I enter, confident, with an armful of button-down shirts and blue jeans. I take off my current clothes and pile them in a heap in the corner. I start with a shirt, because that should be the easy thing to do, and also I don’t have to take off my undershirt for this and can spare myself my own grotesque reflection, but of course, I can only button the first few buttons before things start to strain and I can hear the tiny sweatshop children who sewed these seams together start to cry. I give up on the entire pile of shirts, because if one doesn’t fit, they all probably don’t fit, and nothing matters anymore. I start putting on a pair of pants in the same size I bought my last pants in only a few months earlier, but my bulbous calves barely fit past the part that should hold my entire thigh. I’m hopping on one foot and grasping at the curtains, because that’s what dressing rooms are these days, curtains instead of walls so you have nothing solid to hold on to when you need to lean against something and cry. At this point, I’m stuck inside the pants, my entire leg is sweating from ankle to crotch, my back is dripping, and my glasses are falling from my face. I can hear the sales associate shuffling uncomfortably on the other side of the curtain, because that’s the thing about curtains instead of doors, they don’t really muffle your screams, especially since they always leave a gap sizable enough for a little girl standing nearby to witness you bouncing haplessly in your underwear. “Is everything OK in there?” the sales associate is asking. “Do you need any help?” Which is not a question you want someone asking when you’re trying on pants. “NO, I GOT IT,” I shout back at her. “YOUR CLOTHES ARE JUST THE DEVIL.” And then I finally break free, ripping the pants at the seam and coughing as loud as I can to cover the sound of the fabric tearing in distress. When I finally open the curtain and step outside, back in the potato sack I walked in wearing, I look like I’ve just taken a shower, and the sales associate asks if I’d like to sit down for a minute and drink a bottle of water, or perhaps dab myself with a beach towel. I politely decline, and before they have a chance to convince me that I didn’t try squeezing hard enough, I run out of the store, knocking down a stack of T-shirts on the way out.

It should go without saying that none of this is hypothetical. Which is why I not only avoid dressing rooms, but avoid purchasing new clothes altogether.