Coming Out of the Closet

This red dress has hung in my closet for three years. I bought it at a vintage store, the Remix, on Capitol Hill. For months I'd hit the gym every morning. I'd been so smart in the lunches I packed and the suppers I'd cooked. I hadn't graduated to a life without Spanx, but for the first time since my teens my body was strong, healthy and fit. I looked nice in clothes. Shopping had become fun again.

I trotted into the Remix feeling so happy that I could possibly buy something from the store besides jewelry; vintage clothes run ridiculously tiny. I picked that little red frock knowing I would dress it down in the summer with flat sandals, and style it up with stillettos to wear at Christmas.

I HAVE NEVER WORN THIS DRESS.


Something about being able to wear small clothes made me think I had arrived, forever, into Club Skinny. Skinny people can eat burgers, drink margaritas and skip yoga class. Because skinny people are human, too, I'm sure they do....just not every single day. No one told me that when I sneaked my way into the Club. I grew out of the red dress before I ever got a chance to wear it.


The red dress has become the gauge I keep hanging in my closet for evaluating the progress of my weight loss. When I start diets, this dress is always in the back of my mind. If I could just get back to my red dress weight, I tell myself.


Weeks before my wedding in September 2009, the dress zipped. Even with proper undergarments it didn't look right for wearing, but it zipped. I vowed to wear it to my friend Anne's wedding rehearsal in December.


I wore this, instead...

I am 5'3. I weigh 163 pounds. There, I said it.


I am not obese, and I want to think, not even fat. I am, however, too large for my frame. I am too large for my clothes - the red dress, and most everything else in my wardrobe that now fits my body like casing to sausage. Most importantly, I am too large for my health.


Gearing up to lose weight does not frustrate me. I've done it so many times before that it's old hat. It's maintaining a healthy weight that has become my true handicap.


I have kept journals and used writing to soldier my way through every struggle I have ever stomached in life. I've just never shared them with anyone. Why I am sharing this, I can't quite say.


Candidness inspires me in others, and perhaps part of me thinks making my record of the red dress public will foster an accountability in myself that nothing else has..not class reunions, not my own wedding, not even a family history of heart disease.


I'm coming out of the closet with the story of my weight struggles, at least until I can go back in to, pull out my red dress and, at long last...wear it!