rissabug84
getting to know myself...
Jan 24, 2010
Wow.. I can't believe that I have been signed up to this site since before my surgery and only now am starting to enter my information and become more of an active member...
Last week was my six month "surgiversary" and I was also able to reach my goal of losing 100lbs on the same date.. I had been thinking for the last little while about how much I realize now that I want to share my story and try to give advice and provide support to anyone that wants it.. Though most of you don't know it this website was extremely helpful to me when it came to the decision of having WLS and the following through of it... for me it was scary in a different sense because I went to Chile to have a Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy and chose to stay with relatives for 6months (that in itself took a lot of getting used to) but having people who's stories were so inspirational and who I could follow when I started having the "Have i lost my mind?????!!!!?!?!!" thoughts and the lonely feelings and the homesick feelings this was where I turned to. So, to all you who don't know me but have been brave enough to share your story and your journey I want to say thank you for being there for me (even if you didn't know it).
I don't think that my story is much different from anyone else's but I think that they are all rooted in the same reasonings. I was always a big-ger kid and I had a tough life with a physically & verbally abusive dad and I never seem to get over those not good enough feelings. I was always the really good friend who did everything for everyone and I was always the afterthought in my own life. Once reaching my highest last year at 306lbs - I was forced out of my self-loathing bubble and forced to see people who I hadn't seen in several years when I had to go to my grandfather's funeral in Chile. Beyond the deep sadness I felt for the great man who had spent a lot of my life loving me from afar and always worrying about me when he would talk to my mom on the phone; there was the disgust of barely fitting in the airplane seat and having to share my sister's fold-down tray on the plane because mine couldn't come down past my stomach and the agony of trying to find clothes to wear which I think I have been experiencing since I was 7. Taking a step away for 5 days to see my life from an outsider's perspective was scary. . I was weighing the heaviest I ever had, I had alienated all my friends because I was ashamed of the way I looked, I was working for a company that was hemorraging money like it was nobody's business and I was the girl who people were calling the hunt down money that the company didn't have. Then there was the fear of going to Chile and my extended family seeing me and worrying what they would say - so with taking a few deep breaths I walked into my grandpa's house and ready for criticism what met me was shocking - LOVE so much love and hugs and kisses that I didn't know how to react. Later that evening after all the obligatory functions that come with a death in the family I began thinking..what was wrong with my thinking??? Why did all these people love me so much with no question or criticism yet I couldn't do that for myself??? Why was I allowing myself to the so-called whipping boy for a company that I was only an employee of?? Why wasn't worth it or deserving of all this love that my family was showing me??? I got home from that trip to Chile and made some calls to family and was recommended a surgeon close to where some of my family lives and there began my journey to figure out who this 25 year old stranger was that was staring back at me in the mirror...
I will write more but I realize that even to write it out this far is very emotionally draining and therapeutic at the same time....
