Objects In The Mirror May Appear Larger Than They Are

Anyone who has come out of an eating disorder is aware than the mind can play tricks. You may only weigh 90 pounds but when you look in the mirror your eyes are able to double or triple that until you take up the whole mirror. This playing with perception has never really left me though the days of dieting (or not eating) have long gone. Usually I am aware of my brain’s love of playing games and have a variety of tricks that I use to offset any craziness. Then pregnancy happened and that meant all of my little tricks became useless. Mostly because I was larger – 55 pounds larger and my body was no longer mine.

When I came out of the pregnancy in a fit of momentary madness I decided to clean my closet of all of my pre-pregnancy clothes as my hormone laden mind believed that there was no way that my body was ever going to fit those clothes again. So I packed everything up, pointedly ignoring Ryan’s gentle remonstrations to ‘maybe just put them away in the storage locker,’ and dropped the garbage bag off at the Salvation Army. I wore my maternity clothes, purchased some clothing on sale and continued on with my life. That was until the day my pants fell down as I was walking. Fortunately for everyone involved, Imogen and Sabine were the only witnesses and I managed to find a belt to hold the pants up. Cleaning out my closet I found a couple of pants that had escaped the purge and fortunately I had never had the heart to give up my skirts so I had something to wear that didn’t fall off. I was comfortable with the status quo until this week. Tomorrow I am going to a friend’s art opening and realised that I own nothing that is appropriate that fits.  Ryan put Imogen to bed and I went to the mall.

I actually argued with the salesperson who was helping me as she handed me a dress and I said that I needed to have a larger size and then grabbed one that was 3 sizes larger. She grabbed it back from me and gave me another dress one size larger. We continued this pattern as she helped me find a dress to wear. I took the dresses and went and tried them on. In the first one I felt NAKED. It wasn’t low cut, it had sleeves and hit just above the knee but I felt naked and realised that at some point I had disconnected from my body. What it did do was skim my body – a body that I no longer recognised as my own. The dress was SEXY and I am not sexy. I wound up getting another dress because I just couldn’t bring myself to commit to the SEXY dress. I left and went and bought some pants, tops and another skirt that fits me. By me, I mean the one that is actually in front of the mirror and not the one that I have been seeing in the mirror.