an ode to the thrift

vlogs, yet I never saw the same piece twice. I was drawn to the seemingly infinite mysteries held inside the store.

This bubble burst quickly when I discovered that thrifting isn’t as easy as the influencers make it look. It’s an art. Sifting through clothes, going from rack to rack, feels similar to mixing just the right paints to reach the perfect shade. It takes time to figure out how to find the good stuff. I was amazed by the pools of clothing on my first thrift trip, but I lacked the skill. I left the store 10 dollars down, with a pile of oversized tees that I haven’t touched since. Despite my amateur approach and subpar results, I fell in love.

It may sound weird– to be in love, to find peace in a store full of used clothes that have been god knows where. But quite frankly, that’s what I found so special. With daily restocks, there was an endless supply of new clothes to discover. Each piece of clothing I found in the overcrowded store– no matter how old or new– had a life before it ended up in my hands. I relished that experience.

Feeling like myself while in the thrift store is one thing, but finding myself was another. Take an old t-shirt, for example, in the back of the store. It’s green (not a gross green) but a lime green that most people would put back on the rack instinctively. It’s falling off its hanger, stuffed behind all of the others.

Freshman year of high school, I was that tee nearly slipping from the hanger. I couldn’t seem to find my place, whether it was at school or with friends. Mostly, I didn’t know myself. Still, I’d run out of school each day and straight into the holy land, where millions of shirts and jackets waited for me, barely hanging on. As I swept through them, careful to not to let them slip, I knew that all they needed was some love and care, a little push back onto the rack. I knew that all I needed was a new outfit– a new way of expressing myself– to get me through the school year. A small push.

The clothes in the thrift store were that push for me. That year, as my thrifting skills improved, my outfits began to warp who I thought I was. “I love your shirt, where’d you get it?” became a common question I faced as I began to show up to school in far from typical garb. I’d never felt more like myself in outfits that only cost a few dollars! I felt wanted in all the places I stood in, solely because of my decades-old, worn out, beloved thrifted clothing.

Ever since that first day in my local thrift store, I’ve gone back each week searching for something: a new story for myself, brought to me by someone else.