Acuarela
As a 34 year old woman who was either overweight or obese since as far as I can remember, having weight loss surgery feels monumental. It is not only the process of changing what you see in the mirror, but battling the demons inside your soul and eradicating the mean voices in your head. The voices that have become stronger since I started to gain weight.
For a long time I tried every fad diet in existence. Not necessarily because I felt bad about myself or how I looked, but because everyone else sort of felt bad for me. It seems they had an idea in their head of what a healthy and beautiful me should look like. I look at pictures of myself now and wonder why they thought I was fat. Yes, I was bigger than my size 0 friends but it didn’t really bother me. I remember doing diet pills, acupuncture Jenny Craig and some other things… they all worked but they didn’t last. They would temporarily give me a reprieve from the you have a beautiful face comments that were followed by, you would be gorgeous if you were thinner, but in the end I gained it all back and then some.
Mind you, this is not a blame post. I am just trying to explain what got me to this point. Looking back I think I truly started gaining weight after I graduated high school. If you’re an 80’s or 90’s child and you remember tv programming from that time (Saved by the Bell, California Dreams, Sweet Valley High) my school was as perfect or even more so than Bayside. I was involved in every after-school activity you could imagine, I went to every party because I helped organize dozens of them. Maybe I didn’t dance much at them, but I had fun. I never had a boyfriend, but although I wondered if being larger than a 0 had something to do with it, I was so happy with my friends I didn’t really care.
I lived in a glass bubble and looked at life through rose colored glasses. I was sheltered from the harshness of the real world. I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out when my college experience wasn’t as idyllic as I had imagined it would be. There was no Mike, from the College Years, or fun parties to go to every Friday or Saturday night. There were no late nights in ICQ or weekends drinking and having fun with friends.
I went to a beautiful Baptist College in West Palm Beach that overlooked the Intracoastal. I was raised Catholic so not sharing their beliefs made me feel out of place, not having my mom or my sister to talk to everyday, or anyone telling me when to go to class made me feel lonely. Not having had a true relationship made me feel socially inadequate. I didn’t know how to date, not that anyone was asking me to.
My first night there, the girl assigned as my roommate didn’t stay in our room. The next morning she showed up and told me I had to pack my things and move out. She had spoken to the Resident Advisor and was moving in with her best friend. They had planned it all summer but housing had overlooked their request. So I moved out of my dorm room and was assigned the roommate the other girl had left stranded. We clicked immediately, she was very much like me, and we went out to eat as much as we could. She liked food, she was heavier than I was, and although I didn’t see it at first she was very depressed. Misery loves company, they say.
Needless to say I didn’t last long, I started to feel sick and my parents gave me the chance to return to PR. I worked full-time for my family’s business and I loved it. But I wasn’t social. I didn’t want to see my friends. Every time they invited me somewhere, anywhere, I would make up an excuse. I didn’t want them to know I had “Failed”. Me, the one that had applied to every university she could think of and had all these lofty dreams. I slowly pushed all of them away and disappeared.
A few years went by and I moved to Miami and had my first relationship. I got married and invited a few of my friends, the closest ones. My wedding was perfect, except for my dress. It wasn’t what I had in mind, it wasn’t what I would have picked for myself and I saw it only a week before my wedding. My mom and grandmother had ordered it for me in PR while I was still living in Miami. They described it over the phone and it wasn’t ugly, but it wasn’t me. Thank heavens for green orchids and curly willows, without them I think I would have eloped.
Immediately after the wedding I moved to Argentina for 5 months and I was happy. I cooked everyday for myself and for my husband’s family. I had fresh ingredients at my disposal and I cooked until I couldn’t cook anymore. Then we went back to PR and everything changed. Work, bills, relationship issues, motherhood, depression…they all contributed to my continued weight gain. I didn’t see it. I looked at myself and I didn’t see myself. I had disappeared, the real me wasn’t looking back. I was an empty shell satisfying herself with food.
After a lot of back and forth we decided to move back to Florida and start anew. I started working from home, I didn’t have friends to go out with, and my family was still in PR . Although I felt good about moving, and loved the slower pace of my life I was still comforting myself with food. If I was happy, I rewarded myself with food. If I was sad, I would find solace in food. If family was in town, we would celebrate with food. Every aspect of my life involved food.
If we’re friends on social media you’ll see there aren’t many pictures of me after 2011. There are many photos of my life, but I’m not in them. I erased myself. A friend from work had surgery and then another friend had a Sleeve Gastrectomy, and I decided to do some research. I figured it was worth a shot. I witnessed their transformation, and I thought I could do it too.
One day I heard my youngest son tell his friends, “that’s my mom, she’s fat”. That didn’t make me feel wonderful inside, it hurt but at the same time I knew there was no malice in his words. He was saying the truth… I am his mom and I was fat. He didn’t love me any less, in fact he said my belly was more comfortable than any pillow, but that shattered my heart and opened my eyes. I was hurting my children by providing an unhealthy example. It took a then 5 year old to propel me forward and decide no obstacle would get in the way of my weight loss.
I battled with my insurance and completed all their pre-surgical requirements but they denied my coverage. I tried again, and after some additional testing they approved me. I finally had weight loss surgery on August 7th, 2017. But that’s another story…