I remember being twelve and being told that the girls sizes might not quite fit anymore.
A heartbreaking sentence for a child
who isn’t quite ready to grow up.
So I stuck it out and tried on what felt like thousands of pairs of jeans.
Sobbing in the dressing rooms because most of them would not fit my larger body.
Over mother ******* jeans.
Middle school me would try and starve myself.
Friends bragging, but not bragging, that their Abercrombie and Fitch jeans size 0 were too big in the waist.
I couldn’t fit into any Abercrombie and Fitch jeans if I wanted to.
Flash forward again to 14.
A freshman in high school where most of my friends were a healthy size,
or even, dare I say, skinny.
But none of them would ever admit it
to me and my low self esteem, everyone was smaller and all matter of discussion about weight,
would leave me feeling like ****.
I was just a hot air balloon wandering through the halls with not real friends.
Not because I wasn’t friendly but because me and my ****** up mind don’t know how to connect.
Off the subject.
There was a purple shirt,
purple for our school colors.
The only shirt I could find close to my size, the dreaded
“X-LARGE”
Sizes like tags and words that define who I am.
I would wear it with my mom’s disapproval,
“That shirt is not flattering”
“You have other clothes”
But my stupid pride and school spirit said,
“Wear this shirt, this awesome purple ****”
That shirt was not flattering, it revealed every secret roll I probably should have kept that way.
I found out in a picture, a few years later,
after the shirt “disappeared”.
Once again, flash forward to an adult.
Fat, 18 year old me.
Sitting in the passenger seat of my mom’s old car talking about weight like any other conversation.
Then she drops the bomb,
“ I didn’t think you’d turn out so big,
I thought you would outgrow it but I guess not.”
Those 18 words leading to silent tears in the car and hiding myself away.
Days of feeling terrible of something that I didn’t know how to change.
A lifetime, honestly, of something I still don’t know how to change.
The revelation, that my mother was disappointed about how her own offspring turned out,
makes me want to **** myself.
If she doesn’t like what I look like,
why should I?
I’ve battled with what I look like for a long time.
Trying to find the right thing to wear on a daily basis is a trial of itself.
I am judge, jury, and executioner.
I will forever gravitate, grudgingly, towards the plus-sized section.
The small, dimly lit area in the back of stores that so many women like me pick through to find something flattering and worthwhile.
I wish I could say I was of a different mindset but, honestly,
the tags on my clothing are a defining factor of who I am.