This morning, I had an MRI to find out if I have a brain and if there’s anything wrong with it.  A scheduled ultrasound to make the same determination as to my liver had to be postponed because nobody told me to fast — and I didn’t!  But the MRI was the more critical test of the two, and it’s done.  I either have something seriously wrong or not; and we’ll know in “3 to 5 business days”.

As I re-dressed in my street clothes, I chanced to see my form in a full-length mirror.  My gosh, I’m thin, I thought.  I cast my memory back to February of 2008, when a young orthopedic doctor admonished me about my weight gain, saying, When we gave you that artificial knee, you weighed 115.  You weigh 172 now, Ms. Corley; that knee can’t take anything over about 135.  Who knew?

While I didn’t know that artificial joints of that vintage were weight-rated, I certainly knew that my lily-white spastic legs suffered from any excess poundage.  I understood the situational sadness that had sent me to the cupboard, fridge and vending machine time after time until my 5-3 frame held over 170 pounds.  I watched my body go from a size 2 to a size 16.  When even the 16s felt tight, I started wearing loose-fitting dresses which I thought hid my bulk but really just accentuated it.

On March 1, 2008, I started on a sensible diet.  It had just two rules:  Eat less; move more.  While I can’t do much in the way of serious exercise, I could and did pursue the adaptive yoga techniques of Peggy Cappy.  I had a headstart on that front: My first physical therapist had been a yoga instructor also, and though I’d abandoned the discipline, its principles felt familiar.

By January of 2011, I had gotten down to a size zero and my doctor’s eyebrows raised as he suggested, mildly, that possibly I might have lost just a tad too much.

I’m back to a 2, now.  While size might be “just a number”, in reality, I’m very small-framed and I have weak legs, which fare better with less burden.  I eat healthy food (except that quick McD sammy that prevented the ultrasound and now sits like a brick in my stomach) and don’t drink alcohol.  I still do stretches and use a HealthRider for a bit of cardio, pushing its benefits as far as my long-ago dislocated and now-arthritic hip will allow.

I don’t feel “skinny” and I think, even though I was only heavy for three or four years, that my body image until today had still been allied with that chunky, middle-aged, dowdy divorced woman who felt miserably unsuccessful.  Whatever else I might know, or learn, or realize, today I faced the fact that my weight matches my body’s design.  I have small wrists and a narrow carriage.  I’m supposed to be this size.  And I am.  I’m not fat; I’m not ‘too thin’.  I finally cast off the perception of myself as fat and unattractive, after that long, telling look in the sterile mirror at St. Luke’s Outpatient Imagery.

Another woman, with a larger frame, might be perfect at 150.  For me, it’s 110.  My size.  Five foot three, 110 lbs, size 2.  I stood in front of that mirror and realized that I felt light, light as sunshine, and in serious danger of drifting away, into the sky, to dance among the clouds.

Peggy Cappy’s Website