As someone who was once in exactly the situation you describe, your post almost made me cry. Whenever I read posts on the forum written by people complaining that they need to shop in the plus size department, I realize they don't have a clue how lucky they are. It's all relative, isn't it? When I started I also had to buy all my clothes from catalogues. Being able to shop in a store is a wonderful milestone.

I remember one day over a year ago, walking into a plus size department and realizing that I could wear the size 24s and 26s. I must have tried on half the department (it felt so good to be able to try on clothes and not just pick them out from a picture in a catalogue). A salesperson came over to me and said something sympathetically about the difficulty of finding clothes in a large size. She didn't have a clue that I was trying them on not because I was dissatisfied with the selection and how I looked in the clothes, but because I was so thrilled to have any selection at all!