fat clothes, skinny clothes

so i just packed up all the boxes and bags of unwanted stuff from my house- clothes, dishes, etc- and put it on the porch (it's supposed to be there by 730am for the charity truck and I'm not getting up before that, or for a while after that). The fruits- the spoils? the spoiled fruits? - of my cleaning frenzy of the last week or so.

i hope they come and take it ALL!

interesting thing happened, which hasn't happened to me in years. i cleaned out my closet before leaving town for xmas, so i could see my useful clothes instead of having that starting at the open fridge kind of experience where you can't find the good stuff for all the condiments and unidentifiable leftovers. then, over xmas, not one but TWO people gave me their castoff clothing, which was very nice stuff.

one person, because their sweaters were too heavy for South Carolina (and i really need sweaters in NJ! except today and tomorrow where we get a freak warm snap thank the lord) and another who is on a bird seed diet and a size 2 for the first time in her life. She gave me her "fat clothes" (all pants, except for 2 skirts and 2 jackets) because she is terrified of ever being so fat as a size 8 again. mmkay.

this happened to me before, 10 or so years ago, when i got about 6 giant hefty bags of clothes from 2 different sources (friend, co-worker) who had both, in this case, gained weight and gave me their "skinny" clothes. interestingly, these clothes that my friends referred to as "skinny clothes" are the same size as the "fat clothes" I just received.

well, it's nice to just be a medium size and have people give you clothes, as long as you can wash the psychic baggage off them.

I've weighed everywhere from 92 to 150 pounds with lupus. when I'm ill, I lose muscle and appetite, and when I'm on the drugs, I retain a lot of water and gain as much as 10 pounds a week. I pretty much just t-shirts and pants with either drawstrings, elastic waists, or both when I'm fluctuating more than a high school wrestler wearing a hefty bag in a sauna.

One thing you hopefully learn through when you have so little control over your appearance is "I am not my body. I live in my body, while I am on this earth, but there is more to me than my body and my physical appearance."

I am not defined my fat clothes, or my skinny clothes, or my ability or lack thereof to fit into them!