what do you do when your clothes no longer feel like you?

26 Feb, 2026

twelve expressions (1999), inday cadapan. pastel on watercolor

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

content warning: discussion of an eating disorder & body image issues

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

i have always lived by the fashion philosophy of “if it makes you happy and comfortable, wear it regardless of whether it’s ‘in’ or not.” it’s something that i’ve tried to follow and live by so closely that it’s reached my dad’s friend, who asked him to ask me (because she thinks i’m cool) what i thought about skinny jeans: yay or nay? should she toss it or not? to which my dad replied something along the lines of “she’s always lived by the rule of it don't matter as long as you’re comfy. so if it makes you feel good then keep it but if you start to feel like longganisa¹, junk it.”

i don’t know if i’d say i’m fashionable. i have always tried dress nicely and stick to my guns. i’ve always liked dressing like i popped out of the shoujo manga i used to enjoy, like lovely complex and sugar sugar rune. sometimes i’ll even look to childhood photos to find inspiration for my outfits, but i never boxed myself into only following the 2000s aesthetic. i’ve always just worn what i want depending on how i feel. some days i feel like i listen to tommy february6 and other days i feel like i listen to good ol’ joni. i’ve received compliments on my outfits and have never really had a major issue about my identity in clothes. i’d even go as far as to say that i’ve finally settled into my style; finally found clothes that feel more like home than anything else.

recently, my ninang² handed me some clothes she thought would live better lives in my closet. she parted with them by saying “so you finally look like your age,” to which i’d asked my mom, who had been with me when this happened, what she meant. my mom says that my ninang had told her that some of my clothes make me “look old.”

i had already been having a rough month. i started off the year with a major case of january blues that i still haven’t managed to shake off. i was close to relapsing into my eating disorder, wasn’t getting out of bed until noon, wasn’t really functioning until evening. even then, that had been some halfhearted form of function. so naturally, hearing this, i started to spiral. i conferred with my council and consulted my dad. i stressed and was comforted. my ninang has always been careless with her words.

a comment from her roughly fourteen years ago set me off on my exhausting journey with anorexia-bulimia; an ongoing battle that i seem to be mostly losing this year.

i won’t say what my best friends called her, but the general consensus was that she was insane and in the wrong. she has an inflated sense of self. i don’t look older with my clothes. in fact, i look just fine—young, even.

gabby likes to use the fact that a sixteen year old had struck up a conversation with me last year³, leading to a now-unforgettable moment that my friends and family will not let me live down for the foreseeable future, to argue with my ninang’s statement.

i slept over it and forgot about what she’d said.

or at least i thought i did.

last saturday, i was dressing up to join my dad in makati. he goes to therapy and i muck around the area. i put in my foam rollers last night for no reason aside from the fact that i wanted curly hair. my outfit had been pieced together in my mind yesterday while listening to both joni mitchell and carole king. it isn’t anything crazy: jeans from the last collection of a long-running ines de fressange and uniqlo collaboration, a green linen top i’d nicked from my grandmother’s closet, and my favourite flip flops. i thought of wearing a bandana, but it didn’t work too well with my curled hair, but my outfit’s cute, simple. it’s still got the pop of colour that many associate with me.

i couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. there is a voice in my head telling me i look old.

i’d barged into my dad’s room asking him if i look old. he said no. my hair was funky, but it wasn’t bad. he agreed that i looked nice, but now my clothes do not feel like myself and i have no time to get changed, but even if i do, what do i wear?

none of my clothes have been feeling like myself anymore. every time i put something on, i worry about looking old. i worry about how big i look; how my stomach looks in the skirt. how will it look when i eat something? how do my arms sit against my body. they look too big. i need to lose weight.

a comment, given without second thought, has shaken the confidence i worked so hard to build up.

i am twelve again, going through hand me downs, feeling like nothing i own is truly mine.

i feel like throwing everything in my closet out again. all the pieces i carefully curated through instagram resellers, visits to the thrift store, clothes bought in foreign bazaars and boutiques.

recently, i talked to enna about how i’ve stopped paying myself mind in the mirror as of late. just a brief glance to make sure everything is in place and nothing more. sometimes, I’ll refer to my shadow to fix my hair. i feel like if i look at myself too long in the mirror, i’ll keep finding something wrong with my outfit, or maybe i’ll morph into a monster in my mirror, body dysmorphia chasing me down again and again, never giving break to the chase. i told them that i have only worn the dress i got in taiwan maybe once or twice since bringing it home.

enna said something about how they couldn’t believe i’m not wearing a dress that feels like it was made for me and that the back would look even better now that i have a new tattoo.

i said that i wasn’t wearing it because the Evil Worm in My Brain was telling me i looked bigger than i am. something about how the loose fabric falls on my body; how my breasts make it hang awkwardly, giving me an unflattering silhouette.

i feel so exhausted. i’ve been arguing with my own body and mind for the last fourteen years. i’ve suffered from an eating disorder longer than i’ve lived without one.

to a degree, i know that i should have built thicker skin by now—have learned to let things go in one ear and out the other, but it is harder to do than it is to say. i think there’s a part of me that wants to play the ever so amiable monkey, star of the circus called “my strained relationship with my mother and her sister.”

in joan didion’s “notes to john,” her therapist says something about how children who don’t grow up stay angry at their parents but they can’t show it because they need their love. they don’t feel secure without it. i think this applies to me. there is some part of me, some sad little dog, who can’t afford to lose any form of maternal love, no matter how horrible it is. not that i would ever consider my ninang my mother (my mom has her own set of faults, but i feel like that’s another post in the making).

i wore the blouse that triggered this whole affair to my parents’ wedding anniversary dinner. it was at a good, somewhat fancy restaurant. the food was good, but i couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. my clothes felt like they were digging into my body; that i looked too large for a cropped top like that. that i would leave the dinner with a distended belly and my clothes would look horrible. i didn’t feel like myself that whole evening. i wanted to change, but once again, i ran out of time. but that didn’t even matter because nothing in my closet would alleviate the downspiral i was already setting myself on.

i felt like i looked old. like i was trying too hard to be something i’m not.

the only photo that i liked from that night was the one where i’m stood behind my dad, everything but my head and a little bit of my shoulder sticking out. even then, i look for faults; how my hair looks, how filled out my cheeks seem, how my nose sits on my face. ridiculously stupid things that exhausted my mind so much, i fell asleep in the middle of my shift.

earlier, i talked about how i have been on the verge of a relapse into my eating disorder for a while now. as of writing, i can assure you that i am most certainly back in the throes of it. i’ve lost the joy in eating. earlier today, i looked at the nutrition information of a can of canada dry ginger ale and wondered if the 130 liquid calories is worth it (i was too tired to really think and so i got it out of the fridge anyways. i can tell you that this will all come back to haunt me tonight before i sleep).

how ridiculous it is to be back where i started, all over a simple comment such as “para naman magmukha kang bata.”

i wonder if my mind and body will ever know peace.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚

the carole king song that inspired my outfit from last saturday.

i wish i had more to say. i don't know if this makes any sense or is coherent, but i felt like i had to pour my feelings out somewhere or i'd sink even further.

it's been tough recently. i wanted to start the year with a post about all the books i read last year (a whopping 30), but i was too sad to even get out of bed and eventually wrote something else. i wanted to write new years emails to many people but again, i was too sad.

now i am here, with another heavy blog post. i guess some things never change?

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