This essay is part eleven of my year-long project where, each month, I’ll look through old journal entries by using a random date generator to decide which day of my past to explore. This month’s was September 9th.
September 9th, 2011 - 2024
2011: We had our last day of first rounds today. After, I walked to Village Green Records to see [REDACTED] and then we went back to his room.
2012: During Pref Rounds, all the KD PiChi’s laid outside the room and cried when they sung [REDACTED]. After, I had my first CC meeting of the year and I did homework at Anna and Erin’s which was fun.
2013: I had a pretty busy day with work, class and Ball Bearings call-out meetings, but it was still a good day. [Two of my roommates] broke up last night, so the girls all just hung out and talked about it with one of them.
2014: I didn’t have anything to do at work, but when I sent out my G cover, I started an argument among editors about a rubber duck. It was just not a good day at all and I felt like I didn’t accomplish anything. I drank a lot of wine when I got home.
2015: Most of my section was released pretty early, so I got done with work fairly early for a Wednesday. I finally finished my freelance project, too — it was a really frustrating experience this round and I’m glad I’m done.
2016: I was certain I was going to miss my train ride home, but I made it just in time. Dad picked me up, Mom and I got a little drunk off rose and then we had the best dinner — it’s so nice coming home to them.
2017: Sam and I had brunch at Citizens and then we met up with Serria on the West Side highway for awhile. She wanted me to go out, but I really, really needed to sleep.
2018: Serria left for Toronto, so I didn’t really do anything except lay on the couch and read. It was a relaxing day which I think I really needed this week.
2019: I thought this week was going to be very low key because I am not designing this issue, but I was very mistaken. There is so much to do, it will be a miracle if it closes.
2020: It always feels weird when I let parts of TIME100 go — I get nervous when other people get into the files. I was anxious about that all day today, but I am glad it’s happening.
2021: After work and 305, I met up with Dad and some of the crew at the High Line Hotel before getting dinner with him and Mark. Dad and I went to get ice cream after and it was such a nice night being together in the city.
2022: I woke up at [REDACTED]’s and wanted to stay all morning, but couldn’t. I worked all day and am so proud of how my team held it together yesterday, but I am also so exhausted from it all.
2023: I took class — I was uncomfortably sweaty — and then had a chill day before meeting up with a friend at a sober speakeasy in Alphabet City. It was nice to force myself to go out again.
2024: I woke up at [REDACTED]’s and then left to go to work, but couldn’t stop smiling all day. I went to 305 with Kim and then I got my outfit back from [REDACTED] which made me surprisingly sad even though I am really glad we are no longer in a relationship.
Olive and the OG Highlights piece in the corner
When I was little, ask anyone, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was sure, so sure, sure enough that, when I got an art piece selected to run in HighLights magazine (my artistic achievements peaked early!), it very clearly states underneath my drawing of a goose sitting atop what appears to be a rainbow-colored plane or blimp: “Jennifer P., age 8, future fashion designer.”
A career in fashion was my truth until it was not. The hard and fast switch to journalism did not come after a field trip to our local newspaper where, as a class, we crowded around the managing editor’s desk as she restarted her computer countless times to battle “the spinny wheel of death” on her Mac while uploading photos on an increasingly tight deadline (ironically, this exact situation, minus the audience, is how I have spent a large chunk of my decade-plus career working as a visual journalist), but was instead a direct result of my older cousin handing me down every issue of Seventeen, Teen People and CosmoGIRL that she owned. I was at an impressionable age on this particular trip to New York and at the end of the summer, I insisted on putting all the issues I’d inherited in my suitcase back to Idaho. (It’s worth noting that my parents protested, citing the impracticality, but had to concede as they were guilty of transporting an entire wheel of Locatelli cheese, a cheese that was sometimes, but not always, available in our hometown, in one of their check-in bags).
Back home, I read, then re-read the magazines constantly. On top of that, I was suddenly obsessed with standing in the check out line to see what new ones had dropped that week. (Luckily, this was not a burden to my family as we were frequent, if not daily, visitors to the grocery in order to check on their cheese-wheel status. My family is upsettingly Italian). I was fascinated by magazine journalism, fascinated by the stories, the graphics, the sections — fascinated by everything. I felt changed reading through each issue, always in awe of a new element or piece (to this day, I think about a feature I read in Seventeen about a model who lost her leg from TSS every! single! time! I am on my period… do you know how many periods that is?! If you are a girlie in her early-to-mid thirties, I know you know the article!) and, for the first time in my life, I started to get excited about a career other than fashion.
