby telling me that it was all in my head. She said that there was no such thing as “pulling off” a look. She said that as long as you believed you could rock a leather jacket, you were as punk rock as you wanted to be. I remember agreeing and being pulled into a bar where we didn’t belong, in a leather jacket that didn’t look right, dancing to songs in a way that felt wrong. Surrounded by sweat and body heat and my nice leather coat, I had never felt colder in my entire life.
It dawned on me for the first time how young I truly was. At eighteen, the line between youth and adulthood is very blurred. You can be tried legally in court, but still rely on your parents for everything from emotional support to basic human needs. There are some who are old at eighteen, people who thrived on the ideals of aging. I could see Abby was an old eighteen year old, but I was too young. I was three months older, but still too naive for the world she had accepted as early as she could have. I was eighteen stuck in fifteen, she was eighteen stuck in twenty five, and neither of us knew why we were trapped in an age that didn’t fit us right. Abby hooked up with a college student that night. I called us an Uber to get home.
Combat Boots
It was a party, my first party as a college student. The guy that sat next to me was slobbering and drunkenly asking me what my major is and for some reason I told him it was some type of science even though I write. "This will be writing experience" I had thought to myself. He was too far gone to notice my fake. He said he was an engineering major which I highly doubted, but I lied too so I didn’t comment.
His arm was dripping in the heat and I saw steam rising on the windows, closed to conceal the disgusting rap music I’d never listen to outside of this context. Sweat is cold. I never noticed that before but sweaty was cold, and his hands were ice as he reached around my back. When I think of sweat, this public declaration of dehydration and overheat, I don’t notice that I am drenched in the cold, but I noticed then. It’s a million degrees in this hell hole but I’m so cold with his arm on my shoulder, with his mouth near my ear, with my eyes looking at the puke covered carpet and my arms covered in goosebumps.
If I am the manic pixie dream girl, he is the relaxed ogre nightmare boy. He was large and his hands touched my back like he wants something more than a casual conversation. If only my skin was as burning as his hand was cold, then maybe he would have snapped his arm away without a second thought, move onto the next girl in the next room.
I can’t help but wonder why I wore my combat boots. I wore them because they went with everything, they were comfortable and reliable. Now I looked down at them and wondered when I began to put reliable first. I looked at them and felt very young, very foolish, very naive about this new lifestyle I was thrown into.
They are old, seventh grade old. The laces are frayed and broken apart and then tied back together. The tips of the toes were once black, then coffee colored from the wear, now black again, due to a sharpie I stole from my roommate. These were not heels or boots made for parties. These were combat boots. Boots made for battle.
Yet here I was, disgracing their name. I was not fighting off this boy, this drunken slobbering boy. His hands kept finding new ways to touch me, to grab at me. I shrugged uncomfortably but my low self esteem and alcohol cocktail made it clear to both of us I didn’t care all too much.
It dawned on me then how much I didn’t care. Not at all. I felt empty. I looked around at the other belligerent teenagers and twenty somethings and wondered if they felt as empty as I did. Or was this how they felt fulfilled? This is what movies said college was, this is what my father told stories about and what my mother warned me about. This was how older friends met boyfriends and how they knew their friends were real. But I didn’t feel that. I felt alone. I stared down at my combat boots. Boots made for battle, but this war zone was not meant for me. The battle was walking home, down streets I didn’t know the names of. The battle was holding onto this idea that I was someone who enjoyed this type of night. The battle was pretending that I was not a sheltered Catholic girl who lived a life of One Direction concerts and gossips and leggings with sweatshirts. I was not made for my worn combat boots. The frayed strings tied together a history of failed attempts to change who I was.
Red Lipstick
Abby was a makeup girl. She loved fashion magazines and Project Runway reruns. Abby loved purses and Justin Bieber and anything else that a stereotypical teenage girl might love. She knew it too, she loved that about herself. Abby was something I wanted to be, unwaveringly confident in herself, the identity she embraced without hesitation. Abby wore bright pink lipstick and for some reason it never smudged.
