I’m not a purse person. No matter the style or the fabric, carrying a purse makes me feel awkward. A purse on my shoulder unbalances me, and I feel like an impostor. I love what purses look like on other people, and when I see something especially adorable (or ugly, as the case may be), I’m usually jealous. I drool over the amazing big bags celebrities carry (though I’m not sure why anyone needs a handbag that big), and I drool over the Kate Spade bags I see at the department store. I can always find a bag I like when shopping, but when it comes time to make a decision, to slap down the credit card and say charge it, I hesitate and eventually walk away empty-handed.
To my credit I’ve had quite a few purses, and they’ve all been fantastic and adorable and frequently complimented. All of them have lasted for a few weeks, then they’ve been put aside for something I’m much more comfortable with: the messenger bag. Praise to the holy messenger bag. I gave up on carrying anything but a messenger bag for school related activities a few years ago, and I haven’t looked back since. And I have always had the appropriate sizes for other activities, too, and if I can’t just grab my wallet and go (or slide my credit card and driver’s license into a back pocket and go), I’ve relied on a messenger bag (normally a little bigger than necessary, but that’s never been a real problem).
Me and my trusty Timbuk2 messenger bag (and Dionne) in New York
For my birthday the first year Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt and I were together, he gave me a Timbuk2 Metro Messenger bag:
Not the actual bag, but one just like it someone is selling on eBay.
It was love at first sight, especially since I had seen a similar bag at Half Moon Outfitters during our vacation to Charleston earlier that summer and was terribly disappointed I couldn’t afford it. This smaller, purse-size bag, became The Best Bag I Ever Had™. It went everywhere. It could hold everything. Moleskin? Easy. Small college-ruled Mead notebook I only write in with a Cristal Bic, blue ink? Done. Camera, wallet, and mp3 player? Sure. Glasses in their case, sunglasses in their case, and a book? Pile it in. It was perfect. It was The Best Bag I Ever Had™. I never felt awkward with it, never felt like an impostor, never felt out of place. Sure, it’s a little casual if I’m out to dinner with the queen, but that only happens what, once, twice a month at best?
When Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt broke up with me, I took stock of what he had given me and made decisions on what I could keep versus what was detrimental to my psyche and needed to be disposed of. Over the past almost year (has it really been almost a year?), I’ve sold some things, decided others could stay, and put the things I was more emotionally attached to-couldn’t get rid of-couldn’t keep using/around in the back of my storage closet. This bag went into the back of my storage closet. For the past half a year I have been bag-less, throwing my wallet and phone in my school bag, carrying my wallet and phone by themselves, and finally, almost six months ago, began using a purse full time. (It makes me shudder to type that last part.) You’d think in six months of using a purse all the time that you’d be used to it, but I’m not. A purse just isn’t me. Give me a messenger bag, any messenger bag, with a strap diagonally across my chest, and I’m perfectly content.
The dilemma in all this is that I am currently going through a bad period where I miss Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt and think about him and how I’ll never be back with him. I don’t really want to dwell on it very much (at least not right now; try me again when I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep), and because of that I think digging out The Best Bag I Ever Had™ would only make me more sad and depressed. I remember how many times that bag went to Mexican restaurants with us, how it was there for our second trip to Charleston, and how it toted books and snacks when we went out to read at The Ridges. I think it would be best for my psyche and my wallet if I sold The Best Bag I Ever Had™ and replaced it with The Best Bag I Ever Had V.2™, except there are a TON of Metro Messengers on eBay, most (if not all) of them brand new. The prospect of me getting any money for the bag at all is slight, and I’m not that eager to sell something on eBay for less than it costs to mail it to the buyer again.
What this is really about, though, is my aversion to purses and my strong desire to be A Girl Who Never Uses A Purse. Does carrying a purse change me in some way? Do other people look at me and make assumptions about me that are different from the assumptions they’d make if I was carrying a messenger bag? I’m not girl-y, I never have been, and the only high maintenance thing about me is my fragile emotional state. A purse, at least in my mind, is full of girl-y things: make-up, hair-fixing accessories, compacts, birth control pills, a Victoria’s Secret credit card, lip gloss, loose change, tampons, and perhaps a matching wallet. I carry none of that. I’m a writer (at least in my imagination) and my bag has a Moleskin, a notebook, several pens (different notebooks use different pens because I’m OCD), chapstick, my planner (a Moleskin one!), a camera, a Sharpie, my mp3 player, the book I’m currently reading, and God knows what else I NEED for wherever I’m going and whatever I’m doing. Sure, that’s what I’ve got in my purse, but no one knows that. Carrying purse makes me feel fake, like I’m pretending to be the exact opposite of what I am, and even if I’m not pretending to be someone else, everyone else in the world who sees me will make the assumption I’m at least a little bit of who I’m not.
(I also have a thing about not getting a purse dirty, like it’s delicate or dainty, and I can’t just chuck it on the ground like I would a messenger bag. I’m always in positions where I need to set my purse down and acting all confused while I try to figure out where it can go and still be safe.)
I’m thinking I’ll go ahead and purchase this:
It’s expensive, but it’ll make me feel much more like myself, and like the person I want to be. That’s sort of worth it, I suppose.
Posted by the center of attention 
