Gypsy Blossom

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I wish this was going to be poetic or wildly inspired or even marginally profound but it's not.

I had a shitty day at work.  I'm exhausted.  It took everything out of me and now I just want to be surrounded by beauty.  All I can say is that people like the woman I had to deal with today make it easy for me to see why prejudices start, continue or are ever even remotely pallateable. 

It ate me up today.  Consumed me completely and her grade-school bullying worked on me -- why?  Because even though I'm not timid and even though I am confident and intelligent and pure intented, what she did to me scared the bejesus out of me.  Deep down at the very core of my professional persona is this fear that because some small-minded, ridiculous excuse for a co-worker has decided the world owes her and she doesn't have to earn anything she gets, that some innocent mis-step will cost me my position, my job, the respect of my superiors and co-workers.. I couldn't stop being afraid of it.  It didn't matter that my boss, another manager and one of our directors assured me there was nothing to worry about.. having "HR" waved in my face as a threat because of something I did with purest intention absolutely terrified me to my core.

I still can't shake it.

The only triumph I can say I had in all of it is, despite the availability of cookies and leftover halloween candy in the department, I did not fall into a dismal abyss of chocolate therapy.  I admit I REACHED for the cookies.  Had them in my hand, even.. then the little voice in my head said, "what are you doing?" and I put them down.  Didn't stop me from wanting them but I kept resisting them.  Unfortunately, I did eat a peanut butter cup while I was crying and before I even knew it was in my mouth.  Man that old insecurity works fast!!

I think the worst part of the fear is the conscious side of my head that knows WITHOUT DOUBT that allowing her to bully me this way gives her strength to do it to someone else along the way.  It gives her validation.  It tells her, 'this tactic works' and gives her license to use it on others in her present and future.

I hate that.  Let's all walk on eggshells, too.  Let's all be more concerned about not upsetting her because she holds a bright, flashing neon, elephant in the room card than we are about making sure the team is unified.  Let's allow that to rule our workplace.

ARGH.

On a note about karma.. in the midst of this and my need to be surrounded by beauty, I got home and WFMT was broadcasting "Cosi fan tutte."

God Bless Mozart and God Bless WFMT.

Man I suck!!

This will be quick but with the promise* of a more detailed post to come..

Still maintaining.  So incredibly busy with "real life" I sometimes don't even log onto the computer once I get home at night!!  (SERIOUSLY)

Mike and I are doing great -- I am planning to relocate as soon as I can secure employment up there.. *yikes! further commitment!*

We just got back from vacation -- seven glorious days in Arizona for my 20yr HS Reunion.. got some nice compliments (very nice, considering nobody from high school really ever saw me at my worst...) but I was told, "You haven't changed since High School!"

Nice compliment.. I'll take it!!  :)

I'll try to add some pics from the trip:



Mike and I at an old-timey photo studio in Tombstone, AZ.. here's another of those:


HAHAHAHAHA!!

Here's some from the rest of the trip:


That's me and my girlfriend Barbara.. we were inseperable our last two years of HS.. and she and I have both struggled with our weight since then.. well.. not so much for her.. she just lost it and it never came back!  :)



This one's my favorite.. that's me and Mike at Trader Vic's for Sweetest Day.. I'm bombed.. don't I look it?

Anyway.. there are others, I'll try to post some later, too.

More soon!!

I love it when God steps in and says, "oh and by the way, yes, I am listening and no you don't know everything.  Let Me take care of it."

The past week has been really rough.  I think part of it has been hormonal and part of it has been just a twinge of depression I've let creep back in. 

I thought I had it figured out.  See.. I spent most of my life obese.  I had it all nailed down -- all the bad personality traits I had and still have were because of my 'fat girl syndrome' -- or whatever you want to call it.  Here's how I explain it:  When you're fat your whole life, you know people don't want to be around you.  You know people look through you or past you or ignore you or try to avoid you.  You know it like you know the sun comes up -- I mean, DUH.. but you never think about it.. and in this case you don't particularly want to think about that because thinking about it means you'll come to the conclusion that you're gross and you probably smell and that people don't want to hang out with you just because you're fat.  So.. my theory is.. you have to become other things to make yourself acceptable as part of a group.. and at the same time, you have to create reasons to explain why you're getting rejected.. you become obnoxious and loud.. or you become a know-it-all.. or you become a bitch on wheels.. or you become abrasive.. and you do it to your friends and your family ... and you step it up when you start feeling like you're getting left out of things because then there's a ready-made reason why you're getting excluded..

