As young women, our bodies are changing all the time. Whether it seems like your jean sizes have changed five different times in the past year or you can never seem to find the one size that fits just perfectly, we go through jeans like crazy. We change our style and change our favorite color every week. We cuff them, roll them, rip them and wear them out. In the end, the most satisfactory part about wearing jeans is finding the perfect pair that feels as if they were made just for you. You’d wear that pair over any other and believe that these magic pants (similar to the ones on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), makes you look, and feel good no matter what.
Recently, I was helping a dear friend through a bone crushing, painful heartbreak. She and her boyfriend were seeming to drift apart, becoming distant and losing their intimacy. I described the situation to her like a pair of jeans. We find these pair of jeans that seem like a dream. You look at the price tag and think “How could this be!” They aren’t too expensive yet they are of such good quality (or so you think), they fit just perfectly, and you feel oh so good wearing them.
You wear these jeans everywhere and they go with everything. They seem to fit just right with all of the curves and bends of your body. When you wear them you forget about all of the things you previously hated about your body because the jeans cover them up, making you feel like a whole new person. They allow you to fit in with the current trends and fashions, the jeans represent the moment of time you are living in and to you, they become this priceless piece of your wardrobe.
You create memories in these jeans, they’ve been worn on the dance floor as you dance the night away with your friends. Inside the fibers of the denim are scents and smells of every experience you have had in them. Tiny grains of sand sit in each pocket from late nights on the beach, watching the black waves hit the shore in the arms of the one you love. The vibrant pigment of the denim has faded from the outgoing rays of the sun, as it sinks into everything it touches. To you these jeans are your everything, you so deeply have fallen in love with them and can’t imagine ever having another pair just quite like them.
And maybe you won’t.
But maybe, just maybe, you will…
The thing with time is that it changes, obviously. It changes the trends in the world it changes the rays of the sun and it changes the time at which the waves kiss the waiting seashore. Suddenly your body starts changing and the buttons start getting harder and harder to fasten. You have to put a little bit of extra work putting them on, squeezing and wiggling into them as if they are almost fighting back against you. You look in the mirror and realize they are beginning to disrespect instead of compliment your body. Sometimes they get so tight that you can hardly breathe. Every time you try the jeans on, you are hoping, wishing, praying they have grown with you. But honey, nothing grows exactly the way you do.
Things grow and things grow apart, and all of sudden you and your favorite pair of jeans have grown apart. They have been pushed to the back of your closet because they no longer make you feel good and they no longer bring out the best in you. As much as it feels like the jeans rejected have you, maybe you need to consider the fact you outgrew the jeans. So maybe for a while you don’t wear jeans, you experiment with dresses, skirts, and bear the winter in shorts while you deal with icy winds cutting past your legs. All you know is that for a while, it might be too painful to wear jeans again because it will remind you of the perfect pair you once had.
But after winter there is spring and the ice and wind and snow will all stop and new life is brought into the world. You gain the courage and go shopping for another pair of jeans. Not out of luck or by accident, but by fate, you find another pair that makes you feel even better, look even better and are of so much better quality. These jeans are different than the last and you didn’t even know something better existed, but it does.
As humans, we grow and change who we are. Things no longer fit and sometimes people don’t either. We may always miss that first pair of jeans that made us feel irresistible, but we must remember that we have changed, our bodies have changed and the old pair doesn’t fit us quite like a new pair could.
And maybe the new pair has a little more stretch than the first, allowing you to change and grow a little more while they grow with you.
