Does Size REALLY Matter?

I recently fished a "new" pair of jeans out of the box of misfit clothes.  Aside from being truly hideous, they made me giddy, as each reclaimed item does, to be putting on "that size?!?"  Inevitibly, as I put on the jeans, the first words out of my mouth were "I can't even remember the last time I was 'that size.'"  And then, I took a minute, as I always do, & tried to remember when I last wore the item.  These particular jeans are so ugly, & so crisp looking, that I am quite skeptical as to whether I EVER wore them.  In fact, I feel quite certain that they were denial jeans & that at the time of original purchase, they didn't even fit.  I didn't take them back because it was more painful to admit that I couldn't fit into "that size" than it was to just lose the money.

Thinking about these particular jeans made me think about "that size," which is really just whatever size I am at the moment or wish I was or wish I wasn't or know someone that might be.  There is such an aura around size.  It comes to mean so much more than just a number & a convenient solution to finding clothes ample enough to cover my naughty bits.  I am having a real struggle reconciling the idea that a size that once made me sob (on the way up) is now making me dance (on the way down).  It really has made me think about what a thing of perspective size & body image really are.

Though I realize that there are issues of health & well being that very reasonably should have upset me as I was gaining weight, it wasn't my blood pressure or increased risk of developing diabetes that made me so upset.  Conversely, it's my skinny jeans & not my resting heart rate that are now making me giddy as a school girl. 

The actual number on the tag is really irrelevant, "that size" is all about what's going on in my head & it makes me so sad that I spent all of those years berating myself over being "that size."  Even now, "that size" still runs rough shod over my thoughts in a mix of pride/shame/regret/anticipation that I struggle to reign in.  Nearly a year of trying to make a better life for myself & it's still coming down to "that size." 

In all of their ugly glory...

Mildly related tangent: I don't know what psychotropics I was on when I was gaining the weight & deciding what clothes I was going to keep in the hopes that "someday" I would wear them again.  Such a mis-matched, hodge-podge of crap has never been accumulated in the same place.  I don't know where I thought I was going to be going "someday," but from the looks of things it was some sort of cold-weather, hoochy bar where I may or may not need a Rainbow Bright t-shirt to wear with some wool, herringbone trousers.  And you wonder why I'm in a steady rotation of the same three outfits.