Reality check

Sometimes clarity occurs in the strangest places. For me, clarity presented itself in the middle of the Goodwill today.

Day to day, it's been hard for me to tell much difference in my body since my surgery. Even though I step on the scale and see change, I don't SEE it when I look in the mirror. I guess that's why I flipped out so badly when I didn't see any change on the scale for several days. It has been the only concrete evidence that I have had to let me know that I am getting better. That, and being able to stop my medications.

Until today.

I had cleared out alot of the largest clothes from my closet before my surgery, so I haven't really had the experience of purchasing clothes and noticing the sizes.

Again, until today.

TODAY . . . I picked out a few sweaters and pants to tide me over. I picked them out based on the size I thought I would wear. Before surgery, I was a size 26/28, and when I got home from the hospital, I was wearing a few 22/24 items. Today, I found MORE 22/24 things to wear for now, and I wishfully picked out a few tops in size 14/16, and some nice winter weight pants in size 16. My intention was to keep these "small" pieces for cooler weather, thinking I might wear them in January or February.

I decided to try on the clothing that I picked out for "right now" to make sure that I hadn't chosen things that were too small, and I was shocked to see that the first piece swallowed me. I thought "Hmm, well, that's just one blouse, it's probably just cut really large," and I proceeded to try on more things I had picked.

They ALL swallowed me. Every damn one.

It started to dawn on me . . . the clothing wasn't mislabeled. It wasn't "cut big". I was smaller. LOTS smaller. Like . . . 6 to 8 sizes smaller.

I took a risk and tried on the "small" 14/16 items.

And they fit.

They freaking fit.

Damn. It was unbelieveable.

Standing in that dressing room, it dawned on me that I am smaller than I was in the entirety of my 30s, and most of my 20s. I finally realized that my body is responding, and I am getting thin.

Me. Thin.

I thought about that for awhile, standing in front of that mirror. I thought about the years and years and years that I had wished for, begged for, hoped for this day.

For all those times that I lost 20 pounds and gained it right back, for every diet I blew, every promise I made to myself and broke, every dress I loved and bought hoping to "get into" it, for every one of those dresses that I donated to charity when I never got close, for every time I felt like a failure, for every time I endured the embarassment of being told about the latest diet, or sitting through a "heart to heart" with doctors that warned me of the bleak future that awaited me as an obese person, for every nightmare that I have had of dying and leaving my children behind, for every thing I have ever NOT done because I was too fat, for every time I was convinced that my body was broken, for every time I felt "less than" because I was fat, and every time that I felt ashamed of my body . . . this is a sweet, sweet victory.

A moment of clarity. I'm finally winning.

Finally.