The Dress and a Big Life Lesson

My mom used to get this catalog in the mail each month. Coldwater Creek catalog. The majority of the clothes in it were for adult women, but I loved going through it to think of all of the pretty things I could one day wear. I had just gained about 30 pounds back from my lowest weight ever I was about 160 at the time, and I thought that if I could order one of these dresses in a size 16 it might just fit and make me forget how I had gained. I would be pretty if I just wore this dress! It was a black tea-length dress with white polka dots and pink shrug to go over it. It also had a pink ribbon to tie in the front. SO CUTE!  My mom got it for me, and I waited patiently for it to arrive.

Well the dress came, and when I tried it on I cried. It wouldn't even go up past my thighs. I couldn't believe it! How in the heck was this possible!? My jeans were a size 16, so why on earth couldn't I at least get the dress to go on, never mind zipping it up!?! My mom felt bad, so she encouraged me to hang the dress up where I could see it as an incentive. Maybe if I just lost a few pounds it would fit! I thought it couldn't hurt, so I hung it in my closet front and center where I could look at it longingly every day.

Months passed and I still couldn't get in it. I lost about 10 pounds, and it still didn't go on. Sometimes I would just sit and stare at the dress, imagining what I would do while wearing it. I pictured myself going on a date in it, looking adorable at church in it, walking hand in hand with a boy while wearing it, etc. It was the Ultimate Goal. I think I spent literal hours fixated on a piece of fabric.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this dress hung in my closet for years, taunting me like a piece of cheesecake taunts my now-diabetic self. I obsessed and obsessed and obsessed. And you know what? I never wore it. I gained and gained until it wasn't even a feasible option anymore. It still just sat in the closet, welcoming me home on the weekends when I visited from Snow College. It was a friendly reminder as to why I wasn't staying down at school to go on dates with boys. ( Just for the record...I think I would have actually gone on some dates if I would have stayed there and had some confidence and actually SPOKE to a member of the opposite sex in any of my classes.) 

One day I started to think really hard about the dress. I pulled it out of the closet and grabbed another dress that did fit me. I compared them. Something wasn't right. The coveted dress seemed far too small to be close in size to the other one. I yelled for my mom and ran the dress in to her. "Mom I need you to try this on. Right now!" She looked at me like I was crazy, but she did it anyway.

Now if any of you know my mother, you know that she is a TINY woman. She weights about 115 soaking wet. I am talking tiny, little, adorable, fun-sized human here. (She is my best friend, too, but that is a different story for a different day.) So my miniscule mommy slid this dress on, zipped it up, and there was hardly any extra room in that dress that she wasn't filling out. I couldn't believe it. The dress had been marked wrong. It wasn't me, it was the dress.

Naturally, we moved the dress over to my mom's closet. (I don't know if she ever wore it, honestly.) I believe over the course of  the next few weeks I cried a lot over this realization. Sometimes it was over relief, other times it was more of a "why did this dress do this to me" cry.

Here is the part that I didn't understand then, and I do understand a little better now: I was wallowing and blaming and shaming all at once. First of all, it was just a piece of fabric that I should have never allowed to define me the way it did. I should have just sent the dress back and gone out and found one that did fit and made me feel beautiful. There is nothing anywhere in the world that states "gaining a few pounds means you can't feel beautiful." Second, it was not the dress' fault that I didn't fit into it. Yes, it could have been the manufacturer's fault that it got mis-marked, but why waste time and energy blaming them and hating them for something that they didn't even know about?! And third, this just made me spiral more down into the shame cycle I talked about with you earlier.

I come from a long line of blamers. Blaming and finding excuses runs in my blood. I don't want to be this any more. I refuse to be it. I won't allow myself to pass the buck on for self-gratification any more. It is my life and I make the choices. If I want to get healthy, I need to just do what it takes, instead of making excuse after excuse until I have none left. Life is meant to be lived and enjoyed. Being healthy helps life become more enjoyable! I just want everyone to live their lives to the fullest and see all of the possibilities, without holding back!

We can do ALL the hard things, including getting past the obstacles we make for ourselves.

My mom and I  on my Wedding Day 10/14/11