It's terribly complex and really kind of stupid but that's what goes on in a fat girl's head.  At least that's what goes on in THIS fat girl's head..

So..  fast forward three years..  now I've dropped the weight.. people DON'T look through or past me anymore.. I get noticed when I walk down the street.  Sometimes the attention is surprising and a little bit of an ego boost.. sometimes it creeps me out and I want to hide from it.. but I imagine everybody feels that way.. it's just that normal girls have had their whole lives to figure out how to deal with it... ANYWAY.. so I've dropped the main reason why I get rejected or left out of things..  but then a trigger occurs.. I start feeling the left out/rejected thing for what ever reason (it may not even be real.. but I feel it).. so all those bad things I had to create as a self-justification tool kick into gear.. and they go into overdrive.. and as I watch my friends pulling away from me, I realize it's got NOTHING to do with me being fat.. but that all the nastiness I've developed over all these years is really the reason for it.  So.. yeah.  It hurts.  I realize it's something I need to change about me (like I have said in the past, they do surgery on your stomach.. not on your head).. but it still hurts when the realization comes..

But the reason for this post is the point where it turned around for me.  I've been wallowing for a few days in this shit.  I had my voice lesson this morning and my voice teacher (God love her) took one look at me and asked "what's wrong? Work?  Boyfriend?"  I was like.. "none of the above!  The thing that's bothering me has the LOWEST priority in my life right now.. all the important stuff is really good!"  and I proceed to explain all that crap up above to her.. she said it's important to just focus on what I decide is important and let the rest of it go..

I half-listened to her. 

After all, she doesn't know what it's like to live in a body like mine.  She never lived life like I have.. but what she said made relative good sense.. I just still walked out feeling sorry for myself.

I walked down the hall to the manually driven elevator bank of the fine arts building and rang the bell.  Up came the elevator with the little Polish man who has been driving me up and down to the 9th floor for 10 years.  He and his cousin Joseph have seen me through the whole transformation.  We've talked about it along the way.

Today, he looked at me with a genuine smile on his face and asked me, "how much you lose?"

Cue Self Loathing Melting Away

I smiled back and told him 140.  He smiled some more and said, "you really look good.  it was good for you.  you should be proud."

It wasn't creepy.  He wasn't coming on to me..  he was speaking with the genuineness of someone who stands between being an acquaintance and friend but does not have any axe to grind.  Just kindness.

We had a brief conversation in the ride to the first floor and I bid him good bye til next time as I always do.  Then as I walked through the foyer and into the sun, I almost started to cry.  I realized God was telling me, "hey, I am still listening, you know.  You don't know everything.  Let Me handle it, okay?"

Okay.

My new lesson for the year:  Sometimes being open about your decisions/choices gives angry people something to use against you.

I don't even know if that's all so incredibly accurate but it's given me pause to consider how open I've been about my surgery.

Many of you know I have not really kept my surgery a secret.  I tell people if they ask me how I lost my weight.  I'm not at all ashamed of my choice OR my success level.  To me, success is how I feel inside, not how I look compared to others outside.

Well this week, I had an interesting situation.  As you may have noticed from my last two posts, I'm an active member of an online community called DCP.  With that activity comes recognition.  People know my online persona, I have "friends" online with whom I share a common bond of this hobby called Drum Corps.  Many of them I've never met.  Some I have and some have transitioned into a part of my "real" life.

Years ago, I met a woman through a different online community.  We became friends and over the course of the next 10 years or so, we drifted in and out of each others' online lives.  We met once I moved to Illinois and we'd see each other at the occasional show but mostly we talked online and we actually even took a road trip together on year that turned out to be .. well.. fun.  Most recently, though, we drifted much further apart.  She seemed angry about a lot of things that I thought were kind of not worth holding onto anger over and she went her way, I went mine.  We had been in the same drum corps for a little while and her opinions about that corps soured while I continued to march and I guess that made me "the enemy."

When I was cut from that corps in mid-season, it seemed her attitude towards me changed a little.  It was as though I was or could be .. I don't know, sympathetic I guess.. because I must have felt wronged by the organization, I must surely now share her views on it.  I won't say I didn't share them.. I think I probably do, but I don't share the belief in her tactics.. so I tend to keep to myself.

It's much more complicated than just this but I feel like you need some background. 

Fast forward.. there's this "blog" she keeps with her new husband.  It's pretty vile.. sometimes funny, sometimes pretty much on target but mostly it's filled with a lot of anger towards any number of recipients.  I'll admit that I read it periodically.  

