Ok, after a little pitty party yesterday I am feeling better. Part of my problem is the wardrobe thing. We are on the kind of budget that you are on when you are in college...which let's face it, is getting a little old but it is a means to an end so most of the time it doesn't even phase me. Heck, this is how I've been living for the last decade minus like 6 months of being kind of not-poor. You know the kind of budget, where you really really really have to think about what a need REALLY is. Yeah, we are definitely there right now.
So my clothing "needs" have seemed like wants for a really long time. It makes it worse when I have boxes of clothes that just don't fit yet. It's agony! I've put my clothing wants in a category of "too bad, so sad, guess I'll survive on hand-me-downs," and I try to block the want of new clothes out of my head and just make due with what I have.
If you are a woman, you know what it feels like to go to your closet, see things you bought sometime in the last 5 years from a store you can't even remember and tell yourself, "this is so totally in style," when in reality, it's probably not. I'm to the point where I can't even consider "is this in style?" I'm to the point where I have to ask myself, regardless of any sort of fashion sense, "Will this make me look fat? Can I wear this all day without having a random seam cut the circulation off my arms? Can I wear this all day without it getting stuck in my back-fat or front-fat? Is there significant muffin top with these pants? And now I have to ask myself, would anyone notice that these shorts came from the Dillard's old lady clearance section, the dead give away being the 14 inch zipper that comes up to my boobs?"
I have to ask myself the old lady zipper question because the only shorts I have are ones I bought on clearance LAST summer for like $4 each, and even when I bought them, I knew they were a bad idea.
We all have clothes like that, and really, it's OK. We all have bad clothes days. Yesterday was definitely a bad clothes day. It was such a bad day in fact, that I drove myself to the closest store that sells basil plants and clothes, which is Shopko, and decided it was time to buy some new shorts and shirts so I can survive this summer without having a 14-inch zipper in my shorts.
I bought 2 pairs of shorts and the coolest part was that I didn't know what size I was so I grabbed anything with a 16 and an 18 just to be safe. Since I was mildly emotionally fragile yesterday, I started with what I thought were size 18 shorts. I put them on, they fit great, were a little loose in the waist, and went to try on the next pair and realized they were actually 16's!
This made my day. Everything I tried on fit, and I only had to buy size 16. I have had to buy size 18 for the last year and a half and I hate it. I don't judge anyone that wears bigger sizes, but for me, I really prefer to be a size 12. I just feel my best when I'm in a 12.
I'm getting there. It might be slower than I want and more annoying than I want getting there, but I'm on my way. I now have 2 pairs of shorts and 3 shirts for the summer so hopefully if any of you see me in person you an see me rotating through my very huge wardrobe all summer long.
A daily journey and journal for 1 year documenting my baby steps, my leaps, my backtracking, my progress and the struggle to reclaim my health.
Sounds like my wardrobe, although I end up sporting the this-is-so-not-my-style-and-is-probably-not-anyones-style type clothing all too much, simply because I don't like doing laundry every couple days. Steph, you're doing so great! You continue to motivate me every time I read your blog.
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