The Museum of Things I Was Saving for Later 🩷

I have a candle that's survived three different room shifts, three semesters of college and multiple minor existential crisis.
Have I lit it?
Of course not.
Apparently, I'm waiting for an occasion important enough to burn scented wax.

We've all treated certain things like they're waiting for a special moment.
The funny thing is, when we imagine that special moment, it's never anything specific. It's just a vague day in the future when everything feels more put together.

When I was 8, I had a sheet of pretty Barbie stickers I saved to stick on the right books. The sheet got lost in transit while shifting apartments.
At age 13 I was gifted a YSL perfume which I intended to use when I was older and more "worthy of it". My sister slowly finished it before I could've ever used it properly.
On my 19th birthday I wore a navy blue dress which never saw the light of day again.
Why? I really don't know. I kept telling myself I'm waiting for the "right occasion" which "never came" but I've put myself out there more since I turned 19 than I ever did before.

Lately I've been wondering why I've assigned all the nice things I owned to a version of me that probably doesn't exist yet.

But I've come to realize that those stickers don't know where it's meant to be stuck.
That perfume smells the same on me regardless of whether I'm thirteen or eighteen.
And that dress can't tell the difference between a café date and a wedding.

These objects weren't waiting for permission. I was.

Maybe that's why so many of these things sat untouched for months and even years. Not because they're being preserved, but because I'm waiting to become someone else before I enjoy them.

And that's a little unfair to the person I already am.

So recently I've started using nice perfume on random afternoons, wore cute dresses to go grocery shopping and lit scented candles when I craved the sweet smell of it.

I'm still working my way through the museum.
I've stopped waiting for an occasion and started creating one.
Because life isn't made up of special days; it's mostly made up of ordinary ones.

And maybe those ordinary days are what the good stuff was meant for all along.