Imagine my surprise to find a blog entry all about me and my boyfriend this past weekend.  Not just a blog.. but a really mean blog.  I literally had to shake my head to make sure I was reading what I was reading.  Apparently, a comment Mike made about our friend Jim (who happens to be this woman's ex) volunteering that day struck a nerve.  Unintentionally, we had "pissed off the wrong woman."

Hm.  Okay.

So, basically, what we said was it was cool to see a parent we knew doing some volunteering.  I work on a volunteer coordination team for another corps in the area and one of the things we're working on with our parents is breaking down the presumption that if you can't go on tour, you can't volunteer.  We're actively trying to convince new (and old) parents that we welcome their help.. even if it's just to come and serve one meal or do the dishes after lunch or work CPI for the night -- you don't have to leave work and take your vacation with your kid's corps to be involved.

Somehow, though, the comment which, to me and Mike related exactly to the challenges I'm having with changing the mindsets of parents in the organization I'm with, somehow morphed into a slam on someone I don't even talk to and barely even see.

That's not even all that surprising.. what is more surprising is the level of immaturity this woman and her husband stooped to when they thought they had been "slammed."  

I was so shocked to see a grown man and woman, older than me, using the term "fatty fatty two by four" to refer to me.. and the majority of the blog entry was dedicated to how fat I still am and how gastric bypass didn't work on me and any number of other things intended, it seems, only to injure me.

It kind of made me laugh, though.  I thought about everything I've gone through and all the changes in priorities and how I had to re-evaluate the role food plays in my life.. and even down to not just what I eat but in what ORDER I eat it.. and I realize that even if I had been a super-achiever and lost every extra ounce of weight I carry on my body through surgery, these people would still use this kind of thing "against" me in an argument.

It boils down to this:  Four years ago, that kind of an attack would have really hurt.  It would have sent me into fits of tears, self-loathing and self-destruction.  

Things have changed.

My success is mine.  It's for me, by me and ABOUT me.  How successful anyone else thinks I am is their problem, not mine.

I still wake up every day healthier and happier than I've been in 20 years.  

If that's not success, then I don't want any part of whatever success "really" is.
Stef

Is there really such a thing?  

I'm starting to think they, like Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster, don't really exist -- even though we desperately want them to.

Since about .. well.. ever .. DCP has been a lot of drama.  Everybody's cranky.  Everybody wants to talk smack and smack each other down and there are folks out there who think it's funny to be mean.  It's not funny.  It's just mean.  That's a shame.

Now I visit the singles board periodically here on OH.. just out of curiosity.. see who's still around that I know.. check in with my peeps.. see what's hanging where.. and what do I find?

Drama!

Not just drama but out and out meanness.  It's easy to look at it from the outside and think, "wow, that person is really hurting.. they're just lashing out.." but then I get to thinking about everybody else that gets the acid spray from that lashing and how much pain and anger is generated from it to people who aren't even involved.

And I caught myself almost posting.  Egads, I almost posted.

I wanted to say, "take responsibility for the dysfunction in your own life."  I wanted to say, "Stop looking outside of yourself for a reason your relationships fail."  I REALLY wanted to say, "how seriously do you expect people to take you when you're complaining about lack of support out one side of your mouth, while out the other side you are berating and belittling others for something as innocent and minor as not having been on the board for longer than a year?"

I especially wanted to say, "stop being a hypocrite.  Everyone on this board is as easily injured as you are.  We are all insecure.  We are all tripping through this learning process of becoming 'normal' and we are ALL guilty of judging others."

I stopped myself from posting that on the message board.  I wanted to absolutely tear into the cause of all the unrest and anger.. and I was FURIOUS about the way people I didn't even know were being treated all in the name of some false and unrealistic sense of entitlement somebody has about having been around for a while.

Instead, I kept my mouth shut.

I'm intensely pleased that forum support has visited and posted a reminder about the goals of our site.

I'm intensely pained that we found it so easy to inflict so much pain on each other.

I am also intensely glad that the day I decided to step away from the board, my life became so much better.. and I live more of my life off the computer than on.

Another benefit of surgery, IMO.  It gave me the confidence and stamina to go out into the world and be whoever I'm gonna be.

That's all I have to say.  I am over the drama.

Hi to all my DCP friends who are visiting for the first time.

If you have comments and don't particularly want to join OH to make them, please feel free to PM me through DCP.

Unless I have you blocked because you annoy me, you should have no trouble getting through.

