I spent 18 months staring at a package with a former roommate’s name on it. I had intended to mail it to them, but ultimately the neatly taped up cardboard was left sitting on a shelf for so long they don’t even live in the same city they did when I wrote out our addresses. Inside was a collection of seven inch records that ended up in my U-Haul when I moved out of our shared apartment—a bizarre West Philadelphia second floor unit with lime green doors and a sort-of-accurate mural of Bob Marley in the lobby. A few weeks ago I ended up cutting the tape and listened to one of the records. It was by a band we both love and my friend has never asked me about the records, but I don’t think I’ll ever put it in the same spot as my record collection. 

The first time my best friend came to the apartment I live in now, she asked if she could borrow a sweater before we went out. While I looked for something to go with her outfit, I joked about how I still had a sweater I stole from her back when we lived together five years ago. She laughed when I brought it out to her and told me she never liked it anyway. I agreed it never quite looked right—one of those pieces of clothing you think is almost cute but never gets fully there. I’ve considered getting rid of it, but it always makes it back on the top shelf where it lives to this day.

I stole a jacket from the only boyfriend I ever lived with—a worn, dark brown Columbia leather jacket. I stole it originally because it was more appropriate than anything I owned for a Philadelphia winter that never really got cold enough for a real, heavy coat, but now I envision myself wearing it while screaming at him about how he ruined my life outside our favorite pizza restaurant.

I spent years trying to erase the part of my life I spent with him, but while I watched girls online burn the things their exes gave them, I continued to wrap myself in the last physical remnant of the worst years of my life. I could never bring myself to throw it out. I still liked it. 

Maybe stealing little things from everybody I’ve ever lived with could be considered a result of being the youngest of three sisters—I’ve been working from a lifetime of experience stealing makeup and skincare and socks and shirts from people I love. It always felt very romantic about the way the transfer of items could sort of feel like closeness itself, until that closeness became infected with the impossible desire to make myself a perfect victim. I was ashamed of how much I liked the jacket and how reluctant I was to remove it from my wardrobe—as if being able to stand wearing it somehow meant he didn’t actually hurt me. 

Then, months into working through all that shame and pain, I was told by my therapist that I needed to try to start remembering my life as a whole if I ever wanted to heal. In that exercise, I was finally able to free myself from the shame of having positive feelings about something that came from a painful part of my life. There is no betrayal in memory if it’s all just proof I exist. Besides, I can’t erase it anyway. I might as well wear the jacket.