Two, maybe three (?), years ago I impulsively bought a skirt from the sale rack at Anthropologie without trying it on first. Big expensive mistake. A few days after the purchase, I put that skirt on to wear to work and the buttons strained across my belly. I got all of the buttons buttoned, but the one at the waist was nearly cutting me in two. The skirt was too small. I frowned and shoved the skirt into the back of a drawer. Yes, I realize that I probably should have returned the skirt, but I am not good a returns. Particularly if it was a sale item. I feel like I am pulling off a scam or cheating on a test. A few months ago, I bought a dress online (from the same place). It is too big, but I like it like that. When I put it on, Michael said “but…you have no shape.” I cheerfully responded “I know right?!? I love it!” and I do love it. It’s like wearing a soft tent.

Clearly I do not know my size or how to pick up a tape measure and measure my damn hips.

I am reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. It is about a group of people attending a somewhat radical wellness retreat that promises to change their lives. The ten day retreat begins with five days of ‘noble silence’. No cell phones, laptops, TVs. No talking or making eye contact with each other. Diets specialized to each person. Individualized daily schedules. Daily blood draws and blood pressure checks. Counseling, yoga and meditation. It sounds extreme. It sounds downright awful and challenging. It also sounds heavenly to me. One character in particular is attending the retreat to specifically lose weight. She’s desperate to get her body back into the shape it was before having four children. She is recently divorced for the old cliche reason of the husband wanting an upgraded model. This character dived full in to this retreat, without any complaints or objections. In her first counseling session, she asked several times if she had lost weight. The woman in charge never answers her because she doesn’t want this character’s life change to be just about her weight.

Women said they needed to “lose weight” with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they’d committed.

Every pound of fat that I have allowed to settle onto this body has made me feel shameful. This wasn’t always the case. In fact I have a very clear memory of the day and moment that my weight became something that made me feel ashamed of myself. Sometimes that memory gets pulled from the back of my brain and placed front and center. I see myself in my hand-me-down swimsuit inherited from my sister and my reflection in the mirror is wearing an expression of shock over not looking anything like my sister did in that swimsuit. I hear the words that came out of my mother; how those words made me curl up with shame. Now that memory makes me burst into flames of rage over how that moment, that one moment, had me wasting so many years trying to get this body to look like someone else’s standard. This week, I pulled out that skirt from the back of the dresser drawer and I tugged it up and over my hips. I buttoned all of the buttons. There was no straining or stretching of fabric. My waist was not being cut in two. The skirt fits. The skirt fits perfectly and I am hyper aware of just how much this body has changed in just a year’s time. Those changes are the side effects. I did not set out to change the landscape of my body. I set out to lower my cholesterol and prevent the Type II diabetes that is so prevalent in my family. I did not lose weight. I gained health.

I have created my own standards.