I (spoiler alert) ended up going to school for journalism graphics, getting a degree that combined my love of storytelling with my visual creative abilities. My professional life is an exact replica of what I went to college for, a rarity, and I am thankful for that as well as honored to have been employed at some fairly prestigious media companies, especially in a time when the industry has not always been the most stable. Despite the instability, I’ve always known I made the right career choice, knew from the way my entire being was lit up with excitement when I walked into my first “real” newsroom at the Chicago Tribune and has continued to do so with every job I’ve taken since. Reading through these entries from my past September 9th’s, so many of them are focused on work, giving me a snapshot of my different roles throughout the years. I can see the exhaustion in the writing, sure, but I can also see the energy, the passion, the love of the struggle and the gratefulness I have for my career.
Still, I’ve always felt… I don’t know, a little guilty, maybe, for giving up on my childhood fashion designer dream. So, throughout my life, I’ve tried to rectify this by cultivating a specific fashion sense. Once, my sophomore year of college, I ran into a friend during an early morning walk home and I think it says a lot about my clothing confidence that they complimented me on my outfit, not realizing the literal pillowcase I was wearing was not “an interesting choice,” but the consequences of Walk-of-Shaming home after dressing as “Times New Roman” for a font party. (Getting away with this is actually a pretty proud moment for me). When I worked at The Boston Globe, I had a spreadsheet with a running list of the outfit I wore each day, right down to the accessories and shoes, to make sure I didn’t have any repetitions during my six-month long contract. This is, I understand, certifiably insane, but I cared about how I looked and how my outfits were perceived in a professional setting. And, this continued throughout my career. When I worked at TIME, the security guard told me I was one of the most recognizable people in the building out of the thousands he saw daily because I “always look and dress better in real life than you did in your badge ID.” (This was a truly devastating blow, as I had thought I looked pretty cute in the photo). Still, it was clear from his comment that, each day, I tried. I am not going to lie and say I was one of the people who put real clothes on during lockdown because I was not — for most of 2020 and some of 2021, my co-workers at TIME saw me on a screen only in either my green sweatsuit or blue sweatsuit — but when I got hired at TODAY in 2022, I wanted to make a significant fashion shift. This was going to be my first job being a manager and I wanted to dress for the part. And, so, right before I started, I went shopping.
That’s how I became the owner of my lime green suit set.
What can I even write about this green suit? I loved it the first time I saw it. It was brat green before brat green existed. It was made of a material that reminded me of the ‘90’s and came with a high-waisted skirt with a chunky, square belt that I fingered in delight as soon as I walked into the store. It was the exact vibe I wanted to convey to my new co-workers… she’s professional, but fun! I didn’t try it on — it was too expensive — but I went back the next day and the day after that to see it again and, when I finally did put it on, it fit my body so well, it felt like it had been made specifically for me.
I bought that suit the day after the night I’d slept over at the apartment of the man who would later become my boyfriend for the very first time. Our relationship was casual and stopped for a little while shortly after that, but when it picked up again in late 2023, both of us serious now, I’d get in the habit of leaving one outfit at his spot in case I spent the night and needed to go to work in the morning. (I have come far from the days in my twenties of waiting patiently outside the Urban Outfitters to buy new clothes for work after an evening out). Me leaving this particular outfit there was an act of faith in our relationship, though I didn’t see that at the time. It was my favorite thing I owned and me keeping it as his place without even thinking was the realization, I saw later, that I thought we’d be together for a very, very long time. And, I did think that. In the same way the suit felt made for my body, my body felt made for his, enough so that it became an inside joke. I was enamored by our compatibility and was sure, so sure, those feelings would never change.
On the night, early this year, that I handed him the outfit to hang in his closet, things between us were great. On September 9th, when I broke our almost four months of silence since our break-up to ask him to please send the green suit back to me in an Uber, I asked how he was doing and he said things with him were great. Great! That made me happy for him because things were also going great with me, but underneath that happiness, I was surprised to find a very low-grade level of sadness. I didn’t want to be with him anymore, but the perfectionist in me was still, impracticably, a little bit annoyed.
Maybe it frustrated me because things were so decidedly not great between us at the end. In the beginning of the year, everything was perfect — I was sure, so sure, ask anyone! I was as sure about us as I had been all those years ago about being a fashion designer, a blind faith, an identity, and so, when things started getting, for lack of a better word, bad, I chose to ignore all the signs that I was in the wrong relationship. We would lay on his floor together for hours, talking, something we’d done for years, but now, when he was done speaking and I would start telling him about my day, I could see his eyes glaze over and I’d watch him reach for his phone to scroll as I spoke, not listening with even half the intensity I had given him. And, during this all, I’d keep talking, presenting fine on the outside, but feeling my heart shrink, feeling myself get small. I’d fought so hard to get here! I had been so sure! I could feel my happiness in my reality shifting, but I didn’t feel ready to actually give up.
