Two sizes short: the story of a beautiful dress and Me.

Joker is going to love this post. Why? Mainly because this post proves a theory that he has - and he's right.

Yeah, I have written about this many times. Bear with me. For as long as I can remember, staying fit has been a priority of mine. I have been known to eat plain rice for months, eat Campbells soup for weeks, gone vegetarian... I think I even tried to fast just so that I didn't gain weight. I am famous amongst my friends for dieting so hard that I have ended up at the hospital many times. Oh yes, it is possible to force your body to a limit that is unhealthy or even dangerous. My gastro once even called my mother to tell her that enough was enough, that weighing 83 pounds was not cool at all. That time I actually thought he was right.

Having been bigger in a past life, I have always refused to go back to that body. I don't have anything in my life that isn't negotiable but that. When you finally find the will to do the work and lose the weight, the last thing you want in life is to lose it - the will, the power. You know what I mean. You get a high from reaching the goal, you want to keep on going without noticing that you made it.

The thing is, I never have been able to stop wanting to lose more weight. It's a very weird thing, you lose and you just want to keep on going to see how many more pounds you want to shed. Yes, it's all about control. If you can control your body you can control anything. And trust me, the older that you get, the more difficult it gets, hence the challenge becomes even more interesting.

So today I was at the mall. My best friend has her birthday coming up and I wanted to find a nice dress to go to her party. So I decided to walk in a store that I usually never enter. Ok let me give you a hint. There are some stores that are marketed in a way that not all women walk in because they think that they have ultra small clothes. But today I was just walking along and thought, hey, what could possibly happen, maybe I won't like a thing and move on to another store. No big deal.

I glance on a dress that is just perfect. I take a size and get in the dressing rooms. Um. Uh. I get in the dress way easily. In fact, it's big for me. What the fuck, I think. Did I read the size correctly? The nice lady that is trying to sell me anything that is on the store decides to bring me two sizes short. I laugh. Honey, I tell her, no way. That size will never fit me. She tells me to try them anyways. So I take the smaller sizes and get in the dressing room again. Since I'm in a hurry (I was going to see a movie - which I will review after I write this), I didn't notice that I put on the smallest of them. It fit. So I walk out, show my babe the dress (drooling is a nice sign that the dress is fine with him, hehe) and I tell the gal: see, the smallest size would have never fit me. She smiles and shows me the dress I didn't put on. It was the middle size. I actually looked at the tag. Yep, it was the smallest size they carried. I sat there, frozen.

Not because of the small size, not because of all the hard work I put in trying to look my best. I was astounded on how I see myself and how I really am, body wise. If I had a nickel for every time I have heard people telling me that I shouldn't lose more weight, I would be a fucking millionaire. I always retort the same way: are you kidding? I can go on! More and more, I always say. They have always looked at me like I was an alien. Like I didn't understand what language they were speaking. It was always weird to me. Until today.

As I watched myself in the mirror, I saw my body for the very first time, in a dress that was made almost just for me. I felt beautiful. I felt that all the work that I had put in, I could finally see it. I didn't even glance at the price tag. I felt I deserved to take the dress home because it did something that no one has ever quite done: it made me realize that I have the body that I didn't think that I had.

200 bucks? Who cares. It was worth every penny to see myself for the very first time.

PS: That is the actual dress.