Up too late, again

Can I just point out that the fact that I can wear size SIX pants is laughable?  I went off to a Gap store this afternoon, taking advantage of sales and an Illinois state tax holiday to look for a pair of pants that'll work in case someday I have a job interview - I've spent the past 11 years working in jeans and t-shirts and sweatshirts and workboots that got covered in dust and lacquer every day, and it's not likely any job I may find in the future is going to put me in circumstances where those kinds of clothes are required.  I actually ended up getting size 8's (and "ankle length" rather than regular - I'm 5'6" tall, which is pretty much the definition of average height for an American woman, or at least used to be, and most regular dress pants I've tried on lately are way, way too long.  Perhaps they expect all women to wear high heels, which I cannot and will not do unless I really want to cause myself intense foot pain).  The 6's fit, but if I gain so much as one more ounce they'd be iffy, and more than an ounce and they'd be too tight, and given that my resolve to stop overeating and start exercising disappeared not long after it was initiated, gaining another ounce, at the very least, is a possibility.  The time will come when my lack of desire to buy larger sizes of clothing will overcome my lack of desire to eat more intelligently and move my body more - not sure when that will be, though.

Although given that I'll no longer be doing physical work in a cabinet shop, I'll need to start moving my body sooner rather than later.  If nothing else, I need to start lifting again, because there'll be no point having tattoos on flabby arms, and I like my tattoos.  OK... tomorrow.  Uh, I mean today, given that I'm typing this at 12:30.  Today I'll resolve again.  (If I'd ever, ever been able to stick with this kind of resolution, I'd feel more confident about this.)

But my point was, when I was in high school and college, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I wore size 12 pants.  And eventually my last size 12 jeans, the ones that were so nicely faded and patched and comfortable, were too tight to wear (I think they're still in an upstairs closet, for that day when I get pneumonia or food poisoning again and get back down to my all-time and very unhealthy adult low weight of 114 pounds).  And I know there's been lots of inflation of women's clothing sizes, since all those wily marketers know it makes ever-expanding American women happy to fit into clothing sizes with smaller and smaller numbers attached.  But I remember back in 1998 going through a phase where I was going to get my weight down, damn it, and I was going to do it by starving myself, and I did do it, I got down to something like 123 pounds, I ate nothing, I had one of the elevator operators in my building on 73rd Street so worried about my weight loss that he gave me chocolates, and then I went out and bought a size 6 short blue sleeveless dress, which I wore when I traveled down to Lookout Mountain that August (although I didn't wear it to the singing itself, so no, it's not what I was wearing when I met Jerry).  And that week I decided to stop starving myself, my weight went back up to a more sane and sustainable number, and I was never able to fit into that dress again and gave it away eventually to Goodwill.  Size SIX.  The size of pants I'm now fitting into at somewhere around 132 pounds.

So there you have it: ruminations on the insanity of marketing.  And a public airing of my current weight, to boot.  It's actually not so bad: my constant weight goal is simply to keep below 130.  So it's only a matter of a few pounds... right now.  Last time I stopped paying attention, it crept a bunch over 130, and that's when pants really stop fitting, so I do have to be vigilant.

Although that would require caring.  I have to get to the point where I care about things again.  I'm not there yet, not at all.  I'm most definitely still thinking "nothing now can ever come to any good."  I mean, I'm not totally apathetic - I bathe, I do laundry, I wash dishes, I sort mail, I get things done - so I would imagine this is all proof I'm not clinically depressed, for some who might have been wondering about that.  But everything feels different - things don't matter to me the way they used to.  I feel detached, I feel like I'm in a fog, I feel separate and different and apart.  Like the world is turning around me, and I'm just observing, not really seeing very clearly, just sort of passing through and waiting for something.

I'm afraid that what I'm waiting for is Jerry's return.  How long do you wait for something that is never going to happen before your mind and body adjust to reality and you get to figure out a new way to be, a new way to live that is reconnected, that has some sense to it and that lets you start caring again?  I guess it's different for each person who has to do this, adjust to a harsh reality she doesn't want.  And I guess I'll find out, eventually, if I can do it.  But I have to.  Otherwise I might as well arrange to have my ashes scattered along with Jerry's, because "existing" or "functioning" for the rest of my life cannot be enough for me.  I want to live, and I want to care.  I don't know how to do that yet, I don't know how to even imagine a time when the missing of Jerry and the longing for him are not going to be this intense and this painful.  But I have to imagine that I will be able to imagine it, and I have to imagine that I will find a time beyond this intensity, when missing him will be part of who I am, but not all of who I am.  I feel like I need to apologize to Jerry for wanting to stop hurting this much - it's not that I'm going to stop loving you, Sweetie - I'll never stop loving you - but it can't keep hurting this much.  Not if I'm going to survive.

I miss you, Sweetie.  I love you.