Part II January 18, 2008

Jan 18, 2008

I have some thoughts on my brain today. Its been an interesting journey over the past 15 mos. I started out scared to death that this thing might not work for ME... what if I was the only person that still had a huge appetite and a stomach the size of a large thumb? I'd be in trouble! Or, what if I didn't lose weight because something was wrong with me? Then after losing 135 lbs, my fears did not go away... they just changed to another question: "What if I gain it all back?" As I approached the time for plastic surgery, I questioned "Am I ready for plastics? Will my insurance pay for it? What will I look like? What procedures do I need?" So many questions... And it has made me realize... we are all on the same road... the same journey... its just that we all may be at different locations... or at different bends in the road. One thing that remains constant, however, is that we are all ON THE JOURNEY... and I must re-emphasize this to myself...

Then I got a plastic surgery date.. Wow. Everyone was elated. I was excited. I was at a fork in the road, ready to part from the path that everyone else in our forum was at... I never realized it would make me sad and depressed. No one that I knew from our forum had been through this, no one that I could glean insight from... no support... I never realized that I was uneducated about what my body was about to experience... about how I would actually GAIN weight, feel so fat that it wasn't even funny... and if you look at my four week pictures, you will see that I was larger than a week after surgery. The clothes that fit on the day of surgery didn't fit me three weeks after surgery... I had to wear 3 sizes higher, which were borrowed from my mother... a sick joke I say... A sick joke to play on a gastric bypass patient who is already very much afraid of gaining her weight back...

A few months agoI started to feel like my journey had ended. I felt left out at the luncheons. (Not because I wasn't talking to anyone, or they weren't' talking to me... had nothing to do with that! Everyone has always been very friendly and kind!) Hang with me here though... I considered not coming to any more. I looked around the room, everyone was stunning and had lost MORE weight... I had lost none. Everyone was changing their clothing sizes. I still remained the same. I could see facial differences, people changing their hair, their bone structures looked thinner, and I stayed the same. I felt left out. Heck I couldn't even dig through the boxes of clothes anymore... no one brought clothes to fit me. Maybe I was at the end of my journey. Maybe I had done everything there was to do. Like a baseball player who had played his best, accomplished his dreams, but now must go on with life, perhaps it was time for me to realize that my weight loss journey had come to its end. You have to remember that for over a year, my focus and goal was to reach a certain weight... to lose as much as possible... just as everyone else... and for that goal to be met, what was I to do with myself? (It's like graduating from high school or college, then saying "Ok, what now?", only I didn't get a piece of parchment paper with a gold seal and the signatures of authorized gastric bypass professionals saying I could go on to the next step. Instead, it was like graduating and never getting to walk the line to get the degree and putting closure to it).

Four months pass after plastic surgery... and finally! I see the results from the plastic surgery that I was looking for ALL along! I realized, I can get this quick result from plastic surgery! Look at those legs! I could get them fixed... what about my breasts? Wow, a breast augmentation would change that instantly! And the arms... while only a little saggy... probably won't go for the arm lift, but wow it would sure look great... then you start to examine every nook and cranny... wondering what can I fix? How can that be made better? And it can seem like a fixation or obsession with one's body....

I've never been the pretty one... the thin one... I've always been the fat one... I didn't get my first boyfriend until the late nineties... I had to wait ten years and 131 lbs of weight loss to get another one... obesity stole a lot from me. Or, maybe I handed it over all too willingly... but for me, in my eyes, obesity did this... and now, I have a chance to reclaim every single thing that obesity stole. My health is better... which is the main reason for my surgery. I am not on all the medicines that i used to be on... my depression from being obese is gone... when I used to take 2 anti depressants a day before wls...

While I had surgery for my health, now I walk the road of the journey for ME. I can be stingy, or selfish if I want to... for all my life it was always about doing nice things for others, helping other people out, because that's how I tried to make people like me... but now, I dont have to make anyone like me... I am simply trying to live my life and get back everything that has been kept from me... Life is great.... I am with someone that I love... I can fit into small clothes.... I can go into any Goodwill and find some great bargains and not worry whether or not they have clothes large enough to fit me...

And to end this long winded insight, I will end by saying that I promised one thing... to be honest all throughout this journey. I would not lie, I would not mask feelings, or hide things. Because, somewhere along the way, someone may need to know that its' ok to feel these things... they may need some assurance that what they are feeling and experiencing is normal, healthy, and expected. I've seen the therapist. He assures me once again, I'm ahead... I'm doing fine... and in areas which might appear unbalanced, just give it some time...

Today I posted on the Plastic Surgery forum and voiced some of my frustrations and feelings.  I gained reassurance that this is normal...  and may spend a little more time hanging out with folks who have been further down the road of the journey than myself... for in doing, there is more insight and support to be gained....

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