-True Religion. From Native, a little boutique in Franklin Village. Hollywood, 2009.
-Seven For All Mankind. From that crazy Puerto Rican girl I used to work with. West Hollywood, 2007.
-Rock and Republic. From Wasteland on Melrose, Hollywood, 2010.
-Frankie B. From a cute little shop I stumbled across after a wine tasting. Ventura, California, 2010.
I could go on and on. It's a really big pile of jeans, but it's too depressing. When I say these jeans don't fit, I don't mean that they won't quite button or that they're uncomfortably tight. I mean, I can't even get them over my hips. At all. And they fit me perfectly when I got pregnant. I inexplicably gained 60 pounds during my pregnancy, and almost everyone said I'd lose all the weight quickly. But, I just knew that wouldn't be the case. I knew 60 pounds wasn't going to miraculously melt off my 36-year-old body. Even if I was a yoga teacher who had been in super great shape before this whole wretched pregnancy ordeal.
Well, I was right! My spectacular baby girl is six months old and I'm still 13 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight. But it's not even about the number on the scale. It's where exactly the extra pounds sit on my 5'0 frame, and it's about how much my body has been vastly and forever changed. My hips are much, much wider. My ass is huge. My boobs went from a perky size B to a saggy size D. I have rolls of extra skin on my back and flabby chubbiness above my knees. My legs are a lot bigger in general. But the worst of it...the very very worst of it...is my stomach. Sigh... My stomach... My once chiseled abs now resemble the Pillsbury Doughboy. My belly is round and poochy and it droops down when I bend over. If I'm not sucking in, I really do look like I could still be posing for second trimester pregnancy photos. Honestly, 13 pounds sits heavy and foreign on my 5'0 frame.
And so I think about how the "me" who bought those jeans in California is...gone. She was a wild-angel party girl with a tiny tight little body. She drank dirty vodka martinis at swanky hotel bars and didn't go to bed till just before the sun came up. She danced with her girlfriends all night and she wore stiletto heels and smoked American Spirit yellows. She auditioned for big TV shows during the day and directed avant garde theatre in the evenings. But she was lost. And she was lonely. She didn't believe in herself, and she never loved anybody who treated her right. She didn't trust anyone, least of all herself.