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" His name was Kevin, or at least, I think his name was Kevin. It was so many years ago now, I can&amp;#039;t remember his last name at all, but I do remember that he was tall and blonde, and that he was funny and wore clean-smelling button-down shirts. He worked in finance, I believe. But the thing I remember most about Kevin is the Christmas gift I never gave him. He and I had met in August of that year, but it wasn&amp;#039;t until after Halloween\u2014when he&amp;#039;d attended a party at my apartment wearing a garbage bag with Massengill labels attached to it\u2014that we got together. He&amp;#039;d just taken his mother to see Cats, and so needed a drink; I was at a bar doing just that with a group of our mutual friends. We continued to date though the blur that is November and December, attending parties together and lazily hanging out at each other&amp;#039;s apartments on Sunday afternoons as the holidays approached. After wracking my brain and quizzing my friends about what, exactly, I should buy this new person in my life, I selected a set of Crate &amp;amp;amp; Barrel highball glasses, tall and slim and practical but decorative, not unlike Kevin himself. Not too expensive, but not cheap, either. I threw in a bottle of good gin. This seemed to capture a sense of our time together, a time in which beverages had frequently been consumed. Satisfied with my choice, I had the box gift-wrapped and set it aside, tied a bow around the gin, and waited. I imagine he had something for me stashed away as well, but I&amp;#039;ll never know for sure, because suddenly, our presents still not exchanged, we were flying to our separate homes to celebrate the holidays with our families. While he was home, he reunited with an ex, and when he returned to the city, instead of giving me a gift, he called and dumped me. I took the news calmly on the phone. Then I cried on the shoulders of supportive friends, gave a friend the gin (wisely not consuming it all by myself), and stashed that wrapped box in the communal closet of the apartment I shared with two roommates. I shoved it behind the coats, the paper towels, the toilet paper, and the boots I was forever planning to have re-soled. There it would stay until I moved some months later. It came with me, but I didn&amp;#039;t open it for even a peek at its contents before hiding it away in my new closet. I was ready to forget the guy, but what was I supposed to do with this stupid lingering present and all the lost potential it still held? Where was I going to stash the disconnect between expectations and reality, past and present, that it flung at me simply by existing?  I wasn&amp;#039;t going to throw the glasses away; that would be wasteful, but I didn&amp;#039;t really want to see them, or think about them and all they implied, either. So I held onto the gift but kept it out of sight. Each time I moved, the glasses would move, too, still in that box, its ribbons fraying with time. Eventually a roommate suggested we actually use the glasses. I wasn&amp;#039;t sure. She was persuasive\u2014why, after all, should good glasses be kept in a box in a closet?\u2014and I finally agreed. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re nice!&amp;quot; she said, pulling one out and inspecting it. To her, they were simply objects from which to drink, hardly the compartmentalized feelings I&amp;#039;d been toting around for far too long. We made ourselves vodka tonics, and I was surprised that, after a few sips, all I felt from letting those glasses back in my life was a slight buzz. I&amp;#039;m not the only person for whom a gift has gone off course. My friend Maggie had met her new boyfriend at a destination wedding a couple of months before the holidays came around. For his present, she chose an array of things that meant something to them as a couple, &amp;quot;a Muppets Take Manhattan poster and a Grateful Dead Built to Last one, along with a Duets DVD because we did a mean rendition of Cruisin&amp;#039;, Huey and Gwynnie style.&amp;quot; He gave her a gift, and then he pulled a disappearing act, leaving Maggie with those reminders of the relationship that wasn&amp;#039;t to be. Stowed in a closet at her parents&amp;#039; house, they represented a suddenly tangible incompatibility, as well as her confusion about what exactly had happened. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t think I was massively in love with this guy, but I certainly thought we were well past the point of just stopping talking to each other out of nowhere,&amp;quot; she told me. &amp;quot;I guess those gifts sort of symbolize to me how wrong you can be about the status of a relationship. I thought a guy who appreciated Muppets Take Manhattan in the same way I did was a winner!&amp;quot; Then there&amp;#039;s Jessica&amp;#039;s story, which comes with a twist. She bought an expensive leather coat for a boyfriend she says she should have broken up with months before, a guy she suspected was cheating on her. When they actually did break up a week before Christmas, she returned the coat, which she&amp;#039;d opened a store credit card to buy, and which she hadn&amp;#039;t yet given him. &amp;quot;I got 20 percent off to buy it, but for some reason when I returned it I got the full purchase price back,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;So I got more money back than I spent. It felt good.&amp;quot; Later, she told him about his gift and how she&amp;#039;d returned it. &amp;quot;That also felt good.&amp;quot;  The gifts not given may be worth more than just the purchase price, since they are often imbued with greater layers of meaning than they would have if they&amp;#039;d followed the usual course. As with any object meant to communicate feelings, you&amp;#039;ve got to look past the wrapping. They can be reminders of what once was, remnants of things avoided, signifiers of what we did not choose, or of that which did not choose us. They may have initially implied a certain hoped-for future, but they can also be potent symbols of empowerment.  After all, implicit in the idea of a gift not given is the eventual realization that you&amp;#039;re better off keeping it for yourself (or, better still, returning it for a 20 percent profit). Maybe, like me, you&amp;#039;ll eventually pull yours out of the closet and pour yourself a drink. It&amp;#039;s funny how much meaning they held once ... and now, like Kevin, those glasses are long gone. Perhaps the funniest thing of all is that I don&amp;#039;t miss them\u2014any of them\u2014in the slightest. They weren&amp;#039;t for me at all. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a13945/gifts-not-given/>