Some days I get into these strange moods and I end up making decisions that I know I will probably regret later.  These might include cutting all of my hair off, or buying two packages of ice cream bars that I will TOTALLY have the willpower to eat just one a day, and/or dry shaving my legs with an old razor because I’m in a hurry.  I’m just saying these might be good examples of what I mean—I’m not copping to anything.

Now that I think about it, “some days” is somewhat of a misnomer.  A more accurate way to start this story is “every day” I get into these strange moods and I end up making decisions that I know I will probably regret later.  Well, tomato/tomato (how do you even write that?) it basically means the same thing: I love making wrong choices.  In fact, I have been known to spend an entire afternoon stressing over which is the best way to drive home after work and then after making a, kind of, solid decision, I inevitably end up getting home late because I found the one street in Denver that has two of its four lanes closed for what looks like nothing. Nothing at all.  Sons of bitches.

As completely annoying as these instances were to me, and to the poor people walking on the sidewalk next to my car when I was completely losing my shit and screaming hell and damnation at the City and County of Denver, I will share with you the worst decision I ever made—and, let me tell you, it was bad.  Now that I think on this a little bit, I’m not quite sure why I’m sharing this information with you.  Let’s just say you have all entered the circle of trust.

I bought a bikini. There, I said it.  Those of you that know me personally probably gasped in surprise and horror and those of you that have yet to know me super well are maybe thinking, “What’s the big deal?”  Well, let me tell you, it is a deal of the biggest fucking kind.  My body is not made for bikinis!  It is made for capris with ten thousand pockets and high-waisted jeans, layers of shirts that cover my big ass and inevitable panty line.  It’s made for swimsuits with attached skirts and bras that are able to carry fifty pound boulders! Some people like to compare their bodies to fruits like pears and apples, but I can’t really roll with that.  I am completely a Mike Wazowski, or the Penguin, or Tweedle Dee AND Dum.  Basically skinny legs with a beach ball balancing on top. That’s the kind of body we are talking about here.

But, damn it, I was in a strange mood that day.  The week before had been really rough on me mentally and I was having a hard time getting back on track.  After re-evaluating my life again (for the 35^th time since January) I felt I had come up with a plan.  Clean eating, exercising every day, not watching The Mindy Project finale three times in one night—I had the perfect map to a perfect René. I felt invigorated, ready to take on the world, and then that flipping advertisement plopped itself right into the middle of my facebook timeline.

I had known that it would be time to invest in another swimsuit for the upcoming summer season and had innocently and half-heartedly spent some random minutes perusing different sites that might help me make the best choice.  It didn’t really dawn on me that once I looked up something on the internet, I would be chased down by advertisers of that product for the rest of my natural life.  Boy, have I learned my lesson well.  Now, not only am I being stalked by the swimsuit company but by another business advertisement campaign with photos of women walking down a country path wearing semi-casual clothes from the waist up, and nothing but incontinence underwear from the waist down.  Sigh. It’s a long story and maybe I’ll talk about it later.  Fucking facebook.

Anyway, after the swimsuit company tracked me down, they had the audacity to share their new line meant for the plus sized woman.  By now we all know that plus sized in the real world means a lot different to people in the modeling and clothing industry.  The featured model was about as plus sized as Kate Winslet in Titanic.  But I fell for it, because I knew this was the self-improvement plan that was going to work.  I was going to rock that bikini, even if I was the only one who was going to see it.

The excitement that I felt towards my new purchase could only be explained by the speed at which I removed the price tags.  Obviously, I did not go to an actual store to track down this wonder of bikini-land (so many things could go wrong) so it was sent to my home in a white, non-descript bag and I jumped on that thing like I was looking at the last $12 dvd player at Walmart on Black Friday.  I held up the two pieces of fabric and decided, “Yep, this is it.” Snip. Snip. Snip.

The boys were immediately sent out of the house on a fool’s errand, while I huffed, puffed and tugged myself into this alien piece of fabric.  I moved over to the full length mirror (what an idiot, am I right?) and basically lost six seconds of my life that I still can’t remember.  I imagine that that music from Psycho was playing in the back-round, because evil was definitely in that room.  Hyperbole?  I think not.  I know the strengths and weakness of my body as well as the next person self-obsessed with their appearance, and I wasn’t expecting to see Brooke Shields, or anything, but holy hell, I sure wasn’t expecting what I got.  Can I staple the tags back on?  Am I wearing underwear right now? They’ll take them back if I tried them on wearing underwear.  Shit.  No one will ever know…

It wasn’t my shiniest moment.  Being such an emotional person sets me up to fail in such spectacularly ways that I hardly even notice them anymore.  But this really crushed me.  Why was Greg married to me? How could I do this to myself?  I can’t wear this in public or private, it would be terrorist act on my community.  But, damn it, I still want a tan stomach. I still want to be brave.  I still want.  Normally this would be the part where I told you I sent the suit back to the company and went on my merry, but I was in a really strange mood that day. Again.  I kept the damn thing.  I kept it in the bottom of my drawers for a good two weeks, but I kept it.  I just had to find my time.

It came on a bright Friday morning when the hubby was at work and my boy was at school and, after peeking through the curtains and scoping out my backyard, most of my neighbors were at work.  I put the suit on under my clothes and headed out to the patio.  Armed with three blankets, one towel, one pillow, one book, and some seriously cute sunglasses, I was ready for the big experiment.  First, the blankets were draped across the patio railings, creating my own cabana and the towel was spread out on the ground squished between the rail and the patio table.  A careless toss of the pillow to the towel and I was all good.  But how to get out of my clothes?

If I were a supermodel, hell, if I was just someone else, I probably would have just shimmied down the pants, stripped off the shirt and plopped down to do my thing. And that of course, that’s exactly what I did, if you consider laying down on my back using my feet to push off my shoes and socks, shimmying off my pants while only lifting my ass off the ground two inches, pulling off my shirt and flopping over to my stomach just doing my thing.  Success!  I was now in a bikini on my back patio.  On my stomach. In a house of blankets. Now what?

Twenty-five minutes later I managed to lay on my back.  Twenty-five agonizing minutes of “Oh shit, is there someone about to mow their lawn?”  “Oh shit, is there someone knocking on the front door?”  “Oh shit, you’re going to take your dog outside now?”  Honestly, the only reason I turned over was because I was hot, my back was burning, and I hated myself for being such a loser.  I had to have some kind of victory.  So I let my inhibitions go, and rolled over.  I’m sure that if someone would have been watching it might have resembled watching a rather well-fed baby turning over for the first time.  I lasted five minutes. I’m a fucking rock star.

As far as victories go, I’m sure this seems like something not even worth mentioning, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that this was a really big deal to me.  I felt like I had climbed Mount Everest, or at the very least really big hill not too far from my house, and no one is going to take it away from me. I love that I met the challenge, but I wish I had never seen myself in the mirror in a bikini. I just don’t. That was the worse decision I ever made. It made me panic and come unglued and it made me de-value myself as a person. There are plenty of other things out in the world lying in wait to make me feel bad—it shouldn’t happen in my own bedroom. I haven’t put the bikini on again since then, but I do think back to that time when I was so bad ass and I know, that when the right conditions are met, I will put it on again. I’m just going to have to get rid of facebook.

© DRB 2015

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