Tag Archives: self disgust

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The 321lb Girl – Part Two…the Repost

Here it is – my blog from several months ago that started to explore the contents of my head on my way to 321lbs.  You’ll see some repetition – starting to identifying that I monitor everything and actively replace my negative with huge personality positives.   I’ve said some of this on this blog too – but, well, it’s pretty much the hugest of conclusions for me and the pieces of this are what I’ve met in the mirror many times – so, it’s pretty much why I’m here.  Here’s the repost…

“Let’s start further back:

I am very, very proud of and very, very grateful for my family.  My childhood has been described by many people as Pollyanna – and it’s easy to see why.  Two functional, smart, loving parents with 3 healthy girls, the requisite cat and dog and single family home with money enough to get by with good management.  We communicate and express ourselves well.  We have good ethical and moral upbringings.  We are untouched by significant disease, injury, disability, abuse and hardship.  We had chores, curfews and expectations, camping trips, good grades, a home church, manners and scrapbooks to document it all!  And, today, we are successful, interesting, active people.  My parents have crafted their retirement beautifully and are truly present and engaged with their own lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren.  Us girls are happily and healthily married and successful in our fields of medicine, theology and the arts.  My niece and nephew are healthy and beautiful.  My dogs have a perfect dog life.

I don’t feel this as Pollyanna – because that word smacks of artificiality and this has all been my real life.  Not fake.  Not crafted.  Just hugely fortunate.  And still, somehow, I managed to get to 321 lbs and not really be able to effectively deal with that until I was 30 years old.  I find that I can’t say a whole lot (I don’t consciously know a whole lot) about where/how the failures happened in that process.  I could probably make a decent record of what programs we tried, but that’s the logistics, not the emotion. There is probably more exploration there that would be useful – looking at scrapbooks and trying to remember how I felt as I grew up and grew larger.  I know we talked actively about it through the years and struggled with the attempts fairly openly – at least while active attempts were happening.  And I know some of the last triggers that led to reversing the process:  not physically being able to keep up with my impression of myself or all that I intended to experience and having the stability of schedule/job/home to have it take over with full intensity and support.

When I sat down to try and say what I could about my teens and twenties, I started with what was obvious to me.  In short, for a long, long time I have been very mindful of how I frame and present myself.  I choose when and how to look at my reflection.  I often balance negative feelings and thoughts with good counters or with plans and resolve to fix them. I started to list some of the self-dialogue that I know has been with me for these last 25+ years.  I thought, at first, that these were just the expected things – comparing myself to other overweight people, being aware of myself in space – fitting in chairs, holding my posture, etc.  But pretty quickly, I realized that my inner dialogue goes WAY beyond a healthy awareness and observation.  It goes WAY beyond my physical weight.  And way beyond equipoise.  I leapt on the word equipoise earlier this year – the mind’s ability to serenely monitor one’s thoughts and actions and correct for bias and shortcoming.  There is not as much serenity in my usual monitoring as I’d like to think.  To repeat some of what I find that I *constantly* have thought about:

  • constant comparisons to overweight people I see – if they are bigger or smaller than me, if they hold themselves better or worse, what I think of them, what they radiate about themselves, what I think others think of them.
  • how I sit, how I hold my arms, my legs, how far my stomach sticks out, how tall can I make myself in my seat, how my clothes drape on me, how much room I can create for others sitting next to me, how engaging and bright can I make my face….
  • how I might react (retort?) to any given situation.  At first, this was if someone were to address my weight – either in a casual way (a look, an off-comment) or a personal way.  But now I realize that I do that for more than weight – I look to react in the “right” way to anything – employing humor, kindness, smarts, whatever – to be the way that I want to be in relationship to the people around me.  To make the situation a good thing for everyone involved  (fix it, encourage it, whatever).  AND – to emerge successful and well-thought of.
This last part is the important one here.  There are lots of good things about being aware and responsive to the people and situations around us.  I pride myself on that and don’t want that mindset to go away.  BUT, I am realizing that there are some very not good sides to this.
I have developed a way to feel that I ensure an impression of me that I can live with – and this same method has likely helped to push away dealing with what wasn’t good (my weight) and, in the process, build some pretty cemented defenses. Emotionally – I constantly monitor and control how I respond to any situation – let’s just go ahead and call it hyper vigilance.  Making sure that what was noticed about me was my energy or humor or competency or talent or organization or my beautiful voice or my bright face.  Trying to make sure that the impression of funny or kind or smart or capable was the only impression I would make and it would outshine anything that people might remember or say about my weight and, eventually, I think that’s become about what people remember/say about me period.  Lifestyle-wise – this same control has been the thing to prioritize my actions and my focus.  If it looked like something that I wasn’t going to be successful at (dating and weight-loss for two primary earlier example), then I focused my time and energy on what I could ensure – my artistic pursuits, management/leadership/organization, great friendships and family relationships.
And from this carefully chosen positioning – I could convince myself and others that I was open, trusting, successful, balanced, healthy, etc., etc., so forth and so on.  And – in many, many ways, I am those things – plus the creative, smart, kind, funny, capable…
But I have also spent a great amount of energy – a HUGE HUGE amount of energy – shoring up my positioning, monitoring everything and talking myself out of the pieces of that that weren’t so healthy – including, for 20 years, the elephant in the room – literally.  This on-her-way-to-321lb girl.”
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The 321lb Girl – Part One

