The big question... What size am I?

Last night after a day of constantly pulling my jeans up I went through my "skinny" clothes in my wardrobe to see if one of my many other pairs of jeans would do up.

I sorted them in size as I have a few different sizes and tried the 18's on first as this was the size of the ones I am now trying to keep up. I had one other size 18 jeans and 3/4 pants so I pulled them out and tried them on. Well the 3/4 pants would barely go over my ass but not to be disappointed I tried on the jeans and these were worse.

I still kept looking though as I knew there was a pair of jeans there somewhere that would be close to fitting as I was trying to get into them a couple of years ago when I was about this weight. I even found clothes I had forgotten I had!

Anyway long story short I finally found a pair that pulled up and did up even. They are still a tad too tight but they do up and gives me something new to achieve. And these are a size 16! How can the sizes be so very different? These jeans are a stretchier material than the others but still. It just doesn't make any sense.

I have other clothes that are a bigger size and I couldn't even get them up my legs. It makes it so hard when you go shopping and it gets you down when you know you are normally an 18 but you have to buy a 22 to get it to fit. I have so many different sizes in my wardrobe now that I can fit into and they range from a 16 to a 22. How do I know what size I am? How do you? How can sizes differ so much between shops? Isn't each size the same measurements everywhere?

So many questions and no answer. On the upside though I think it is just about time to retire my current pair of jeans as I can pull them off without undoing them now.