Conclusion: All stores hate me.

Warning: 1 part pity party, 1 part justified frustration, 1 part laughing at my situation, 1 part hating clothes altogether.



This weekend I went out to the mall with my husband and I was browsing a really cute outlet store. It had both a "normal people" section (as I call it) and a plus size section. Clothes in both sections were absolutely adorable, and I'm in dire need of clothes (I have 5-6 shirts I feel comfortable in, and one pair of jeans). I stared longingly at the normal people section, wishing I could try on the clothes there without feeling like a total blueberry girl (think Willy Wonka), and then I looked at the plus size. There were women with their children who clearly had baby weight (not hatin!) and in the normal sections, tiny skinny asian girls (I'm in Hawaii, not hatin!) then me, at size 12 everything. I felt like I didn't belong in either store.

I sucked up my pride (because for some reason, my brain refuses to believe I've gained weight while my self-esteem has already whimpered in defeat) and stepped inside the plus size arena. I was determined to buy at least $100 of cute, comfortable clothes that I looked good in. With that, I was off.

I picked up a ton of stuff: pants, shorts, skirts, shirts, dresses, and tried them all on while my husband played on his phone outside the store. I grabbed the smallest size they carried there (1XL for shirts, and size 14 for pants, since even my 12's are a bit snug) and put them on, one by one.

The shorts and jeans - I was able to pull them up over my butt without unbuttoning or unzipping them at all. NEXT.
The shirts fit great over my boobs, but slumped over my shoulders and ballooned out my side. Clearly not my fit. NEXT.
The dresses, the skirts, they all followed suit. Not wanting to let that get to me, I ran to the "normal people" side and grabbed their largest pants and shirts. Muffin top all the way.

45 minutes after confidently walking inside, I came out of the store empty handed, and my husband looked at me with nothing short of shock. He knows I hate shopping (especially in Hawaii, where everything is surprisingly tailored to the small asian tourists as opposed to the Samoan and Hawaiian population who are notoriously less tiny) but when I told him I was checking out the plus size regardless of how much I hated it, he expected me to find SOMETHING.

So I walked out of the store, and out of the mall, with a rain cloud over my head. This is why I have no clothes. Yes, I donated a whole lot of them when I married my husband and moved around a lot, but I also couldn't find a way to replenish my closet. My husband's shirts outnumber mine 5 to 1. I tried so hard to fix that clearly unbalanced ratio, but the clothing stores in Hawaii (and Texas and California) apparently have nothing that will fit me.

Clearly, the only fix is to work out, eat healthy, lose weight, buy better clothes. But this whole dilemma is so depressing that it's KEEPING ME from working out and eating healthy and losing weight. It's like when you have a massive thesis due or something, and the thought of having to do it keeps you from doing it. You end up cleaning the heck out of your home and running errands and babysitting your friend's kids and adopting a dog and volunteering at the shelter INSTEAD of doing what you know needs to be done.

That's where I'm at. It feels like a crushing defeat that I KNOW should be motivating me towards a victory. My husband passed it off with "You're just shapped different" to which I, in my head, quickly shouted "NO, I'M SHAPED FAT." It's frustrating, and today I took a nice long walk to destress, but I really just need a sounding board. You guys are really good at that.

Thank you for reading through my massive wall of text regarding the almost certain conspiracy the fashion world is plotting against me. I whine, I huff and puff, I drown my sorrows in watered down green tea in hopes I'll wake up skinny, but I'm not direly depressed. I hope I made it somewhat obvious that this was mostly satire (with a whole lot of "I kind of want to rip my hair out" moments) and that I really just needed to get it out of my system.

QUESTION: Have you ever been at this place before, where clothes, ANY clothes, don't fit you? I feel like maybe I should just give in and get a loom or something. That'd be cool. Let me know!