The Feminine Urge To Carelessly Misplace Your Scarf

The hardest part of breaking up is getting back your scarf 🧣

Red scarves, previously a harbinger of the northern hemisphere’s winter holidays, have been having a pop culture moment now that a certain scorned millionaire has stacked some stanzas onto their significance to be a token of emotional anguish and romantic betrayal. It’s a very exciting development for red scarves, once wholesome, now an agent of drama and intrigue. Now, I know what we are all thinking: if I were a millionaire wouldn’t I simply just purchase more scarves? Isn’t that the point of having millions of dollars? Yes. But that is simply not canon. The Scarf becomes imbued with the energy and expectations of the moment when it was last seen (at your sister’s house in some drawer), and unfortunately for The Scarf, things did not go all too well.

OK, but like, which drawer, according to MG’s AD Open Door episode??

Everyone knows that the past cannot be changed. But all disappointments offer lessons — and the lesson I’m getting to here is: do not leave your scarf at his house. Consider it the same instinct when watching a horror movie and you think, oh no no no girl do NOT run upstairs. But sub The Scarf to mean “any possession of yours.”

I know, I know, when you’re regularly regularing with someone, leaving some toiletries at their place makes things a lot more convenient than having to haul an overnight bag every time you stay over. However, much like when dealing with the TSA, I would not leave anything at a man’s house that a) I would miss if I never saw again, and b) contained enough of my DNA to be repurposed for nefarious deeds (including but not limited to selling my underpants for capitalism). If it can be used for evidence in a felony, keep that shit to yourself.

Go on, Carrie, colonize his medicine cabinet.

Maybe your mind is less inclined towards conspiratorial paranoia than mine, in which case you must sleep very soundly. How nice for you. But breakups are annoying even when you aren’t negotiating assets. Getting dumped, getting upset, and getting petty about things you probably don’t actually care that much about but have now become representative of so many other downplayed or neglected injuries. Annoying! Tedious!

No ink has been more thoroughly spilled about the carnage of post-romance material assets as that of semi-fake boy group 2ge+her with their crossover hit (from satirical tv movie to real-life charts) “The Hardest Part of Breaking Up (Is Getting Back Your Stuff).”

Actually, though, a pretty sad story about the end of this band/show

As much of an angsty little porcupine as I can be, even I know that you do not go back into a burning building — especially not to procure nonessential items. Belongings left on fresh ex territory always become connecting links between yourself and them (sometimes intentionally), and the negotiation of their exchange can be an opportunity to reach out to someone you have no business reaching out to.

Example one (and one only): I remember a dumpening of my youth, during which I was made to sit through a literal laundry list of my fatal flaws. I did not argue against such claims, as there was no prize to be had on the other side of incorrect. So I calmly put my shoes on (I’m sure they were some sort of loafer slipper flat that was trendy in 2011), and I quickly scanned the room for anything that belonged to me: a copy of some book that I’d written what I’m sure I thought were really interesting things in the margins (they were not) in an effort to appear actively literate. A toothbrush. That was it.

“I’m just gonna…” I said, trailing off as I slipped the book into my purse. He nodded an of course. I left the toothbrush. And then feeling self-consciousness and pressured to say something that said something in the face of his pitying expression, I half-heartedly wave-saluted goodbye and shrugged, “well, smell ya later, I guess…” As soon as I shut the door behind me I knew that those shall be my last words to this person, and they were. I mean, how do you follow that with anything? At all? You don’t.

Since then I’ve only ever been dumped in my own home, which is another kind of rude, but it does have the benefit of cutting down on the commute. Who wants to travel after a potentially crushing emotional blow?? I’ve cried on almost every subway train in New York City (won’t risk my Uber rating by having a cry in one) and it’s not something I recommend unless you’re a glutton for humiliation or want to attract some weird cry fetishists (they exist).

In retrospect, of course these were all relationships that needed to end, and I know in my sentimental little ticker that if I left anything worth having at someone’s house, it’s likely I’d secretly be expecting them to get in touch to return it to me — or worse, suffer the cold impersonal double-rejection of having my day ruined by a box of those things showing up on my doorstep when I least expect it. Neither is ideal.

I have skincare products (good ones!) littering the medicine cabinets of people I don’t speak to anymore, at least one vibrator, cooking implements, a charging cord, one signed copy of A Home At The End Of The World, a terrycloth bathrobe with my initials embroidered onto the lapel (actually that is a bit weird he kept that), headphones — nothing I’ve decided I can’t live without.

I think that when confronted with the prospect of subjecting myself to an interaction that is bound to leave me wanting so much more of what I should absolutely not be having any longer… the safer route is to just get new stuff. Better stuff, even.

It may be a bit romantic or indulgent to think that my abandoned things exist as reminders of me. But I remind myself that they’re just inert objects cluttering up someone else’s space, probably disregarded, charging their devices, thrown in a corner and covered in dust, or maybe kept in a drawer at their sister’s house.