The Evil Jean Shorts

TW: eating disorder

She couldn’t see them. She’d buried them at the bottom of her drawer for a reason. At first because winter had fallen, and she no longer needed them. But now, they just laughed at her. They were once her best friend, through and through, these jean shorts. When every other article of clothing snickered behind her back or threatened their seams, they stood by her. Hugged her in the worst of times.

But then last summer came, and she found out that they’d turned on her too. It couldn’t have been that bad of a winter, could it? What had she done to make her trusty favorite cutoffs betray her like this?

She tried on other pairs of pants: stretchy, stiff, corduroy, polyester, denim…hm, maybe a bit snug, but nothing major. She looked in the mirror. The one she’d put out of sight for months for this very reason. She moved it all around the room while she looked at herself in it. She had to make sure there wasn’t any of that “trick of the light” business. With a sigh, she said the shorts had to be a little bit wrong, at the very least. Even as she said the words, she didn’t really believe them.

She was the first person to poke and prod herself. To make judgments on the smallest details of her body. Was that stretch mark there yesterday? She had to be sure. If she wasn’t going to do The Bad Thing again, she wanted to feel some kind of control. Knowing every inch of her imperfect skin was it. Might’ve been better for her body itself, but it was just as toxic for her mind. She knew this, and yet, she didn’t know how to stop. She didn’t know how not to hate herself.

But at least all this time she’d had her shorts to give her confidence. And when someone you trust tells you something’s wrong, you have to listen. She didn’t know they weren’t really her friend anymore, so she took their criticisms as gospel.

And she did something she knew was a bad idea. Not The Bad Thing, but everyone knows the scale is the same as a gateway drug. So she stepped on it, and the number…she’d never seen it that high before. 

But, she insisted to herself, she’d been healthy. She’d been eating fine and working out. How could this have happened?

She swallowed her tears and googled and dug herself deeper into a hole. She wanted to know why even maintaining her size was so goddamn difficult. She, of course, wanted to whittle this number down a bit, but she hadn’t been actively trying to lose weight in a few years. It always led her back to The Bad Thing. No, she was trying to focus on maintaining now. But the scale had pushed her further than that this time.

She fell into a little world of macros and counting and policing again. Not quite The Bad Thing (she promised herself, really and truly, that she wouldn’t do The Bad Thing), but pretty close. And at first, she cried, but then she saw results! For almost two months, she worked and worked and got into a routine. She liked routine. And little by little…

Her good old friend came back to her. Things weren’t quite the same. The trust had been lost, but she could deal with it. Her stomach still clenched  in fear every time she zipped them up. She couldn’t help but analyze the way her thighs looked in them now. But when you’re desperate for something, there’s a lot that can be forgiven.

But the numbers got in her head. Like they always did. Not the scale ones, since she quit that again cold turkey, but the ones on the nutrition labels. The number of steps. The minutes of activity. And she turned them off. She told herself her routine was enough, and she didn’t have to look at them anymore. She got better at working out, and trusted herself to focus on what was good about her life. And nobody could ever talk her out of ice cream, she was sure of that.

Winter came and went, and here she was in the spring again. With the shorts she had graciously let back into her arms. So she put them on and…hm. The fit didn’t seem quite right. They appeared the same, snug with an air of a dark side, but that was just winter talking. So again, she forgave the feeling. Or so she thought.

While she wore them, all she could hear were the snickers of stretch marks and ghosts of scale’s past telling her—insisting—that she would never be the same. She was ugly and unworthy. She could run all she wanted, no amount of cardio could save her from their clutches. These shorts were not only participating in the gossip, but they were leading the charge.

She yelled and screamed and could no longer hold back an avalanche of tears. How could she look at herself in her gym shorts and measly sports bra and feel okay—feel good even!—but these shorts that she used to rely on could have so much negative power over her. They owned her, and no amount of crying could change that. No amount of “why, God, why?” could convince her that it wasn’t her fault at all.

They’d probably snuck into the dryer one laundry day and been swept up by the warmth, but she still couldn’t shake the thought that they’d fit one day and all of a sudden, after months of drawer sitting, they didn’t. It had to be her doing. Her gross self had caused all this.

She knew she should throw them away and buy a new pair. Some friendships are only meant to last so long. The time with these shorts was up. And they weren’t even the stretchy fabric she loved on her other jeans, so couldn’t she just make the leap? 

Because they should fit, because they should fit, because they should fit, she repeated to herself.

It’s hard to make amends with yourself when you’ve spent so much time hating everything about you. Your body, your brain, your interests, your skills. And these things rang in her head so loudly. She didn’t deserve a new pair of shorts. A new friend. Anything that might make her feel better. Because she’d failed herself. Failures don’t get rewarded.

While she cried into her sweats, they whispered to her too. But it wasn’t like all the clothes before. These were…encouraging? That was something new. They’d never really spoken before, just hugged her for warmth and the feeling of home. They reminded her that she loved a little retail therapy. Buy a new pair, they said to her. You know you’ll feel better. Throw out those old cutoffs. They’ve exhausted their welcome.

She knew they were right. They always were. Sweatpants don’t lie. And while she also knew that buying a new pair of shorts wouldn’t solve all her problems, if it could give her some peace of mind, that would be enough for the time being. She reminded herself to stop trying to be someone she once was—after all, it’s not like she was a good person then anyway.

A fresh pair meant forging her path forward. She couldn’t change the past or the way she once treated her body or how much she hated it even yesterday. But tomorrow is always a new day. She’ll make new mistakes, sure, but you can’t learn if you always do everything right. The road is long and the journey tiring, and even though there’s plenty of time to mess things up, there’s just as much time to make amends.