Two years ago, while I was waiting for my United Kingdom visa approval in rural coastal Maine, I was always en route to a secondhand store. Once, while driving to the Goodwill in Rockland, I was listening to a podcast recorded at the peak of quarantine, in which two girls make fun of twin flames and debate the soul’s journey. I agreed with the girl who sometimes irked me and disagreed with the girl who I thought could be my best friend if we ever met in real life. It was one of many podcasts I wrapped myself in when I first came back to Maine, when the quiet of the island I lived on began to pierce my inner ear, when I couldn’t fall asleep because the foxes were shrieking in the woods. All of the podcasts that were my companions in those months boiled down to this: two girls have conversations about dating apps, pop psychology, Taylor Swift, or theater kids, and these frivolous topics almost always devolve into a mention of late-stage capitalism. Trains of thought are pinched off with “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” They laugh, the pith of it weighed down by the knowledge of impending societal collapse, and then they move on.
In the trunk, a container of Fiestaware mugs clinked as I turned off of Route 1 and onto a country road. I was donating those mugs, along with many tote bags, paper bags, and plastic bags full of stuff, to the Rockland Goodwill. A week earlier, my visa was approved, and whenever I opened my closet, the stuff inside overwhelmed me. I could not take all of the clothes, the DVDs, or the childhood paraphernalia with me to London. I didn’t want to take it all, either. I own certain ugly sweaters that are better suited to skipping rocks on a rocky beach than to squeezing myself onto the Tube. I have white silk blouses that would look foolish in the aisles of Hannaford, but effortlessly cool in a cramped coffee shop in Kensington.
That overstuffed closet and I had been adversaries for a long time. I have lived in Gettysburg, New York City, Montreal, and Calgary. Before all of these moves, it was my goal to pare down my stuff so that when my bags were packed, there would only be a few items of clothing left swinging on the racks, emergency outfits just in case my luggage was ever lost on a flight back home.
But that minimalist dream never worked for me because flirting with enclothed cognition is one of my favorite hobbies. Over the years, my wardrobe became less functional and more archival. I loved trying on the romper that I had worn to a few memorable parties in the summer of 2017, or studying my skipping feet, stuffed into 80s Danexx boots I had thrifted when I was sixteen. The nostalgia leaked beyond my wardrobe too. I had once found a nasty note written to my eighth grade bully crumpled under the bookshelf. Why had I been wistful for that?
As I pulled into the Rockland Goodwill drop-off line, however, I was wistful for nothing. I unloaded my car, worrying that the people behind me are annoyed that I am taking so long, because I am shedding mounds, and I can only carry so much at a time. Usually when I donated to Goodwill, I felt pangs of guilt for the things I never used enough, or hesitation over the things that I may regret giving up later. Maybe that’s why I had chosen to donate all of these things to the Goodwill in Rockland, and not in Brunswick, the town where I grew up. Both are an hour’s drive from where I was living at the time. If I had donated to the Brunswick Goodwill, a mawkish whiff might have clouded my head, convincing me that I was giving the essence of myself back to the town that had shaped me. Rockland, however, is anonymous to me. I have no precious memories there. Once those things were fed into the maw of the Goodwill and filtered through Rockland, they became nameless to me.
After my car was unloaded, I went inside to shop. Sometimes when I go into a Goodwill, I think of certain things I need, like a kitchen utensil, or a piece of clothing. I had found the white silk blouses, the ones perfect for London coffee shops, in that way. I had noticed that on Pinterest, I had been drawn to elegant, architectural outfits that suggested I used “summer” as a verb. The most basic piece I had needed was a white silk blouse, and when I had gone thrifting that day, I searched the racks and had found two. When I walked into the Rockland Goodwill, however, I didn’t know which section to go to first. I knew that there was nothing I needed. But was there truly nothing I wanted?
Then, in my head, all of the podcasts hosts I had listened to over those months said in unison: there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
As I wandered through the aisles, I only noticed things that I wish I could have taken with me to London, to the flat my English boyfriend and I would share.
There was a hand-painted chest in which I would have liked to store our sheets, or blankets for a sofa bed. A preponderance of cheesy romance novels that I would like to collect one day. Decorative pieces for the kitchen we’d like to paint sage green. Kitten heels I would have liked to wear with those silk blouses.
I didn’t buy any of it. Some of it, like the chest, could not have fit in a suitcase. But, theoretically, I could have brought everything else. The romance novels could be tossed into the suitcase, and I could have embraced the Waspishness of my inspired wardrobe and have worn the kitten heels on my flight to London.
A few months earlier, I probably would have said just send it and have bought everything I thought I could make fit. But podcast hosts had been telling me that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and even though I know that buying secondhand is one of the more ethical ways to consume, I realized that this cycle of purchasing and discarding based on something as ephemeral as nostalgia is not healthy.
I have been unintentional in my purchases for as long as I have had purchasing power. After I took the SATs, I went to Rite Aid and bought whatever nail polish color suggested a semblance of joy. I hadn’t thought of whether those colors were ones I’d wear again, once the shame of SATs had worn off. I had kept those buttercup, tangerine, and periwinkle bottles until ten years later, when I had opened them and found an unworkable goop. I had kept them for nothing other than the memory of pastel nails that accompanied me as I packed for my freshman year of college, a memory that gave me a tiny pulse of elation that had attenuated over the years.
And how pathetic is that pulse of elation over going to college compared to the thrill of moving to London? That girl with buttercup fingernails folding her clothes would pee her pants in excitement if she knew she’d be living in London one day.
But I could not bring her with me. I had to surrender her things to the anonymity of a Goodwill in a town I never go to because she has been consuming things over the years that don’t serve her anymore. If there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, then neither is there emotionally sustainable consumption. She cannot grow if she is chained by camp tee shirts and sequin dresses and holey Keds, even if those Keds had carried her all along her semester abroad in Rome.
There is an abundance of stuff in this world, and so there is an abundance of stuff in London. Now, however, I am consuming this stuff with the intention of building a new nest.
Instead of fluffing up an old, dilapidated one.