Shirts

I opened a rarely-used hall closet this evening and discovered a couple of shirts there to be taken to Goodwill. I don't know how they didn't end up with the last large batch of clothes my wife took in; they certainly were part of the last great purge of clothes that no longer fit, thanks to my relentless pursuit of obesity.

Inasmuch as I've lost quite alot of weight in recent months, I decided to see if they'd fit me again. And they do. So Goodwill will not get them, not just yet.

This incident made me think back to the time, only a few months ago, maybe two or three months before I began my weight reduction program, when I finally admitted I needed to get rid of a bunch of clothes. At the time I was irritated at myself for having allowed myself to gain so much weight that the shirts would no longer fit. But I was resigned to being forever larger than I had been. I agreed to give the shirts away because I thought it would have been pointless to hold on to them in the hope that I'd eventually get the discipline necessary to lose enough weight to fit back in them. That sense of failure and of the inevitability of just gaining more and more weight was very real. I remember it well.

I don't know just what prompted me, not long thereafter, to commit to losing weight. My resignation to my obesity had been so thorough and so complete; how did it change? I don't know. I'm glad it did. And I don't begrudge Goodwill and its clients the fact that they got some perfectly good shirts off of me.