UPSIZING

Clothes hold memories. A lot of memories.

The green velvet dress I wore the last time I ever played the flute.

The spotty skirt I wore for a glamour photography shoot with my closest friends.

The dress I wore in Rome while standing on my tippy toes pointing up to a street sign with my name on it.

The red checked dress I used to wear to work. Back in the days when I had a job.

The dress I wore on our 25th wedding anniversary for a Gatsby party on a cruise – a party my husband refused to attend.

Today I packed up all those memories. Two bulging suitcases full of all the people and places I loved. I packed up those suitcases and left a big pile of empty wooden hangers. And in my wardrobe now are a dozen or so hangers with clothes on them. Skirts, shirts, dresses and jackets. That’s my entire wardrobe. The things that are left that still fit.

It’s a bittersweet state of affairs. With no sweetness in it.

The trouble with rapid weight gain is there’s no time to let your wardrobe adjust – one day everything fits and the next day nothing fits. Well – there’s perhaps a three-month passage of time but still, slowly morphing your wardrobe into something three sizes bigger should take time. It didn’t. Due to medication, I ballooned fast and today I had to finally accept I couldn’t squeeze my sorry ass into any of my clothes anymore.

If you have never experienced the indignity of stripping your wardrobe of all your favourite things, then you have absolutely no idea what it feels like. And I don’t mean just shoving your favourite pair of jeans to the back of the wardrobe because you’ve gained a measly 5kg. I mean going through your wardrobe and realising it belongs to somebody else. Somebody you used to be.

If you have experienced large weight gain in a short period of time then you know exactly what I’m talking about and I feel your pain too. It’s not pretty. It is in fact, downright depressing.

I cried.

I tried playing jolly music as I neatly folded and packed, so I’d be nice and distracted, but it didn’t help. I focused on the organised and orderly state my wardrobe is in now. That just made me cry more. I went out this afternoon with a good friend to buy new clothes that do fit – two pairs of pants and two tops. The only things I now own that fit properly. I will admit it does feel good to slide into a pair of pants that don’t hurt – this is true. It doesn’t feel good to look at the label and see it’s three sizes bigger than my other pants.

I feel like I’ve given up, that I’ve been beaten down by the inevitable. 54 years of dieting and trying to change every inch of my body and today I just thought, fuck it. I can’t be assed. I’ll just sit in this sorry looking body and sulk on the inside, but I’m going to do it in comfortable pants.

I’ve tried really hard to get good at the body acceptance thing. I really have. I don’t know what it feels like but I have put myself out there and tried talking the talk as well as walking the walk. It hasn’t sunk in but I’ve tried. Perhaps one day I’ll wander around like the lady in the purple hat and feel comfortable in my skin. For now, I just want to feel comfortable in my clothes.

I’m tired. I’m so tired of fighting this war with myself and today was a very big battle that I lost. Or perhaps some might see it as a win because really I cannot be bothered thinking about what I do or don’t eat anymore. I can eat a shit ton of chocolate for dinner if I feel like it and I just don’t care. I actually had an omelette so that’s probably a more intelligent option but honestly – I couldn’t care less right now.

I miss my clothes. They’ve been very carefully and lovingly packed into our only two large suitcases – which are of no use to us now that COVID-19 means we’re trapped on the island and can’t leave. Perhaps by the time we can use those suitcases again, I will have the opportunity to rummage around and try some of the contents on.

But then again, perhaps not.

Who knows? I may not be comfortable in this body but I’m going to try practising to accept it. I don’t have to like it to accept it. There’s a lot of unlikeable things we have to accept in life – dirty nappies, flat tyres, doof doof music, chipped fingernails, menstruation. They call it radical acceptance in DBT – just accept something all the way through, even if you don’t like it. Losing my wardrobe feels like losing a friend – I feel a sense of grief. It’s not just the items of clothing but what they stood for. All the happy times, the sad times, the good times, the bad times. All the times. Every time I’ve done something I was wearing something (almost every time…) and packing all that away isn’t easy. Maybe one day they’ll be unpacked again but today – today I have to put on comfy pants and be grateful I have clothes.