(Shiny, shiny, shiny!)

I knew it as soon as I saw it. This was the jacket. This was the coolest jacket ever put into existence and my twelve year old self just knew that if I owned this jacket I would be as equally cool and maybe everyone would forget the uncool ‘homeschooler’ label that followed me around.

In reality, being now twenty-six years old and no longer wearing a headgear or covering my walls with Hanson, I realize that the jacket was the farthest thing from the word ‘cool.’ I had spotted it in DEB’s (first red flag) and it was plastic, blue and, I’m not exaggerating, extremely shiny. It was exactly the style that every early 00’s pre-teen girl was following.

Still, my youthful, acne-ridden face honestly believed that this jacket was truly amazing. I promptly used all the babysitting money I’d made that week to make this essential purchase. (Because being homeschooled had some advantages, such as I was always rolling in the dough from the daytime jobs I landed during the week.) I slipped it on at home in my tiny, bedroom and felt like I was Britney Spears herself.

My mother made plans to take me to a movie that night and I was excited for the opportunity to show off my new purchase, even if it was with my mother and not any of the many adoring fans I was sure I would accumulate from wearing the jacket. We stopped on the way for gas and my mother decided that was the night I was going to learn how to pump gas. (I knew it was because obviously the jacket made me look very sophisticated, at least sixteen.) But the night quickly took a dark turn when I somehow managed to spill gas all over the ground, my pants and…dun, dun dun…my jacket! I was devastated. We quickly drove home and tried to wash out as much as possible but the jacket was deemed a lost cause and tossed away. It never even had a chance to see the light of day or meet my friends green faces.

At that time of my life, that night was traumatic. I really loved that jacket, and I thought it was amazing and the key to all my pre-teen dreams and happiness. Now being the older, much wiser, lady that I am I will always be eternally grateful that the jacket was destroyed. I count myself lucky that I don’t have pictures of that awkward phase of my life with that eyesore of a jacket draped on my bony shoulders. (There would have been an absurd amount I’m sure, there’s proof with many of the other questionable style choices I made at that age.)

I had another atrocious jacket enter my life four years ago and while I was again enthralled with the shiny smile, blue eyes, and plastic emotions that accompanied this one, it also came very close to ending in a ball of flames. He was another something I didn’t think I could live without, another piece that could fill whatever void happened to be there. That morning when it finally all came to an abrupt end, his words were the gasoline this time. As I walked away from something that was forever out of my reach, I again felt a hopelessness, like my world had been forever destroyed.

I now realize that that was most definitely not the case. I was blinded by the want deep inside my soul to be wrapped in his warmth but it was a false one that really wasn’t practical for me. I saved my heart from being set on fire that day because I knew when to let go of something that wasn’t worth saving anymore. I may have felt like what we had was something rare, and magnificent but looking back now I know that it held little of those attributes.

Both losses were a blessing in disguise. I know I’ll find another of each more suited to me and neither will be just a passing trend. I look forward to the find of a classic pea coat with wits, a rugged Carhartt with a jesting smile, or maybe a warm flannel that knows when to hold tight. I was lucky enough to be saved from a photo album of mistakes that I would have spent the rest of my life looking back on in regret and horror, and for that, I am eternally grateful.