I had purged my closet in stages, pulling things off the hangers and tossing them in bags as they started to get baggy on me. It was never really a concerted effort, the cleaning out of my old wardrobe, and that’s why, I think, I didn’t realize how much stuff I used to have until I was hauling it out bag by bag by bag by bag by another-dozen-bags for Melinda, who was up here in my neck of the woods. "I’ll be up there visiting!" she had said. "Great!" I had said. "I have some clothes for you!" By some clothes, I actually meant all the clothes in the whole world, all of which I did not want to let go. (At left, a picture from May: this sweater's going next. And so, too, are the boobs. Sigh.)

I thought I’d have a couple of pairs of pants for her, maybe some sweaters and she’d pull them on, go okay! These’ll work! And then we’d spend the rest of the afternoon pleasantly chatting over protein drinks. It didn’t look like that much stuff when it was all crammed into the back of the closet; it just looked like I was an extremely messy person with an extremely messy and unorganized closet. This is a true fact. But what was extremely messy was a lifetime’s worth of now-unwearable clothes I had been hauling around with me for more or less my entire life.

It was something like 12 bags of clothing—some of them paper grocery bags, some of them big cloth grocery bags, and a couple giant tote bags, one of which used to hold a king-sized comforter. A lot of clothes. I kept piling them up next to the futon and Melinda said “Good God, woman!” and I said “There’s more!” and I kept hauling them out. Every item of clothing I had ever worn, from the tragic and oversize T-shirts from my fat-and-ugly days to the slinky dresses of my fat-and-fabulous days. My target="newwin" clothing benefactor was an incredibly stylish lady with an impeccable sense of style (did you note that pink dress picture of a few days back? All her) to whom I am still grateful; Melinda got an all-bets-are-off rummage sale and a lot of nostalgia, free.

Oh, the nostalgia. Because I really never threw anything away. I might someday fit back into it; Someday, I could be a size one million, and one day I would get skinny-compared-to-now, and it was best to have every contingency covered and every potential possibility headed off at the pass. An occasion might very well have arisen again where I was 220 pounds and in dire need of a Care Bears T-shirt. One never knew! Even when one weighed approximately 100 pounds in the other direction and was in a place where the very idea of a cartoon character on one’s chest filled one with dread and fear, as it would, possibly, bring attention to one’s existence.

There was also the ankle-length denim skirt I distinctly remember owning in my freshman year of college; the black V-neck sweater with the hole chewed into it by my mother’s dog who died approximately 15 years ago; the blue button-down shirt with the two missing buttons that I wore to the funeral of the uncle of an ex-boyfriend, about three relationships back. And things I didn’t remember (what was I thinking?) and things from my peacock stage, where I dressed the body I had and not the body I wanted and said fuck this, I am going to feel good about who I am and not wish I were someone else. I loved those jeans, which made my ass look round and my legs look long and I wore them with my red beaded heels, and I remember feeling sexy, and being sexy, and I wish that could have lasted. That did not last long enough.

Melinda, who has a more classical and less let's-say-whimsical sense of style than I do, took the button-downs and the knit tops and the slacks and capris and left behind a lot of the clothes I love, and a part of me was broken hearted. They were rejected, my fancy orange top with the tie neck, and the shirt that says "Hell on Heels" and the one with the birds and the one that's kind of drapey. I wanted to snatch those things up and save them from doom. I wanted to squirrel them away and maybe someday I would ...do something with them! Make pillows! Wear them as dresses! Pull them out every day and weep softly into them! I packed them up fast and lined them up by the futon and asked her friend Spike to please take them to Goodwill in his giant truck and please keep the donation, because my closet needs to be cleared out, my nostalgia isn’t doing anything but making me look weird, and there are always new fancy-pants items, possibly with feathers on, to purchase. 

I feel like I’m supposed to close sagely with a lesson about holding on to your past, and looking forward to your future except don’t forget your history as you keep your eyes on the grindstone and your nose in the stars and your feet on the wheel of progress as times goes by. Mostly, though, I just think that it’s a good idea to keep your closet clean and donate to Goodwill.