Please Keep Trying!

It’s summer again (at least in the Midwest)! That time of year when the sweat sticks to various surfaces and melds flesh to vinyl. That time of year we must strip nigh down to our skivvies in order to stay “cool” (Who’re we kidding? It’s still hotter n’hell.) It’s also that time of year Rachel must make that dreaded journey to the clothing stores in order to have suitable summer apparel.

I frick’n hate this time of year. First off, I don’t have the best internal temperature regulator. I’m either super hot or super cold, my body doesn’t deal with much in between the extremes. In the winter I must bundle up and wear layers upon layers of thermal clothing and in the summer I need to wear a loincloth and a boob bandanna.

You’d think I’d be super-fantastic-happy-hooray-go-me about clothes shopping due to my uber weight loss. Tssk, silly, don’t you know twenty pounds of sagging skin is no reason to party? Mmm, yep, since the skin pools in odd places, reducing some areas and increasing others, I have “special needs” when it comes to clothes, and shopping for them is about as much fun as bathing in bleach.

It’s depressing as hell to know underneath all that wrinkly flesh is a size ten, but because of the layers of origami-style flab wrapping, I’m a size sixteen. Yes, I said it. A size 16. Last year I thought I’d be a size twelve, what with the weight loss and the fact I was wearing a size ten top. Ha, noooooos! I went up! Up to a size fourteen!!! And this year, not to be outdone, the ‘ol skin has sagged and pooled so much that even though my upper body is slim and built, (oolala!) the lower body looks like I dropped my skin pants.

Let’s discuss how this phenomena occurs. When the fat evaporates, the skin sags since nothing is there to hold it up. The body can only reabsorb so much of that stretched out flesh before the skin succumbs to gravity and falls down. And down, and down. Now, the skin has reached my knees and is literally layered around my joints. Oh, v-o-m-i-t. Like I need more pressure on my knees.

I was told I needed to lose weight or the arthritis which is lurking in my joints (hips and knees) will get slowly worse. Screw that. I’ve lost all I can. I’m going to talk to my orthopaedists and ask them to advocate for me to the insurance company to get the skin removed. I’ll be damned if I work this hard on my knee injury and hip impingement only to have it mean nothing because twenty pounds I couldn’t ever shed dragged me down the road of arthritis.

This is the last summer I’ll be wearing my skin pants around my knees. Mark my words. Angry ex-fat girls are a force to be reckoned with.