You used to get excited for special occasions.

You’d go shopping several days in advance. You’d spend the entire day rummaging Nordstrom’s Rack, Anthropologie, Free People, and, for a fleeting time Urban Outfitters. You started with the shoes—always something with a strap around the ankle and a wedge. You then found the dress. Something vibrant and above the knees, preferably halter or strapless. Complimentary hoops and lipstick came last.

You have twenty pairs of hoops and ten shades of red lipstick, but you don’t wear them anymore. You don’t go shopping anymore either. Now you scan your closet for a dress that fits. You settle on a long-sleeved tunic that drapes just below the knees. The rest of your dresses are sprawled across the floor. Shoes and accessories are moot at this point.

Your husband walks around singing “I’m so hot for you.” This makes you mad. You know this is crazy.

In the past you rarely wore make-up. Now you’re on your third Mac concealer. If you bring six back, you’ll get a free lipstick of your choice! This is a thing in your life now.

You’ve tried several diets, and they worked well enough while you were doing them. It felt good to see progress, but eventually your weight loss plateaued. You didn’t like turning down the butter chicken, homemade scones, or the Clover Club, which in your mind were all celebratory, because every gathering is. You didn’t like turning them down, not because you wanted to savor them—which you did—but because you wanted to fully participate in those moments with the people you loved. While you were calculating, counting, and running through lists of ingredients in your mind, you missed the cheers, so you stopped.

At some point a formula of the likes of E=mc2 emerged, E being your net weight, m being the length of the failed diet, and c being the number of times you flogged yourself in the mirror for not looking like Natalie Portman.

You scrolled through your news feed, past click-bait pictures of obese women with knobby husbands and taglines that read “You won’t believe what she did to save her marriage!” You stopped to wonder if “obese” was still a socially acceptable word. You passed a picture of a twelve-year-old in a bikini and felt jealous. You flogged yourself some more and tried to remember the last time you wore a bikini. You were twelve.

You read an article that argued fitness success is more likely to come from doing physical activities you enjoy. While this should have struck you as common sense, it didn’t. You vowed to stop dieting and enroll in a master’s swimming program. You found an open-water event and committed to signing up.

You ate a Wing Stop ten-drum combo, after which you were so uncomfortably full you laid on the couch and watched a marathon of MTV’s The Challenge. You told yourself you still had time to sign up. You ate a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and threw up an hour later. You rationalized everything was okay so long as you didn’t stick your finger down your throat. You didn’t sign up, but you didn’t sweat it. Tomorrow you said. There’s always tomorrow.