Shoe closet revisited

This weekend I finally tackled a task I had been procrastinating about.
I did do a round of decluttering my shoe closet in the spring already, but that time, there were several pairs that were either not loose enough yet or "too good to toss".
I had talked myself into keeping them by saying, I could always wear these with thick socks. Back then, that even worked, sort of.
But during the last weeks, I found myself avoiding those shoes, and when I wore them, socks or not, I found my feet floating around in them, sliding sideways and forward, with the heels flopping around with every step.
Conclusion? I have lost volume in my feet, too.
So, this weekend, I pulled out all of these candidates and put them into a big trashbag to take to donation.
First, of course, I tried on several pairs of them one last time.
Doing so helped me in getting several things very clear.
First of all, I am really down one and a half shoe sizes. Keeping the bigger shoes and wearing them only hurts my feet, apart from looking frumpy.
The second insight had to do with a pair of high-heeled mules I had bought in the first euphoria of weight loss.
As a teen and twen, I always wore shoes that had at least five to six centimeter heels. I had to quit doing so when I got too heavy to walk in them. And I had always imagined that I would wear them again if ever I were to lose enough weight. So, when I saw those high-heeled beauties (they had a somewhat wider heel, so I thought I´d be having enough support in them), I just had to have them.
But when I wore them for a full day the first time, my ankles hurt the day after. So, I thought I wasn´t thin enough yet to wear them. Back into the closet they went.
Yesterday, I tried them on and- found my feet sliding around in them, and I found that the arch of my foot hurt after just a few steps. I don´t know if there is any damage internally to my feet from the weight they have been carrying for so long, but like it or not, I´ll likely never again be able to comfortably wear shoes with a bigger than four centimeter heel.
It was one of those senior moments. The realization that my body, even when the excess weight is coming off, will retain some of the damage done by overload and time. The realization, too, that the interior image I have of a slim me is badly dated. At my age, I won´t be able to wear the things I thought I would be able to if only I were slim.
Most of them have been decluttered a long time ago, anyway. But even when I threw them out, I still believed there´d be others just like them.
It was almost as if there was a stored version of a younger me, complete with clothes, heels and lifestyle, inside my mind that was just waiting to be reloaded.
But life doesn´t work like that. I have changed. My life circumstances have changed. My job has changed. My body has changed.
It´s time to put that other version of me to rest. I wouldn´t want to have to go through the things that she went through again. So why should I bring her back? I won´t get a mulligan either. No chance to do it over knowing what I know now.
What I can do is accept that my life is different now. Actually, it´s a lot better than back then. I don´t need to perch on impossibly high heels any more just because they made me look taller and slimmer. I have found that respect doesn´t have to depend on having that long-legged tall slim look I tried to achieve. Nor does it depend on wearing the most garish makeup, or the wildest hairdo.
These days, I never wear make-up any more, I keep my hair cropped short in its natural pewter color, and in my low-heeled shoes, I have to look up to see a lot of people straight in the eye. The stick-on long fingernails have long gone to be replaced by plain old short nature.
I spend no more time and  money on faking something that I am no more, and have never been. And what I save that way I can spend on being with DH and experiencing life with him. Life in the here and now.



Julia