And no, the back pain isn’t that bad
I’ve always been a backpack kid. I even, admittedly, had a rolling backpack in 1st grade that was purchased by my mother for the sole purpose of preventing me from having back issues. I fought her on that decision a year later when I discovered just how inconvenient and isolating rolling my bag everywhere was.
In middle school, I was the kid who had color-coded folders and tabs for everything in my backpack. The big pocket was for school stuff, and the others were treated as junk catchalls, only to be cleaned out quarterly at best.
When it came to high school, organization went out the window, as did any care for the aesthetics of my backpack. I used the same Jansport pack for three years straight and ran it into the ground to the point of my mother forcing me to throw it away on the day of my graduation.
The high school I went to was unconventional in set-up, meaning I had different classes in various buildings spread apart across campus, similar to a college. I became accustomed to never leaving my house or a building without my backpack. It became a comfort thing, the heavy presence on my back acting as a calming weight in any situation. I felt bare without it, though never made the switch to a purse or smaller bag when in non-school settings to counteract this.
When I came to college, I clung to my backpack like it was a life vest in the ocean. I was out of state, knew nobody, and was 2,000 miles away from home alone. I didn’t know much, but what I did know how to do was lean into my academics and work as hard as I could, taking my backpack genuinely everywhere I went. It was a pale blue, logoless, able to blend in with a crowd, similar to how I felt my first year here. I wanted to move through people with ease and get an understanding of the groundwork of college before making larger, self defining steps.
When it came time this summer to begin packing to move back to school, I reflexively reached for my pale blue backpack as my mode of transporting my things. It seemed like a practical choice, yet again, it was only a year old and it had much more life in it.
Then I went shopping.
Tucked in the back corner of a small store near my house, hung a kelly green leather bag with large pockets. Slightly roughed up with a washed finish, it had a clean car smell that I loved and a roughness that when I ran my fingers over it, felt authentic, not manufactured to be distressed. I fell in love with it- not only because I loved the color, another addition to my ever-growing green wardrobe, but it felt like the perfect piece to slightly elevate the way I was presenting myself to others without feeling like I was being disingenuous to myself. Everyone has had those moments where they put on an outfit they saw on someone else and immediately feel fake, or like it’s not authentic to who they are. Last year, I never felt like the shoes I bought to “look cool” fit right, nor did the jewelry or makeup I tried look like it melted into my image the way it always looked so effortless on others. This year is different.
I’m a (new) believer in “look good, feel good,” and my bag has aided me in that realization. Every day I feel like I’m a bit more dressed up than I was last year, due to my bag. It’s distinctively mine, in a color I adore, and it does its job perfectly. I’ve had people tell me that they know I’m somewhere by my bag being so recognizable, or that they catch the color of my bag out of the corner of their eye before they see me.
My bag doesn’t feel like a costume or image I’m trying to force on myself. It feels like the person I am now, and I know it will be with every new version of myself I discover in the years to come.