Fall is my favourite season. Not because of the fall colors, the food or all things pumpkin spice, for me, it is about wearing more clothes. Not like I need in the winter when I become a mini Michelin woman but enough to camouflage my roll-y bits. Yes, even at this age of not giving a shit, I still have roll-y bits I am self conscious of. I would rather have them disappear under a cute red and black flannel shirt than be exposed in the glow of summer.

Summer is just too naked for me. It does not lend well to layering unless of course you are layering over the dreaded bathing suit…if of course there is an actual moment of wearing it beyond the dressing room. I have transitioned from shorts to cute little skirts and I am good with that but the bathing suit…. I just can’t. I don’t even own one, at least not until I spent last summer in Italy. I had only been to Italy in the spring and fall so as far as the summer was concerned I had no idea what to pack. Yes, I packed all the wrong things and yes, I did not have a bathing suit to pack even if there was a pool at the castle. 

The summer was hot, hotter than I expected and the clothes in the suitcase were no help. This meant I had to take my American body shopping in a sea full of European women where they don’t grow them as big as me. Yes, my shoe size is a 40, I am sorry I have big feet. Yes, the large is still too small, I have broad shoulders. No, it still does not fit, I am sorry…are we in the teen section?… this can’t be happening. 

Yes, you knew it was coming… bathing suit shopping. It was inevitable, it had to happen, it was hot, there was a pool, all the cool kids were doing it. I was trying to be cool with my American self but it was not going well. 

They said I was in a safe zone. There was no judgement. Nobody cared, nobody was looking. Just BE, wear the bathing suit, wear the bikini, wear the open back shirt. You are in Italy embrace your roll-y bits you will be accepted into the fold. (no pun intended)

I bought the bathing suit, I bought the bikini, I bought the open back shirt. I pushed past my insecurities and was ready to go… or so I thought. I tried to embrace the safe zone, when in Rome as they say, but technically I was in Tuscany not Rome so did the ‘when in Rome’ thing even apply?

Years of being told what I should look like, who I was supposed to be, what was acceptable for my body and what is not is hard to throw away and all of a sudden embrace the roll-y bits. I thought it would be OK, I thought I could push through the years of not measuring up but it was just too difficult. I have my own style, my own way of presenting myself to the world, my own way of being and that did not include a bikini. OK, to be fair, the 5 year old me did wear an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini in a dance recital but that was then and this is now and my 50 year old belly was just not having it. 

I was in the safe zone yet I did not feel safe. Nobody cared, nobody was looking yet if felt quite the opposite. The voices in my head struggled back and forth with all the reasons to wear it and all the reasons not to. I put the bikini on and almost walked to the pool but alas the ‘not to’ voices won out. 

I never did wear that suit by the pool but I think about it all the time. The missed opportunity to ‘be’ without worry or judgement, the only time I would even entertain wearing that suit was gone. Maybe it was the ‘safe zone’, maybe nobody cared, maybe nobody was looking, maybe it was the only opportunity for me to let go of the voices in my head but in the end years of self-consciousness prevailed and now it is the suit that never was.