Tripping on a rock down Memory Lane.
Talk about a blast from the past! I'm going through some old computer stuff, sort of an early spring cleaning exercise. I ran across a CD of some old web projects, actually, one of my first attempts at Blogging, before there was such a thing. That's when you had to code the whole website yourself. Anyway, below is a journal entry from around the time I posted this picture. For some context, in January 1999 I had my second gastric bypass surgery. I'm not going to post the before picture just yet, but this photo was taken several months after the surgery when my weight loss was at about 70 pounds. The funny part is, that's where I'm at again. After this surgery I made it down to 295 pounds. Five years later it's deja vu all over again.
From Wednesday, July 14, 1999:
Rapid weight loss has always been somewhat of an event for me. Awakening each morning and scrubbing the sleep from my eyes, forcing them to focus on the scale's reading to gauge the previous day's success. Another thrill is shrinking through the clothes in my closet.
I've lost count of the times in the past few months when someone has commented that it must be tough buying all these new clothes as my weight recedes. I usually smile and say that my closet has been full of pants size 34 to 54 for many, many years. What I don't go on to say is that each piece of clothing I pull from the depths of my closet holds its own memories... some good, some not so good.
With my weight loss right at 100 pounds now, I've gone from a pant size 52 to my current 42 inch waist. That has required four major revisions of what's hanging in my closet. When I moved from Reno to Seattle there was a box labeled in broad Marks-A-Lot marker "TS Pants." This cryptic message, I was sure only I could decode, stood for "Too Small Pants." The large box held a collection of over 25 pairs of jeans and numerous shirts of various sizes that had, at some point, started cutting too deeply into my flesh to be comfortably worn. Clothes that, as they were retired to the back of the closet, became a symbol of failure and defeat.
Opening that box several months ago turned into a project that consumed the better part of two evenings. Each article of clothing had to be assessed separately. Simply finding the size tags on clothes that are at various stages of wear can be its own challenge. But as I unlocked the secrets of each piece and piled it neatly with those of like size and era, my mind whirled in the memories each evoked. The blue and green striped shirt that I wore on one of my last, and more memorable dates with Alan. The pairs of jeans in green, sand and blue that symbolized normalcy in my size, once again moving out of the one style, one color choice of big-and-tall clothing manufacturers.
I neatly stacked each size range on the top closet shelf. I positioned the largest sizes nearest the front so they could easily be accessed and moved forward to replace their even larger cousins currently occupying the hangers.
Despite good intentions of donating my discards, my guest bed is currently smothered in a layer of extra-sized clothing nearly two foot deep. While the cat finds this to be a glorious play land, as the pile continues to grow I'm overwhelmed by the task of disassociating myself from it. These are more than just clothes, they are memories of times and places in my life that will never come again. Some were happy, some not so happy, but they nonetheless represent my life.
I suppose that my neglect of this disposal task also has something to do with the fact that I've been trained so well over the years to archive my larger sized clothing. If the current miracle cure/diet/pill didn't work, I'd be needing those things again. This time is different; I've been given the gift of knowing I'll never again be a severely obese adult. Although it's hard to say exactly what weight my body will settle at, it no longer has the ability to store enough excess calories to make me obese.
Maybe a little celebration will be in order when the Good Will truck finally pulls into the driveway to cart off the enormous pile of enormous clothes. As with most celebrations in life, this one will probably have a tinge of sadness too.
