“I low-key want to thrift it this year,” I said to Clara while looking at my ex-boyfriend’s clothes.

Clara has been my best friend since freshman year of college. She is from Texas but moved to New York to go to Columbia and that’s how we met.

Me, a Maine girl who moved to New York to escape the life that she hated, and Clara, the girl who travelled the whole country to follow her dreams.

We lived together for four years and now in a couple of weeks we’re graduating in Psychology. Probably because both of us always wanted to be helped by someone but we never did.

That’s how perfect we are.

Now we are both staring at a box where there’s clearly written ‘CHARITY?’ and it’s easy to guess who wrote that. Me.

Me and Will broke up last year because he has been the worst boyfriend ever, and he deserved to be alone. When they broke up, he never asked for his clothes back because he was too scared to see me again, as he knew the cheater he is.

I then took all his things from our house and closed everything in a box to forget. Now that we are cleaning up and bringing away all our stuff, I must decide what to do with Will’s box.

When we broke up, I asked Clara to take all his items and give them to a charity but she didn’t. She didn’t know the reason why we broke up so she thought I could have regretted it. I definitely didn’t.

“I low-key want to thrift it this year” I repeat while I’m organizing my room.

“That’s a great idea.”

“Maybe I’ll get a lot of money. There are some brand new clothes here.”

“Oh, you’ll surely make money with all those expensive things your rich ex-boyfriend had. You should go this week.”

“That’s right. Next week there will be all my family here and I can’t go with them. But I can’t this week. I have to finish my group project and my graduation speech.”

“You will find time.”

“Or maybe you could go for me? ”

“There’s no way. You know how much I hate those places.”

“You should just go there and leave the clothes. I could call them and do the rest.”

“No, this is not my own business. It’s your turn.”

The next day, I grab the box and drag it to the thrift shop. On my way, it even starts raining and that reflects my mood at this moment.

I enter a tiny secondhand shop that I have never seen before, even though it has always been on the way I took every morning for 4 years. The shop owner, an old woman with sweet eyes, stares at me while I put the box on the counter.

“You’re letting someone go,” she says.

“I already did.”

She nods knowingly.

“People think that thrift stores are about objects. They are not,” she says while she looks at me in the kindest way I’ve ever been approached.

“They’re about stories people can’t carry on anymore and have to leave behind.”

Something breaks in me.

I feel like the story I was never able to conduct is mine.

I thank her and I leave the shop.

When I get home, Clara notices something different in me. She feels peace.

I feel a new beginning.

I feel I can start writing my own story.