Damaged Goods

For so long I felt that I stood basically alone in the knowledge that I was indeed damaged goods.  Silence and secrets kept that certain knowledge from ever being questioned or challenged. I learned young that we are to keep our family secrets hidden, that nothing good could ever come by letting anyone know your situation.  Unspoken messages proclaimed loudly that we are best viewed as wallflowers.  I mean actually who really inspects wallpaper closely, it is something to be viewed and appreciated from afar.  Best to make sure that people only saw enough of you to recognize and appreciate the flower that bloomed for all to see, never looking to see the bent and broken stem held up with duct tape and a prayer.

How often do we really inspect those around us for damaged root systems?  Especially children.  And at the root of who we are, do we really ever grow past being children on the inside? Along with the lesson of not speaking that which was by nature unspeakable, the lesson of duck and weave was embedded with force, with each blunt blow to the trunk of my body and the very occasional blow to the face, I learned to duck those that might ask questions and weave from the eyes of those that might view the residual damage.  The internal bruises were mine, they were kept clearly out of the vision of all, mostly even to myself.  Or so I thought.

For as long as I can remember food never assaulted me, never questioned me with impenetrable stares, refused to ask of me more than I could give.  Food soothed my cuts, calmed my fears, shielded me from anticipation for the next episode. Food offered up to me solace from the world. Comfort for another day.  Then food itself turned on me.  Long ago the concrete source of my abuse was removed, age and distance saw an end to the physical but honestly any abused person can attest that we tend to pick up where the abuser ends, continuing the berating, the belittling, keeping the recording of abuse playing long after the music stops.  Yes, food, the fickle friend, decided to bestow upon me many weight related maladies.

High blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, the constant threat of diabetes, pounding at my door.  But the worst part of all with dance with food was that she told the story of our affair.  I never had to open my mouth to utter words, simply open it to dine on her lies and deceit. She promised me fluffy bites of sweetness, crunchy morsels of saltiness, cold cool drinks of liquid sweetness, she seduced me completely and I allowed it.  I bought the lies that she sold and she left the tail tale signs all over my hips, my waist, my bosoms.  We sinned in private but she revealed our relationship in public, eventually forcing me to become reclusive.  She won out...or so she thought.

The day that I made the decision to severe my ties with food's glutinous promises, was the day I freed myself from my self inflicted prison.  As I walked to the operating room, I stripped her of her power, the surgeon severed any future hope she had of keeping me captive.

We do somehow survive our past, we do find ways to comfort ourselves, in time we hope to thrive...but in the meantime we find a way to inspect our damage, speak of that which we only believed to be unspeakable. If we are lucky,  we discover others that plant seeds of hope within, those that accept us for who and what we are, that see our past our damaged places to find what we too can offer to the world.  We find our station in life.

Alone Again...Naturally

Not so very long ago I dreaded being alone, that is where I did most of my eating.  My children have now all flown away and my husband is married to his job.  I spent many a day, week, month or year pretty much alone anyway, even surrounded by my family I kept alone, well within the confines of those walls that I so meticulously built. Growing up in constant abuse teaches one to  keep quiet and do your best to blend.  It was my desire always to be a wallflower, never dreaming of grand plans, never desiring the best of life, just learning to hope for enough.

I am blessed to have found a husband that truly does accept me for who I am, not asking more of me than I can give.  He has certainly lived through some pretty bleak times with me and never wavered in his commitment to me or our marriage. He too has walls, tall ones with some pretty sturdy material that even after 25 years of marriage I have not managed to weaken.  Seeing him through the years never feel good enough has caused me a great deal of pain but strangely enough it has of late taught me not to do the same.  His constant feelings of inferiority have been overshadowed only by my own.  As this surgery has given me fresh perspective and renewed hope I now see that these feelings are overdue to be challenged.

Now seeing my father as a lost and scared individual causes me to revisit my abuse and recognize it in a different light.  There isn't an excuse for abusing a helpless child, there never will be, but now as an adult it is easier to view the experience as being perpetrated by a sick individual whose own personal needs were never addressed and met.  Gone is the hate that once firmly gripped me, gone is the terrified girl that so often hid in a closet praying to escape that days beating.

We come here alone, we leave here alone, we gather experiences, hopes, enlightenment and if we are lucky we gather peace.  So at this junction I can say proudly that being alone is no longer scary, it is no longer something to fear.  Alone is where I now recharge, it is where I listen, it is where nature whispers to me, it is where I have begun to disassemble all the walls that have for so many years protected yet prevented me from living.  As my years of fat begin to melt something new and exciting is emerging, I can't wait to get to know that lady in the mirror a little better...alone, naturally.

