Hope and the Winter Coat

Last year, sometime just past a couple weeks into the new year I believe, I had kind of hit rock bottom in terms of looking towards my own future. I'd just sort of... I don't know... checked out I guess.

I remember it specifically, because I'd outgrown my winter coat in grotesquely horizontal fashion. I couldn't button it anymore, and hadn't been able to for awhile. So I primarily just, you know, wore it open. Luckily what I'd lost in fabric coverage I guess I'd made up for with several inches of fat, so I didn't freeze to death, though it had occurred to me that I was at a sort of crossroads.

So I made a decision. I decided that I was a fat guy. I'd been big for a few years at that point, and didn't see any future that didn't feature a fat version of me. I'd lost hope. The hope that I was going to take care of myself again. That I was going to love myself again. I'd become so miserable that I was resigned to living an empty and unhappy life rather than work to improve my station. So in deciding that I was now just a fattie for life, I bought a new coat. It was beautiful. A 3/4 length black Calvin Klein wool and cashmere for $500 - on sale. It brought me a fleeting happiness - I was covered again, and looked a bit better, but it was also damning - I'd paid quite a bit for confirmation that I'd chosen this road over the other.

I continued down the newly-chosen road. And a month later I burst a button on the new coat. I didn't bother getting it fixed. I just wore it open.

Two weeks ago it started getting cold again. I pulled the coat out of the closet, went to a repair shop and had a new button sewed on. Then I put on the coat again.

It doesn't fit.

The sleeves now run long, covering my hands to just past my thumbs. The sides need to be brought in. I can grab the front buttons and pull the coat away from myself - easily seven or eight inches. I look like a fourteen-year-old boy wearing his father's overcoat.

And that brings me to my current conundrum - my new job starts Monday morning, and its dress code dictates a new wardrobe on my part. No more jeans and short-sleeved bowling shirts paired with tennis shoes. I want to make a good impression on these people, and I want to look the part, but I don't want to spend a fortune on clothes I'm simply not going to be able to wear in two or three more months. So I've been putting that off all week... I'm caught somewhere between a 2xl and a 3xl for shirts, and I don't know what to do. Buy the 2x and look like an asshole for a little bit? Buy the 3x and flush some money, then go shopping again in a couple months? Buy only like... two shirts and make it work? Ehh... probably not that. And then there's the slacks...

So I don't want to go shopping. I don't want to go shopping because somewhere along the way I found my hope again. And that hope has transformed into effort and hard work. I no longer hope that I'll lose the weight. I now know that I will. I've rejected the idea that I'm a fattie for life. So buying the 3x shirt is tantamount to buying back the unhappiness, the embarassment, the life I've decided to leave behind.

Goddamn hope is expensive. :-D