A Blue Dress Made Me Realize an Uncomfortable Truth

THOUGHTS

I could no longer deny that I’d gotten fat

My eyes filled with tears as I struggled to avoid catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I knew I’d gained weight, but I hadn’t realized how much until I tried to pull on the blue dress and found it wouldn’t go past my thighs. Although my ex-boyfriend would disagree, I’d spent most of my life as either a thin or mid-sized girl. That moment when I was alone in the fitting room was the moment, I realized I was heavier than I’d ever been. My heart sank to my stomach as I realized I was probably plus-sized.

I’d found nothing wrong with plus-sized people. I even thought some of them were beautiful, but I’d never wanted to be one myself. I’d spent my entire life being shown how horrible it was to be fat by the media and my classmates. Whenever a celebrity gained weight, she was accused of letting herself go. Now I was the one who’d ‘let herself go’.

I hated to admit it, but I knew what had caused me to gain so much weight. It wasn’t food, but a toxic relationship. It wasn’t the type of relationship where you enjoy meals together and eventually realize that your clothes have gotten a little too tight, nor was it one where he fed me unhealthy amounts of food. It was the type of relationship where he restricted my intake of calories and demanded that I go to the gym, even if I was sick.

I’d been a vegetarian when we’d met, but that wasn’t good enough for him. He became obsessed with my body and told me he wouldn’t mind if my weight dropped to under one hundred pounds. He even pointed out things he didn’t like about my body and tell me to change them.

I remember a time when he yelled at me for thirty minutes when I’d asked him if we could get a small container of ice cream the next time we went to the store. That interaction drove me to the point of tears. We ended up buying ice cream at the store that day, but I told him to pick the flavor because I no longer felt like eating it.

He accused me of ‘trying to let myself go’ after I skipped a few days at the gym. Once, I’d gotten sick while in the relationship and lost ten pounds because I wasn’t eating. He told me how proud he was of me for losing the…

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