Is There More **** In Your Vinegar These Days?

Is There More **** In Your Vinegar These Days?

 

The vast majority of people are an outward mixture of sweetness and vinegar, kindness and disdain, deeply caring and not, albeit in wildly varying proportions.  For a variety of reasons, those of us who have or will be going through weight loss surgery tend toward the far end of the sweet, kind and caring side, often times to our own detriment.  Until recently, most of the people in my life were unaware that I possessed much vinegar because I have been horribly vigilant about not letting much of that show unless I was under extreme duress.  The thing is that it (vinegar) has always been there within me to some degree, but I fed myself bad carbs and other unhealthful things in an effort to moderate its potentially nasty aftertaste if I allowed any of it out at all when I dealt with other people.  I simply couldn’t bear the thought of displeasing or hurting someone by expressing a negative or critical thought toward them.

 

Well, these days I am almost never eating for comfort or to numb myself or for any other emotional reason.  So, the vinegar has come out along with the rest of who I am.  Unfortunately, there has been no nuanced approach, no elegance, no artful tempering of its outflow.  Given some of the reactions I have gotten at work and at home, it is as if I pissed in the vinegar on its way out of me.  Expressions of dismay, shouting, and even some crying have occurred as the direct result of what has come out of my mouth recently.  While I am not ashamed that I have caused such reactions, as I would have been in the past, I am not at all proud of that fact either.  Those reactions trouble me deeply, but not so much so that I am reverting to old eating behaviors. 

 

Just like accepting what life would be like post-op, this is probably a lesson in learned moderation.  I know that in time I will learn to manage things better and that the people in my life will become more accustomed to seeing all of me, including the vinegar, from time to time.  Have people noticed more **** in your vinegar lately, or am I the only one?

 

RP

I've noticed that as I get more social and all types of people flow into my life, I am having to learn to stand up for myself when the '****ty' part of society comes my way. Before my surgery, I accepted anyone and everyone into my life... good or bad. This week I had a friend invite (on FB) from a person I haven't talked to in two years. She did a lot of nasty things to our group of friends and lied and used us. Before WLS, I would have given her another chance... but this time... I just thought about it and realized that I don't need to let every low-life into my life. I know she'd use the information on my profile against me and I ignored her. It was a breakthrough in my mind.

This journey is hard. It tests us down to our very core, and it liberates us. We don't change, we don't lose ourselves, we just find ourselves peeling away the layers of fear and constraint and finding that person who has always been anxiously awaiting their chance to get out.

In fifteen short weeks, I've changed my life. I'm not willing to be shunted into the corner, used for the gain of others or silently accepting of bad behavior. I've noticed that, for the first time in my life, I'm willing to talk back to someone who deserves it. It sounds awful, but I've started being a lot less tollerant-- and SO much more happy for it.

We've all taken these incredible steps for our health, and our health doesn't stop just at the physical.