I write often about my quest for long pants. I am now the proud owner of 3 pairs of long-enough jeans, 2 pairs of long-enough dress pants, and one pair of long-enough workout pants. This is a collection which will only grow in size, I am sure. Which, yesterday, led me to an inevitability: getting rid of my now-too-short pants.

My dresser drawers are generally brimming with clothes (depending on how much laundry I have to do), and the bottom two were filled with pants- pants which, with the exception of the aforementioned long pairs, I will probably never wear again. Let’s face it- I’m not going back to walking any time soon. Even if a cure for FA is found in my lifetime (which I’m not expecting), chances are it won’t restore abilities to those of us who have lost them. Even the potential treatments on the horizon aren’t expected to drastically improve an FAer’s condition, only to slow progression or impart minor improvements. It sounds odd to say, “I’ll never see a cure for my disease, so I’m getting rid of my old pants”- but that was kind of my thinking. That, and the fact that I need more space in my bottom drawers for my new, uberlong pants.

So with the help of my mother, who was visiting for the weekend, I packed up all my old, now-too-short pants and dropped them off at one of those clothes donation boxes that are found in random parking lots throughout the city. It was bittersweet, but I feel like I’m making a fresh start- and I’ll never again resort to wearing old, too-short pants on laundry days.