Change of a Dress

What a difference a dress makes.

All week I've been hiding out/slobbing around in my workout clothes or a maxidress, the latter of which, I was pretty sure, was the only dress I own that fits.

But yesterday I tried on a dress I wore a couple of weeks ago – including at the beginning of my time in London – and it fit. It is almost as forgiving as the maxidress, so I'm not 100 percent sure it didn't fit last week. All I know is that the last time I wore it it was a struggle to zip it, and when I binged that night, I thought I would bust the fitted waistline.

There is something to me that seems symbolic about fitting back into a dress, even if it's just one. I know I have written before about fearing I will never be able to stop eating, but I had not done anything like what I did in London since before late November 2006, when I began the journey that would bring me to lose nearly 100 pounds. I did binge my way through the TomKat wedding and then Thanksgiving in Italy, but really, the ceaseless London bingeing reminded me of the two weeks I spent at the Venice film festival in August/September 2005, when I put on nearly two sizes and didn't stop eating until I regained all the weight I'd lost sometime in 2004-early 2005.

I don't remember what I was doing in those days – presumably I would wake up after each binge hoping to diet, whereas these days, I am just trying not to binge. Nor can I remember if I ever scraped a day or two of healthy eating together – and at what point I gave in and grudgingly bought larger-sized clothes, just looking for anything that I was pretty sure would fit and get me out of the shop in minimal time. (And if it didn't fit in the size I'd decided I was, I definitely would not buy the next size up.) I hated the clothes and I hated myself for having to buy them and wear them.

I like this extra dress that fits me now. And luckily, it's a dress that can go anywhere, as my grandmother would say – I can wear it to a meeting or out at night. So I don't need to hide, which means lying about why I can't do things... which makes me feel crummy, and which may well make me binge.

Once upon a time I never wore that dress – I bought it in Venice in 2009, I believe, where half of it was supposed to be a birthday present from BN2. (He never paid me.) I brought it to my grandmother's apartment – I think I thought it needed tailoring – and promptly left it there. I didn't rediscover it until this past December, when my sister and I went to my grandmother's to start cleaning the place out.

I started wearing it this summer, hoping for happy memories bright enough to blot out the dress's sad origins in the wreckage of a disastrous relationship that never should have been rekindled, as it was, to some extent, in Venice. Yes, I wore the dress in June the night I met the Italian psychotherapist (did I blog about him?) who rode the wrong train home from a party to get my number. (Alas, that is now the best I have to say about him.) But now the dress will be, I hope, a talisman – and a very fitting reminder that bingeing doesn't have to be forever.

Day eight.