I can’t count how many New Years’ Days I sat on the couch, full and disgusted with myself after weeks of holiday eating and drinking, promising myself that this was the year that I would finally lose weight. Yesterday was an exception. I fear that I’ve at last reached the point where I have no hope, where I don’t believe that I’ll ever lose weight, that promising myself that this year will be different is just another lie.

December was brutal. I realized that most of my clothing no longer fits, and I have neither the money nor the patience to go out and find ones that do. When I attended my boyfriend’s work party a few weeks ago, I stood in front of my closet, half naked and sobbing, because I had nothing to wear.

I decided to pick up a new pair of dark jeans while I was Christmas shopping, thinking that if I paired them with heels and a dressy top that I’d be appropriately dressed for the remaining holiday gatherings. I couldn’t pull up the size 12’s. I could barely button the 14’s. I purchased the 16’s without trying them on. My first pair of size 16 jeans. I stood in line, waiting to pay for them, my face flaming with embarrassment and disgust, fearful that the size 2 goddesses at the Gap would see the size of my jeans and judge me. As if anything they could say to me is any worse than the things that I’m telling myself.

And this morning, I clambered on the scale, body tense, eyes squeezed shut, and braced myself for the number that I would see. Then I saw it. One hundred and ninety pounds. I almost vomited. The fattest I’ve ever been. Every week, it seems, the number representing the “fattest I’ve ever been” keeps getting higher and higher. I fear the worst. Will I hit 200? 210? Will my 5’8” body soon outweigh that of my 6’2” boyfriend?

I feel hopeless. Desolate. The memory of the Skinny Me grows ever farther away. I’m starting to think that I was never thin, never confident, that I never wore that size 6 dress in the back of my closet. I contemplate returning to my old, skinny habits. Purging. Diet pills. Week-long fasts. I remember how my long hair would fall out in the shower. I remember sleeping for 12-hours a day. I remember counting out 20 pretzel sticks and eating them for breakfast, again for lunch, and again for dinner. But I’m too old, too undisciplined, to live on pretzels and Diet Coke.

Despite my utter disgust with myself, I do what I know the thin, healthy me should be doing. I have oatmeal for breakfast with a tablespoon each of walnuts and dried cranberries. I pack a lunch of baby carrots, cucumbers, red and green peppers, and hummus. I fill my Nalgene. I walk to work. I turn down an invitation to a basketball game, knowing that I need to go to the gym rather than to a sporting even where I’ll be surrounded by beer, pizza, and nachos.

But I can’t help but wonder, what’s the point?