Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

When my sister visited this past weekend, she brought with her some photos she'd just had developed. The roll had been sitting around for approximately six years or so, and we were both surprised by what was on it.

Not only did it have pictures of my sister all hippied out, but it also had pictures of me that I simply had trouble believing. I really have changed!

Just to show the difference, I dug out the same outfit and took a picture of myself wearing it, this morning.

Circa 1997

Today

As you can see, the blouse is much too big on me now. I sometimes wear it over something, if I feel like a little extra color. But it's one of the many items in my closet that's fallen into disuse. I'd get rid of it, but it's simply too torn and old to actually donate it anywhere.

I'd worn this skirt this weekend to the Philadelphia Folk Festival and had to tie the drawstring extremely tight in order to get it to stay up. Now, the skirt always had a gathered waist, but I know it wasn't this loose when I bought it.

This all means, of course, that I'm going to have to buy an entirely new wardrobe soon. And I haven't even reached my goal weight yet.

Taking these pictures made me think about this pair of flared jeans that I'd kept with the intent of having them serve as my "fat pants," to show people how much I'd lost. Unfortunately, they're made out of a stretchy material and don't provide anywhere near the kind of visual impact I was hoping for.

I discovered last week, trying to find something nice to wear that was also somewhat dressy, that I'm running out of dressy clothes that fit. Athletic clothes, yes. Every day clothes, yes. Dressy clothes? I'm going to have to go on a shopping spree.

This would ordinarily get me really excited, but when you're in the transitional phase of weight loss, it seems like a real waste. Last fall, for example, I bought myself a new winter coat because my old coat was huge on me. Out of curiosity, I tried on that "new" coat recently and discovered it's already big -- and cold weather is still a couple months away. So, I imagine, all my cold weather clothes will also be too big when I pull them out of my trunk this time around. And many of them were replaced only last year.

I think the strangest thing about all this, as I was explaining to someone recently, is that I never really saw myself the way I actually looked when I was some 45 to 50 pounds heavier. In my mind, I was still the same person. I would see pictures of myself, or look at my face in the mirror, and not recognize it. That was never my internal self-perception.

And even funnier, my brother says he never saw me that way, either. Now that he's living in Vermont, I only see him on occasion, and when I tell him how much I've lost, he squints up his eyes and looks at me really hard and says, "But you always looked this way to me."

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

Musings Index

What do you think? Share your thoughts
at Alyce's message board (left button):