I've got these jeans. Jeans that I haven't worn for over five years. But I just can't get rid of them. The pair, indigo denim with a beige trim of tatty faux-fur, and bell bottomed ankles, may sound like a heinous crime against fashion, but I still can't chuck them. I have come to some reasoned conclusions as to why this might be the case. Firstly, the battle I faced in order to obtain the jeans in the first place, was a struggle of gigantic proportions, that to throw them away now would be an unthinkable crime! You see, they are Miss Sixty jeans. Miss Sixty!I must have spent at least an hour-a-day for a month begging, pleading with my mother to part with seventy five (yes SEVENTY FIVE) pounds in exchange for the object of my dreams, before she finally gave in.
Another reason as to why I may be so attached to this garment may lie in their the symbolic connotations. The jeans reside in a white chest-of-drawers in my bedroom at home. The room in which I had lived for at least ten of the nineteen years that My family had owned this house... until, I went to uni. I've always felt a very strong attachment to my family home. Maybe it's because my first breaths of air, my first seconds of life, occurred in this very house. Or, maybe it's just the character that my home possesses. It's a grand structure, built in the Georgian era, painted white, with two columns supporting the solid awning above the front door. The garden is huge, (well perhaps not huge, but big enough, and exciting enough to occupy me and my brother in our outdoor adventures for hour upon hour when we were growing up.)There's something about it which I just love and anytime the mention of selling up and moving comes up I just can't bear the thought of leaving it. But back to the jeans. What I'm saying is, that this old, tiny (I used to be a scrawny size 6 up until the age of about seventeen)and unfashionable piece of attire resembles a piece of me, a tangible extension of my character, before I left home. A younger, more innocent, dependent 'me', who has now well and truly disappeared. Every holiday throughout university, I would without fail, open the drawer to check that they were still there, consider giving them to the charity shop, and then tuck them neatly back into their home. The place where they belong.
And it's not just the jeans. Every object that remains in my bedroom at home, every survivor of my termly purge, holds a story, a meaning, that to me, is too important to throw away.
I have but one term of university to complete until I graduate into certified, there's-no-going-back-now, adulthood. This fills me with dread. But I am safe in the knowledge, that when I eventually move back home, before finding a job and a place of my own, I can find comfort. I know where it is. It's where it always is. Tucked away in a white chest-of-drawers.