I have never been one to really enjoy makeup. I understand that some people find it relaxing and helpful, but it’s never seemed to feel right for me, specifically lipstick. It doesn’t taste right. Lipstick tastes the way paint smells. Lipstick is for movie stars and girls from New York City. I don’t wear red lipstick, but I have three bottles. Three bottles, three separate times I thought I could be the kind of girl who wears red lipstick. I’m not the kind, I don’t think I have it in me. My teeth are white and my skin is pale and my hair is blond, so in theory, I could pull off the look, but the three bottles sit unused on my shelf.
The first bottle is a wine red. I bought it at a Macy’s for more money than I’d ever spent on makeup before. To be fair, I barely spent any money on makeup before. My mom always bought it for me. She’d come home from work with Sephora bags filled with bronzers and eyeliners for me to try out. She said I should start wearing makeup even though I said it makes me feel sticky, which isn’t an ideal way to feel. She told me to try it. So I tried it. I didn’t like it, but other people did. Friends and mothers always said my eyes would be especially striking when outlined in black liquid. I took it all, I learned how to avoid painting the whites of my eyes and how to curl the thin hairs that lined my eyelids. Any store outing would return with new foundations and brushes, most of which still remain unopened in a drawer in east Philadelphia. But the wine red? That was all me.
Maybe I thought if Taylor Swift could look good with it, so could I. So I lined my eyes, stained my skin, and coated my lips red, wine red. It was barely visible. I rubbed more and more onto my lips but still they never extended past pink. The mirror steamed from my breath and I threw the bottle to the floor in frustration. I looked it up online, this was a good kind, I was sure of it. Still, it disappointed me. I was not wine red.
The second bottle was a gaudy halloween red that tasted like paint and dust. It was excessive and drew your eye to my lips. It made me feel worse than sticky, it made me feel dry and tasteless. It made my teeth appear extremely yellow, and my face became a McDonald’s advertising campaign. I flashed my smiles in the mirror, striking poses in dresses I had brought out that could match red lips. With dark dresses and the pop of the color, the red lips were the main attraction. When I was through with my excessive display of self appreciation, I rubbed my mouth until the gaudy halloween makeup faded into a light pink.
Becca always had really red lips, she was the type who could wear it the way it was meant to be worn. She was a girl in my high school senior class, and the most effortlessly fascinating person I’ve ever had the chance to meet. Where I was unsure, Becca was confident. When I was pulling at my leggings or covering my arms, Becca wore whatever and felt no panic. She could wear leather jackets and combat boots and not look ridiculous, and most importantly, she could wear red lipstick. She listened to indie bands and laughed at things that weren’t funny. She was as close as a person could get to manifesting the manic pixie dream girl. I always wanted to ask her what kind of red lipstick she used, but I never did.
The third bottle was a pink red. It was a Valentine’s red that tasted like cotton candy. I put in on and I felt like a Barbie doll. I felt sick to my stomach. I did not feel Valentine’s red, I felt angry red, I felt fake red. Red, so promising and beautiful, did not fit me. I was not reds or pinks or oranges but blues and greens and dark purples. I was not Valentine’s Day or Christmas or New Year’s Eve. I was a Tuesday, and Tuesday didn’t wear red lipstick. I was not made for a New York runway or to be the most fascinating person in a classroom. I was playing dress up, pretending to be someone I’d one day like to see in the mirror. I am not red, though I’d like to be. I want to be red.
If I could paint myself I think I would. If I could change myself, I think I would. If I could pick and piece together the parts of myself I liked, and extract the parts I didn’t, I think I would. That’s a terrifying thought. I know I am who I am, I know this cannot be changed, despite what media and self help books might advertise. These clothes, equally mystifying and fascinating, bring with them a load of baggage. Behind the leather and the black hides the insecurity in myself that I’ve never been able to face. With each pretty facade I seek to create, it all reveals what I feel underneath. It’s a mask, a disguise to hide the distaste for what my mirror says and what I hate about myself but will never be able to get rid of. That’s the part that hurts. I will not get rid of the sweatshirt, leather jacket, the red lipstick, or the combat boots because I am afraid that when these things are gone I will be forced to acknowledge what they are hiding. I know that I’ll always be waiting, even if I don’t realize it, I’ll always be searching to change who I am, but I don’t think I’ll ever figure out why.
Alyssa Moore is an English Writing student at the University of Pittsburgh. She is originally from West Chester, PA. This is her first piece of published writing.