I was a size 8/9. It was engraved on my being. I thought everybody knew it. When I went into a pants store, and even to the medium section, I had to make sure that whatever pair was going to find its way properly around my hips–pants stopped going up to the waist when I was fifteen–and stay there. For all of the flesh that my butt seems to commandeer, my hips, alas, are straight as sticks. Most of the pants I buy fall down. I have always refused to wear a belt. Maybe suspenders would be the smartest answer.

When I discovered anorexia as a means of weight control, I took my measurements. My waist is 29-30 inches. My hips are about 35. For all the weight I have lost and gained, this has changed only minimally. In the 50s, with my mellow bosom, I would have been a size 16. For a long time, the numbers obsessed me. At 19, I discovered that several name brands had distinctly different sizing than others. In one brand I could fit into a size four. It brought me no joy to see it–I didn’t go around bragging about what numbers were on my clothes–but I got the skirt anyway, you know, to have it around.

The first years in this rabbit hole were spent making myself feel smaller. To do this, a person needs to wear clothes bigger than what fits them. Maybe I was just desperately clutching at straws from the 90s, when how cool you were depended on how many extra people you could fit inside your outfit. More likely, though, I enjoyed the way the shirts and pants hung off my frame. By wearing a pair of size 12 corduoroys, it looked like I had hipbones. I bit into this illusion gleefully and swallowed it whole. For several years everything I wore was too large. It got so that, when I would put on clothes that technically fit, I felt very uncomfortable.

Then, when I was 23, everything changed. First, I realized that I had control enough on my disease to reach a more ideal weight. Five to ten pounds on a small frame makes a lot of difference when it comes to fitting your thighs into tight pants. With a flatter belly, I was able to wear low-riding jeans without fear of muffin topping. At this point, I had started dating a boy who was skinnier than I was. We were the same height. I wanted desperately to fit into his pants. It never occurred to me that maybe women are supposed to have fat on their thighs and butt. These days, science has actually discovered that adipose tissue in those areas creates compounds that help liver function. Back then, I just wanted to look hot, and the new version of hot was skinny–everything so very, very skinny.

In the following three years, my body dysmorphia got worse and worse. When I moved back to Phoenix, broke up with my boyfriend, and got into the music scene, I discovered a whole new genre of people that I could fool about my skinniness. I discovered an entirely new culture that I could participate in who got their sustenance solely from coffee and alcohol. For five or six years, I started wearing clothes that fit, because finally I had a frame that could fit them. Suddenly, I was capable of wearing a size small without an issue. Suddenly, when I took selfies in the mirror they came out looking right.

When I first moved out here to eastern Montana, it was because I needed to literally recover. I needed a situation where I could be fed, because I do not make food for myself. This has gone well. Despite my father’s terrible palate, my stepmother has managed to healthfully raise my weight to what it was before I got involved in all this mess. The main issue that I am facing, now, is that none of my clothes fit–and the implications of that are more shameful than proud.

A week or so ago, a coworker gave me a pile of clothes. There is no thrift store here in town and she knew I needed some. The jeans were all a size six, but when I put them on, they were too tight. The thighs pinched and the butt squeezed and my hips put up a fight. I pulled the pants back off with dismay. So it has come, I thought, the day when I am fat again. I turned to my own collection of clothes. Two pairs of jeans, with a moderate elasticity in the waist, still would go on, but pinched. My skinny jeans made me look like a sausage. Two pairs of jeans, sizes three and five respectively, went on with discomfort. It occurred to me that I needed to buy a whole new wardrobe.

But it kept ringing in my head–you’re too fat for your pants, you’re too fat for your pants. You can’t fit in your pants, because you’ve gotten fat. It was only after a few days of this torment that I realized I was starting to think all of my old thoughts again. Maybe I can just skip breakfast–but I get so hungry by lunch. Maybe I could eat a breakfast and then skip lunch and dinner. Maybe if I just went out and exercised for an hour every day it would get better. Maybe, maybe maybe, until I literally felt crazy from it. Why the fuck should I worry about my pants? I thought, pulling my t-shirt down over the flesh that squished past its boundaries. I gained weight because I had it to gain, I gained weight to be healthy. Wrenching my mind back toward some type of sanity, I thought: I just have a problem changing sizes.

I never looked at it that way. I guess small to medium means failure in most of America. Giving up the size small means that I no longer get to look like a coat rack whenever I put on a bathing suit. It means clothes on the sales rack will become less available. It means all sorts of things–that I am a hungry person with an appetite; that I can no longer moon about how I hate being skinny; that I am all of the things I used to hate myself for being: hungry, needy, passionate, involved in life. Most of all, it means the terrible inconvenience of clothes shopping. I do not usually buy new clothes. When I go to the thrift store, I’m going to have to look in a different section. I can’t browse through the limited front of racks and mutter aloud, “God, everyone must be huge these days, I can’t find anything.”

It’s not my loss. But it is a very curious example of how my thinking still needs fixing, how I continue to have wrong thoughts even when my body is getting healthier. I should be proud of my body for finding its voice again to tell me its needs. Instead, I spent the morning trying to put together an exercise regimen that I know I won’t follow, or a diet plan to help strip me of this padding (as we head into a prairie winter.) It would be a better practice, I think, to wake up each morning and appreciate how my knees aren’t hurting from rubbing the bones together, how I can walk in 3-degree temperatures and still feel vibrant, like my blood is flowing. But I’m not there yet. I’m trying to be. But I’m not there.