Surviving a Stall

Since my WLS I have spent a great deal of time researching, reading and learning.  EVERY person that loses weight goes through the dreaded stall.  I had my first post surgical stall at three weeks and it lasted for three weeks.  I have found that this time frame seems to be a commonly heard complaint by many in the surgical weight loss community.  Because of this knowledge the fear commonly associated seemed to be tolerable.  Fast forward three months...the pasts three weeks have been quite trying because in addition to not losing I have also not seen any non-scale victories either.  This has been a challenging few weeks.

I have convinced myself over and over these past three weeks that indeed this isn't going to work for me.  Going so far as to make peace with my still overweight but greatly more comfortable girth.  I had settled in on the mind set that I can walk more comfortably, wear more clothes, bend over without pain, do household chores with greater ease, basically the brainwashing from within was in full overdrive.  BUT yesterday I dropped a pound...no excitement was to be as flukes happen all the time.  THEN this morning I dropped yet another pound, the party was early (I was running an early morning errand for my sister) but the dancing in my bathroom was sudden and unexpected.  Since I worked so hard to convince myself to be pleased where I was, the gratification I felt at those two consecutive pounds was more than expected.

So for those of you that are attempting to lose, surgically or otherwise, please believe us when we say that stalls are normal, they are part of the journey, we ALL experience them and you will overcome.  You will forget this advice, you will believe it doesn't apply for you and you will want to throw in the towel.  The good part of a surgical intervention...they attach the towel to you, no longer can you "choose" to throw it in.  With surgery we are all in, everyday, in every situation.  Overeating is no longer an option. Just be sure to take a minute to HALT what you are doing and ask yourself what emotion is causing you to want to overeat... are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired?  Just take an extra minute to identify your feelings and stop eating through them.

Visiting the Valley of life.

As I reread my last entry, I am struck that many may feel it was negative, and we are pushed by society to be positive.  I for one do not believe that we should always be positive, which might surprise many of you that know me personally and find me to be an overwhelmingly positive person.  By in large, I do seek to find the silver lining but learned years ago that to ignore those dark days is to go against who we sometimes are.

We should always question life, question choices, question the status quo. If we don't spend time in the valley we can't truly appreciate the mountain top.  Lately I feel such conflicting emotions stirring within me and find them battling leaving me but a voyeur.  Excitement for my new life and yearning for my old ways are in direct conflict right now.  I am happy beyond explanation yet, fearful beyond description.  Why, if my old choices were what made me so miserable, do I still desire to hold onto reckless emotional eating?

Have I veered so far from rational that I would so strongly cling to this sinking ship, that was my life? Do we ever really abandon who we used to be to adhere fully to our new beings?  Is anyone capable of rewriting the entirety of who they are?  Or do we instead, just chisel a little here and there on our outward persona, giving to others the illusion of change, all the while keeping our true selves hidden?

Once many years ago, during a short period of profound depression,  my husband told me to quit being sad.  Confused I pressed for understanding for this quite previously unheard of concept of "stopping" how I feel.  He said to pretend to be happy until I was happy or least let others see me as so.  This was beyond my scope of understanding for, while I had no trouble "faking" my emotional state for the general population, being someone or something that I wasn't never occurred to me within the confines of those with whom I gave and received love and comfort.  He again, reiterated that he didn't want or like to see me sad and that he would prefer that I "be" happy around him.  In that moment I felt something I never thought I would feel, not from him, I felt that he too like so many before him, did not accept me as I was.  I am sure this was fleeting moment for him, one which most likely has no recollection, but for me it is emblazoned in my memory banks.  No longer could I naively cleave to him with the full knowledge that he accepted me fully as I was, he became part of the masses that day, I wonder sometimes if that level of naivety and trust will ever be a part of my life again.

Mirror mirror on the wall...

Change is ever-present.  To stay the same is to regress, yet here I am.  Fear grips me, but I don't know the core of my fear.  Food has always allowed me to repress my feelings, my thoughts, my fears and here I am stripped of my best friend, my constant companion, I stand now naked from the world of feelings, thoughts and fears.  Where do I turn, what do I do, who am I now?

I stand before the mirror that is my life right now and recognize nothing.  Fear freezes me, suffocates me from within, unable to move, forward or backwards I am left with nothing, I hope nothing, I plan nothing, I do nothing.  The calendar moves but forgets to take me with it, I see the clock clicking away, marching forward but I do not feel the passage of time.

Where to go?  What to do? When to do it?  Some days I just sit and feel the rise and fall of my chest, why have I come so far, just to exist?  I have hidden so long under the cloak of fat that I have forgotten...