When I started West Coast Swing, in April 2011, I had one pair of jeans that fit. They were my favorite jeans, the ones I found for $30 that usually retail for $100 or more, fancy Parasucos unlike any jeans I have purchased before or since. So unique they required a special belt.
In June, at my "I've lost my job; let's run all the tests" physical, my physician remarked that I'd lost weight since my previous visit, which was probably in January since I go every 6 months to monitor my medication. Or I was going. I should go.
Sometime in the summer I started cinching the belt closer and closer to the actual ring that was supposed to be used to close it, holding up the Parasucos by sheer force of my affection for them. I dug out a pair of Luckys that had been in the back of my closet and hadn't fit on my thinnest days.
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| By Adains [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons |
Around September I had to admit I'd lost weight and bought a new pair of jeans. Size 8.
Then it got cold, I got awesome boots, and I needed skinny jeans. I could actually wear skinny jeans. Size 6.
It got warmer, and the 8s were looking ridiculous. My size medium belts didn't have enough holes to hold them up. Size 4.
And then last week, the 4s were feeling baggy. I hoped they just needed a good washing, but then I actually weighed myself (I don't own a scale, but I was at J's house and she has one so I figured why not) and saw another 9 pounds were gone. I thought I'd stopped. I thought I was done.
Not for a moment do I recommend my weight loss plan, which was something like
- Lose job
- Sleep 12 hours a day
- As a result, only have time to eat 2 meals
- Not really care about food anyway
- Dance at least once a week
- Yoga twice a week
This is all coming to a point, I promise.
In preparation for my Great Floor Adventure, I am packing, packing, packing. There are many clothes in many sizes that include "Large" and "10." These clothes do not fit me, but I cannot bring myself to put them on my body and prove that they do not fit so that I can let go of them.
I can't let go of the body I used to have and the clothes that used to fit it.
I can't let go of the idea that I might fit into them again.
I've got a whole basement where I can store these clothes, these past skins that no longer serve me, but that's just carrying baggage around, isn't it?
I never know what's going to happen.
Holding on has to do with fear. Fear has to do with not being able to trust. Not being able to trust has to do, maybe, with the world not being solid. With the world changing all the time. With people changing. All the time. With myself, and my relationship to myself. Changing. All the time.
On some days that change is beautiful. It is what is exciting about being alive. It is looking around the corner, the first flowers of spring, hearing from a friend who has been silent, unexpected opportunities.
Somehow my body has gotten caught up in both fear of change, and expectation that there will be change. That the weight will come back as mysteriously and effortlessly as it left. That the annoyance of having to buy new, smaller clothes will be replaced by the annoyance of having to buy new, larger clothes, along with the realization that I had those larger clothes and gave them away.
My body doesn't let me down. It stays healthy. Its bones don't break. Its muscles, though sore after a weekend of yoga, continue to move it in amazing and new ways. It rarely gets sick; it has no chronic diseases. But it does like to change size and shape.
When the floors are done, when I've moved into my bedroom, when I unpack: that is when I need to start letting this part go.
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