these days

at this moment in time, i have lost precisely 90 pounds since the start of the liquid diet. it feels surreal to be on the precipice of the monumental 100 pound mark. it's not that i haven't been there before - i've even been to 130 pounds lost - but then, i felt like i was fooling everyone around me. after years of thinking about why, i've determined it was because i was fooling myself - i wasn't changing on the inside - the cardinal sin of impermanent weight loss. i'm changing now. each day, i'm changing.

i can feel myself being more accepted in the world these days - people make eye contact and smile at me, people walk around me in the aisle of a store, where they once needed me to move. i find myself constantly apologizing to people because i feel like i'm in their way, even though for the first time in years, i'm not. i move quickly, and i don't need to pause at the top of a flight of stairs. most times when i walk up the stairs, i feel like running in some corner of my being, though i've trained myself to move so slow that it feels like my legs are fighting the rest of my body. make eye contact with me now, and every single seat i sit in feels just fine.

i got a haircut and neither the seat my hair was washed in nor the seat it was cut in dug into the sides of my thighs, a common occurrence before now. the smock covered me easily, and i could bear to look at my reflection even in that most unflattering of getups. previously, i always felt like a sumo wrestler in that cape with my wet hair totally flat against my head. in order to hold my head up high - literally, so they could cut my hair - i had to push past the feelings i felt about the way i looked and just block it out, read a magazine, keep it all in. i can't help but thinking how different this week's haircut was than one just about one year ago.

the driver's seat in our car is starting to feel too far away from the wheel, like it will need to be adjusted soon. the pants i rediscovered a few weeks ago in my closet are too big now, as are the pants i bought a while ago to get me through a few sizes and the coat that was too tight to button even right after the surgery. i am packing up yet another package of very plus size clothes to bring to a women's shelter very in need of larger clothes. it feels really, really good, and it brings to mind my own very exciting thoughts of assembling what i've always mentally thought of as "the thin list," an entirely new wardrobe from scratch when my weight loss is done. i find myself fantasizing about it all the time - what a unique and awesome experience that will be. i have never, EVER bought an item of clothing that i intended to own forever because i've never been at a size i planned to stay at. so literally, EVERYTHING must go. it's like a fire sale, and i'm thinking of organizing a swap in the spring or bringing batches of clothing to the support group meeting, though i wonder if anyone there at any point in their journey needs clothes that size. hard for me to tell if i was the largest one in the room at any point because my perception has become so skewed - probably mostly out of self-preservation.

i can cross my legs now, and i do every chance i get. it feels amazing. i am starting to have a lap.