Clothes Problems and the Land of Chafe

I am having trouble with clothes.

You'd think after having so much taken off the front of the chassis, my body would be a different size and weight. Instead, those stats are the same, but packaged in a completely different shape. I used to be an upside-down triangle (widest at the top, point at my feet), now I'm right-side up (apex at my head, base at my hips). I've discovered that all these years, I had a big fat stomach lurking underneath that big shelf on the top. Who knew? I never saw it, and Bill assures me that no one else did either. Now it sticks out beyond the small foothills of my new chest, like a massive mountain in the distance. Sheesh.

Bras continue to be a pain and a challenge. Ace bandages ride up or fall down and always wind up pinching. I buy and try about 4 different bras per day, take them back the next day and start over again. They all rub and chafe and bind. Sleep bras, sport bras, soft cup, no cup--I have yet to find something that doesn't burn or constrict after about an hour. So I change them, over and over, all day long.

Just when I thought I was going to burst into flames yesterday from the fire underneath my latest trial undergarment, relief arrived via UPS--Kellie sent me some lotion with melaleuca oil in it, and I almost wept with gratitude. Ahhhhhhh. Deliverance from the Land of Chafe at last!

I notice every woman's bustline for the first time in my life. I look at clothes in a catalog, outfits on women in stores, costumes in the movies. I gauge them all with a critical eye of "could I wear that now?" or "nope, that probably won't work on the new bod." I have no accurate mental template of my real body image anymore--my head still thinks it's the old shape and form, and it doesn't match reality in the mirror at all. It's a bit like being a teenager all over again, trying to find out what looks good and what doesn't on my particular body type. After years of finally figuring out what I can wear that will make me look sexy, or thinner or businesslike or just plain decent, I don't know what works anymore. My old shirts and pants fit, but they don't hang right--the eye is drawn to the middle of me, and I just look WIDE in the middle. I no longer have the luxury of hiding my abdomen of any size in the shadowlands underneath the overhang of my bustline. My hips no longer look small by comparison. I've been excavated and engineered, and it's mighty weird, like visiting a familar corner that's been bulldozed for a new strip mall. I don't know my way around this new landscape yet.

I thought I was going to be able to wear things that I never have been able to get away with in the past because of my over-large "bowsprit." Instead, I'm confused and style-challenged. I won't be able to do deep necklines because of the puckering and scarring in my cleavage, so that's out. I'm going to have to figure out how to minimize my big stomach and hips instead of my bust. Clingy shirts look great with these new perky, above-elbow breasts, but clingy means I'm going to have to learn to suck in my gut. Or get a girdle, for crying out loud. Do they even make those anymore? Maybe I'm going to end up being a naked hermit up on my mountaintop, simply because I can't figure out what to wear to town?

So, it's a challenge. A new project, even. When I get my energy back, I'll go shopping in earnest and figure out the parameters of this new body and how it fits into the universe of clothes. I wonder if a whole new wardrobe is a justifiable medical expense?