The last time I was at his apartment, I did not know we were going to break up days later. Still, something felt wrong enough that, for the first time, I thought about grabbing the green suit from his closet, stuffing it in my bag when he wasn’t looking. He got up to start work and I laid in his bed in my underwear, staring out the window fantasizing about how I would do that as soon as I got up. I didn’t. I was miserable, but I still thought, maybe, we could make this work. I got dressed silently and left his apartment quickly, not giving me enough time to take it, not giving him enough time to see my tears.
I wrote a piece, when we were still together, about how things were really hard, harder than I expected them to be for someone who had been so sure. I read it out loud only once, to my writing group, and when I looked up, dry-eyed and a little numb, I was alarmed to see how many people on the Zoom call were crying. I hadn’t realized what I had written was so sad.
I hadn’t realized what I had written had made it so obvious we weren’t working.
My favorite line in that piece is about how I never cried in front of him during our relationship. I never let him see how isolated and heavy I felt, but every Uber driver who picked me up from his apartment in the last few months of us being together watched me come undone the second we started to drive away. That’s what I was thinking about when I was sitting on my steps and the Uber, empty of any passengers in the back seat except my suit, stopped in front of my apartment. I opened the door, made a joke about break-up’s to the driver and then, as if on auto-pilot, began to cry.
I didn’t know why. I had my green suit back. I did not want to be this man’s girlfriend anymore. I was great! Why was I crying?
I think, maybe, it was the finality of it all, the realization that —for the first time in years — nothing of importance tied us to each other. Time with us had always been a circle, that spinny wheel of death on a Mac, and now, I’d fully unplugged and finally walked away.
The first thing you learn in journalism school is the prioritization of the inverted pyramid. Every news story should start off with a lede answering the necessary questions of “Who, What, When, Where and Why.” Everything else, all the extraneous details — those come after the most important parts have been introduced.
If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written or listened to me tell a story, you’ll know — I am bad at this.
Once, over the summer, I was laying in my bed for the first time with someone I had casually started seeing. I was telling a story and telling it how I usually do — fast, jumping around, in pieces. I was using first and last names, adding in unnecessary background that, upon his request, required further descriptions. A five-minute story became a thirty-minute one, me needing to color in every character for him in detail. When I was done, he said, “You know, you tell stories as if I know all the people you are talking about and I don’t” and we laughed because it was true, this man was only in my bed for a night, but later, after he left, I sat in silence thinking about how my ex had said the same thing to me once and it wasn’t funny then because he was my boyfriend, he was part of my life, he should have known the people I was talking about. Is that the most important part?
Or, is it this — I was telling my friend I got the suit back the day after it happened. We were sitting on the roof of our office in the sun, a quick reprieve from the daily chaos we both love of working in media, and she asked what it had looked like in the back seat of the car. Was it in a bag? Folded? Did it look like he had just thrown it in? I told her that I couldn’t remember, just that I grabbed it, then started crying. “This could be an essay,” she said, and later that night, her comment reminded me I needed to pull a day for the September project. I pulled it — it was September 9th.
Is the most important part that, in the beginning, whenever I would show up for a date, he would say, “I love the way you dress” before he kissed me? Or, is it that I can’t remember when we stopped going on dates? Or when he stopped giving me compliments? Is the most important part that I stopped even trying to dress up for him, knowing I wasn’t going to receive any praise? We broke up in May, but the green suit sat untouched in his closet since February. Was me not wanting to wear my favorite clothes a sign that, even then, things were not good? Is that important?
I guess, maybe, for me, the most important part is that I feel a little silly writing this essay. I don’t even want to write about him anymore. I am bored by it, bored by the emotions I had, bored by everything about our relationship and what I let myself scrape up as a substitute for affection. It’s just a green suit. Great! It’s just a relationship that didn’t work out. Great! I was sure — so sure — until I wasn’t.
And, that’s okay. That’s the most important part; that’s the lede, coming to you right at the end. I wanted to be a fashion designer until I found something different. I wanted to be his girlfriend until I chose myself. I needed to learn it’s okay for things to change, to let myself evolve, to become someone different, someone better, someone more stable, someone who can be confident that being so sure maybe means nothing at all.
That’s the lede, but here’s the kicker:
The night I got the outfit back, September 9th, when I stopped crying, I tried the green suit on. I used to wear it like it had been tailor-made for my body, but now, like so much of my old life, it didn’t fit anymore.