Thanks!!
Stef

Nope.. has nothing to do with my natural haircolor (and dangit.. that IS my natural haircolor!! Ask my mom!  Better yet.. ask my BOYFRIEND!)

okay anyway.. I umm..  joined the office softball team!!!

OMG I haven't played softball since I was 13.. in fact, since MARCH the year I turned 13.. specifically because at the end of that month, I took it upon myself to run through a plate glass door wearing only a bathing suit and a big grin.. tearing my legs to shreds and almost losing both my left leg and left foot (separate injuries, equally threatening) and putting me on the DL for the rest of the season while my team -- whom I had been with for three full years -- went all the way to championships for the first time ever and ended up in third place!!

Thus ended my Scottsdale Miss Softball career.

And now it is resurrected.

More to come.

well.. Mike isn't crazy about the new 'do.

I got to the bar for Carrie's birthday party on Friday night and the whole crew was there.. and they all squealed with excitement when they saw it..  everybody loved it.  

Mike sort of made the face.

I know he was disappointed because I know he loves my hair long.. but he also didn't rule out the possibility that he could grow to like it.  He said, "it'll take some getting used to.."  I coaxed him to play with it a little.. and I think he liked it well enough.. but he really liked my long hair..

now..  I won't be going back to that anytime soon.   I really love this cut.. and it will be virtually wash and wear when we hit the beach or go swimming..  plus, it's kind of encouraged me to do some of the girl things I've been ignoring.. (like plucking my eyebrows, taking better care of my skin.. wearing makeup and earrings...)

It's a bummer but now I'll have to have new headshots taken -- though I could use my really old ones (from my modeling days waaayyy back when) because the hair is closer now to that than it was..  ugh.. whatever..  point is.. I love it..  everyone who sees it on me loves it.. strangers walk up to me and tell me they love it..  Even Dr. Venuti who's never even seen a picture of me commented on the cute hair cut I have when she met me for the first time this weekend. 

Aside from that, it was a fantastic weekend... and our friend Carrie (who's birthday we were celebrating on Friday) called yesterday and left us a message that her boyfriend Nate had popped the question on her birthday Saturday.

Good news all around!

I did something.



That's right.  I whacked it all off!!

here's another:



and here's a bad full length:



I love it.  I'm so glad I did it.  My hair was (as my hairdresser said) down to my crack.  It was halfway, at least.  One of my girlfriends at work was going to get her hair cut short and she found a picture of a cut I absolutely fell in love with.  

So I did it.

What do you think?

a recent pic?



that is a big ass picture.  And dark.

I was kind of drunk though.. so it's probably best that you can't actually identify me completely.. 

and you know I've been thinking a lot lately.. and noticing things.  Here I am, nearly three years out and I still notice changes.  Obviously, I'm not dropping pounds like I was.  in fact, I am struggling to get below 250 and I am confident that I will but it's work.

I still notice myself in mirrors.  I like the way I look.  I'm not entirely satisfied -- and neither do I ever hope to be -- I always want to feel like I have some way to improve myself.. but I'm pleased overall with what I see.  

I was in the city this past weekend and I stopped off at New York & Company.  Now, I'll admit I've always looked in the window of that store and wished.  I even stopped in there about a year ago and tried some things on.  But this time I went in and I was greeted as if I could actually be a customer.  It didn't seem like the obligatory, 'welcome to.." speech that they have to give you..  they were telling me about purchase sales and specials..  offering to show me new product..  I didn't feel the eyes on me.  That sounds so paranoic but when I was big, I could go into a place like that and they would just watch me like hawks.  Like they were thinking, "what on earth is she doing in here?"

But that didn't happen this time.

I just shopped.  I found a few tops I liked and a dress I loved.. and I tried them all on and some I liked and some I didn't but SOME fit me and SOME I bought.  And I put them on and I look in the mirror and I think to myself, "yes.. you are so cute"  I actually think that!  Imagine that.. me  telling me I'm cute!  But I find my little shape (which, by anyone else's standards is surely not so little but..) pleasing.  I can look at myself and see how Mike finds me attractive.  I pose and pout in the mirror.  I turn and look at how my butt looks in this getup.. I see how my sides sweep in away from my arms so you can see light between me and my arms.. I like that I have an hourglass figure.

I still have to come to terms with my trunk.  I still have a lot of fat and extra skin on my panni and upper abdomen so.. as I said, there are still things I want to improve.. but in all honesty I'm happy with how I am right now.

Happy.  Not satisfied, but happy.  At the risk of sounding completely self-absorbed and conceited, I even think I'm kind of pretty.

Hm.