Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Here’s what happens. You get used to your body looking, feeling, and being a certain way. You know, from an insider perspective, what it’s like to walk around in your own shape. You have a sense for your edges — an intimate knowledge of the line where you end and the rest of the world begins.

You get used to eyeballing things. You can tell, from a distance, if you’ll have to turn sideways to squeeze through

• this group of people
• that turnstile
• the doorway
• etc.

At a glance, you’ll know which chairs in the room will fit you. Sure, you’ll take a chair with armrests even if you know that it’ll uncomfortably cut against your hips after the first 25 minutes of the meeting. You’ll do it if you have to, that is. But, if you get to the meeting early enough, you can choose the chair that will best fit your ass and avoid the whole scenario.

You don’t do this by test-driving each chair, filling out a satisfaction survey, or telling yourself the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears until you find the chair that’s “juuuuust right.” You do it on sight. You have an internal meter. “My hips are this wide,” you think, and you eyeball the world accordingly. For the most part, you are dead right.

Then, the line which divides you from the rest of the world begins to change. Maybe you’re exercising more. Or eating fewer cupcakes. Maybe you are in an accident and lose a limb. Maybe you become confined to a wheelchair. Whatever it is, your body has changed, and your eyeballing skills make a sudden drop.

For me, when I start to lose weight, I start bumping into things. I become clumsy. I drop stuff. The manner in which I negotiate the physical aspects of the world gets all jumbled up. My edges are different, and my brain can’t catch up.

I eyeball badly. I’ll prepare for the pain of squeezing in somewhere, then the pain doesn’t come. My brain jolts. This does not compute. It’s the body image equivalent of having to re-size your wedding ring. Having your favorite jeans slide off your hips. Things that you never questioned are, suddenly, questionable. I trip over my feet.

I lose my stellar ability to parallel park in the tightest of spaces. I mean this very literally, and it’s a great metaphor for my life. I am renowned by friends and family for being able to squeeze my car into spaces with 4″ to spare on either bumper. This ability, mysteriously, disappears. My brain no longer trusts my previously-rock-solid understanding of where I (or my clothes, my car, my limbs, my purse) end and the next guy begins.

The other night I drove around my neighborhood for 30 minutes looking for a parking space. I finally found one, 2 or 3 blocks away. As I walked home, I kept smacking myself in the forehead. “Look at all these spots!” I berated myself. “I could have fit into any of these!”

Well, I could have fit into any of them before, but I can’t right now. That’s how I know I’m losing weight.