Someday Today

What I Learned Getting Rid of My Pants

(TW: Eating disorders)

“Don’t go in there!” I hollered after my fiancé, Paris, as he headed into our bedroom. He didn’t listen, charging in to see four piles of clothes on our bed at least as high as his head.

“Making progress?” he asked.

“I have a system,” I said as he walked through the room and into the bathroom to find yet another pile.

Yes, I do have a system. But I also have a problem. A clothes problem. The fact is I just have too many of them because I never get rid of any.

We recently got a brand-new bed and mattress, which required me to clean out the under-bed drawers from our old bed. With those drawers now gone, and a closet already bursting with both Paris’s newly added clothes he brought in the move and my existing archive of every item I’ve owned since the year 2000, something had to be done.

One day after work, I stopped thinking about it and just started doing it. There are a lot of organization methods out there, currently the most trendy being KonMari/Marie Kondo and The Home Edit. In response to these powerhouses of getting your life in order, I have developed a few methods of my own that you are free to use. The first is the Stop Waiting to Fit into Clothes and Just Buy New Clothes That Fit You method. The next is the You’ve Held Onto That So Long That the Designer has Gone Out of Business and Had Enough Time to Later Reopen method. Finally I present to you the That Outfit is From the George W. Bush Administration, So You Have to Donate It Now method.

Among the many items sorted for donation, I found a brand new, never worn pair of jeans that I bought in the year god-knows-when. I would guess it was probably around 2004 when these jeans were in vogue. Not the magazine. These jeans were more likely to be seen in Us Weekly and People than Vogue. They’re Kitson brand, the favored label of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears when they weren’t sipping Starbucks in their Juicy Couture velour track suits.

I think I got them at Nordstrom Rack, just as the trend was on its downward swing. I didn’t fit into them at the time, but I had a lot of faith in myself. Someday I would fit into them, I vowed. Sure, they were about three sizes too small. Sure, I had no firm plans to exercise or eat fewer calories. Nevertheless, the jeans were a symbol of what I would be someday. Thinner, and by thinner, better.

They hung, unworn, on a hanger, first in my closet in Dallas, then in Chicago, then back in Dallas. They went with me between apartments and eventually to my house, hanging stalwart, tag still on, ever ready. They hung around longer than any romantic relationship, a reliable reminder as the years passed that my someday would come.

I kept a few other items, too. But unlike the Kitson jeans, these were items I had previously worn. Most treasured were my white shorts. In my family, we’d call them “coochie cutters”, but those in polite society may refer to them as short-shorts. They were Arizona brand, no doubt purchased from JC Penney, in juniors size nine. In my glory days (aka the lowest weight I have ever been except when I was born), I wore them proudly with fun t-shirts from Urban Outfitters, like one that read “Pirates Arrrrgh Awesome.” What can I say? I was nineteen.

Honestly, though, I looked hot in those shorts. As my mom says when she sees pictures of herself in the 1970s — I was young and firm. You know what else I was? Miserable. I was eating 1000 calories or less per day. I was running myself sick and doing 100 crunches a night. I was crying myself to sleep with an empty stomach suffering from undiagnosed depression.

Even so, my ass looked great in those shorts.

Over the past 15 years, I told myself someday I’d go back to that. Someday I could fit back into those white shorts. I kept them in my dresser drawer, like a surprise guest in the wings, waiting to spring on stage when they heard their cue. That cue? Me losing the equivalent weight of an entire fourth grader. The only issue was the cue never came. I stayed roughly the same size, yet I just couldn’t bring myself to give up on the promise of those white shorts.

For over a decade, they stood as a symbol of something I foolishly thought I could get back — my youth. I wanted it back so bad because I had squandered it away when I had it, wallowing in misery and self-harm. I spent years convinced I was inadequate. As I grew older, wiser, and relatively happier, I yearned to go back to that time with the wisdom I had gained. I wanted a do-over. A takesies-backsies.

But that’s simply not possible. I kept learning and kept growing. Now I’ve accepted that there is no going back. Cleaning out my closet, as I held the white shorts in front of myself, I accepted that they will never have the pleasure of gracing this ass again.

Even if I could go back, I wouldn’t. There’s too much good around me now. I am confident enough to wear shorts in my size that adequately cover my bathing suit area. I was forced to clean out my closet for the very good reason of making room for my fiancé and his clothes. I got to empty the drawers under our bed because we upgraded to a new grown-up-looking king size bed. I feel grateful that my life has become bigger than those shorts.

During those in-between years, I had left behind the painful days of my early 20s but hadn’t yet found the everyday joy that feeling comfortable with yourself brings. Don’t get me wrong — I still have hard days. Some days that decades-old voice come back and tries to tell me I need to lose weight. It tells me I need to “get back” to that size. It tells me that I’m not worthy until I do.

It has taken me many years and lots of therapy to realize I am worthy just by virtue of my existing. What I have to contribute isn’t made more or less by what my body looks like. What is important is taking care of my body, enjoying life, and being kind — both to other people and to myself. It also helps to be with someone who, when faced with complaints from me about how my body looks, responds with, “I would marry you today, right now, this minute, because I love you just the way you are.” Yeah, like I said last week, there’s no way he’s real.

So into the donation bag both the jeans and the shorts went. I hope the new home they find is a happy one. I hope the cheeks they eventually hug feel beautiful and worthy and look as good as mine did (or would have, if I’d ever put those Kitson jeans on).

Just before slipping them into the donation bag when I held those white shorts for the last time, I brought them up to myself in the mirror. I had to laugh. Even if I were thin enough to fit into them, they are absurdly short. My laugh turned to a smile, grateful that I don’t need to hold out hope that someday will come. Someday has already arrived. It’s here, better than I ever imagined. And I don’t need to squeeze into a pair of coochie cutters to enjoy it.

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