Scavenging

We were very hard up when I was young, and many of my clothes were given to me by neighbours. As an adult I hated second-hand clothes with a vengeance, and would rather go without than have them. All this changed very recently, where I needed to buy smart clothes to play in, but on a limited budget.
Second-hand clothes also had another connotation for me. They reminded me of a particularly horrific time in my life, namely the age of sixteen. I cannot find adequate words to describe how my mum and her husband treated me when I 'came out'. I was subjected to a sustained campaign of constant verbal and psychological abuse. My brother still gets very upset about it. It continued to the day I moved out. One thing I remember is that while I was still at school, my mum gave me a pair of second-hand women's trousers to wear. I really hated it, and decided I would leave school at the end of term, find a job and move out. It doesn't require much imagination to guess how the other kids treated me because of it.
I've really overcome a lot to wear second-hand clothes, when I think about it.