This is the post I was telling you about last week, which I cannot quite believe I have just posted.

What you are seeing here is my first bikini.  Ever.

It has been worn one time, in my backyard.  It is not likely to make its public debut anytime soon.  I did also buy the matching tankini top and I feel pretty good about how I look in that.  Which may be the first time since I was too young to think about such things that I've been able to say that I felt good about how I looked in any sort of swimwear.  So perhaps the bikini's time has not yet come, but progress has happened.

I weigh, right now, about what I weighed when I was fifteen.  I only know this because, for some reason, I remember how much I weighed when applying for my first driver's license and how much I lied about my weight to make it less since they used to actually print this information on your license.  The funny thing is that my current goal is the weight that was on that first license.  It's my goal because I think I have about that much fat left to lose, not because it is what my fifteen year-old self wanted to weigh.  But there would be some satisfaction in that as well, since it feels like, in a lot of ways, I still carry that fifteen year-old self around with me.

It's about ten pounds that I'd like to still lose to feel bikini-ready.  If these ten pounds were just equally distributed, that would not be a big prohibitive thing.  But they are all clinging tightly together in one spot right around my middle.  These are the Spartan Warriors of fat cells.  They are Indigo Montoya.  They will not be moved.

On the other hand, I weigh, right now, about twenty pounds less than I have weighed for most of my adult life.  Probably about thirty pounds less than I have weighed at a couple of points.  I don't know exactly since I used to think that it would be really bad for me to own a scale.  This was a mistake on my part.  Yes, it is bad to be all about numbers and I would be perfectly happy to weigh more if more of my weight were in muscle.  But it has been deeply satisfying in the past year to see that number go down.  And I have to think that I would never have hit that thirty over point if I had realized at the time that I was gaining that much.  It was always later, seeing pictures of myself that I realized it had happened.  Since most of my clothes come from Old Navy, it always seemed perfectly valid to think that they were probably just shrinking.

I don't think my mental picture of how I look has caught up with reality yet.  In fact, it was not that long ago that I saw something on MSN about how to dress for a plus size figure and I almost clicked on it.  I have never worn a plus size, but my thinking was that I'd get some tips on how to hide things.  What a former co-worker called "pockets of nastiness".  I had to remind myself that I don't have to think that way anymore.  But I really believe that no matter how much weight I lose or how long I keep it off, there will always be a part of me that thinks of myself as a fat girl.  You live with it long enough, it becomes a part of your identity.  Which is really sad, I think.

I wonder whether, on some level, staying a little bit overweight wasn't subconsciously part of what has been, at times, my all-consuming need to just blend.  After all, the average American woman is either a size 12 or 14, depending on your source.  I'm not average anymore.  When a table of guys at Chipotle stops eating to watch me walk by, I know I should be flattered but I still don't really know what to do with that.  Maybe people looked at me before and I didn't notice.  Maybe I didn't want to notice because I assumed that they were thinking bad things.  I honestly don't know.

I watched The Holiday this weekend, and I know you're not supposed to take profound things away from romantic comedies, but there was one part that really struck me.  Kate Winslet is having dinner with an elderly former screenwriter who tells her, "in the movies, we have leading ladies and we have the best friend.  You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend."  And Kate Winslet replies, "You are so right!  You're supposed to be the leading lady in your own life, for God's sake!"

I think I'd like to try that.  I'd like to stop letting my insecurities rule me and stop playing the best friend and be ok with people looking directly at me.  I have no idea how I will do this.  But I think I owe it to myself - fifteen year-old self included - to try.