See that 3rd picture from the left – the biggest girl with the smile almost lost in all that face? How did that happen?  I *know* that this is the question that every overweight person asks themselves.  Even if they can answer the question, I guarantee that looking in the mirror the words will spill out…”How did this happen?”

And the turning and facing of weight is just riddled with complication – when inspiration meets up with means – the effort can renew again and again.  When a last straw meets bad timing, it doesn’t end up being a last straw.  I am completely convinced that it is a RARE occurrence to find an overweight person who is “just lazy” or who “just doesn’t care.” Oh we care.  We care so much that there are times when the only thing to do is act like we don’t care.  However that plays out – using humor and being the funny girl that is so amazingly comfortable in her skin, embracing the “love yourself as you are” mentality with fervor, reassuring friends and family that you’re working on the next plan, or…simply ignoring it.  Simply refusing – at least for a small moment – not to see.

Of course, I can’t tell you how many of those moments got rudely, cruelly interrupted by an unfortunately placed reflective surface.  You’re just trying to have a day and that stupid store window snags your attention.  And it’s immediate damage control.  Everything from confirming or ignoring what you saw to the lock down of horror…which includes the self-talk of all the things that are going right and all that you hope and plan to do.  This can happen in the space of a second.

The smoke in the mirror is the thought that I kept these moments from impacting me too much.  Of course they impacted me and each one got added to the reference file in my psyche!  Sometimes I would have to swallow a scowl and a descent into a bad mood (sometimes unsuccessfully).  More often, for me, I would respond with something extra positive.  Say something nice to someone, be extra witty or extra patient.  That’s just how “my thing” played out.

I’m trying to decide how much time to spend in the going back and piecing this together – and I think it will end up being a fair amount of time …especially if I choose to write about it.  But, I don’t want to reframe my life in the negative when that’s not how I lived it.  Even with demons underneath – I didn’t know they were there and I lived as fully as I could – planning how I would overcome my weight as often as I could.  I don’t want to re-remember my life as though I’m watching the demons put on a puppet show.  This is tricky, though, because now that I can see them – I can see how influential they were.  The solution for me – is to also see the person that they built…and, again…say “thank you” and good-bye.

I blogged through a couple of significant times during this last phase of the weight loss – just a private blog to express some thoughts.  I’ll pull in a couple sections from that blog now and again and it’s time for the first of those (to follow this post).  The one where I did try to go back and ask how I got to 321lbs and ended up first recognizing how many layers of control freak were there to sort though.  So, the post doesn’t necessarily stay to the pursuit of the question, but it does really dig into the things that would go on in my head…constantly!

And here’s my conclusion about that…like with ANY other situation in life – you don’t know unless it’s you.  You can’t look at anyone you see and have the context for how and where they are.  And our brains can’t help but try to categorize and understand.  I see a fat girl who is jolly, who is unsure.  I see a single woman who is flirtatious or who is bitchy.  I see a macho man or a gentle, androgynous man.  Someone having a bad day, someone being nice and cheery,  someone radiating health and well-being, on and on…

You don’t know…just as they don’t know all that goes on in your head.  But I hope that I’m learning not to assume.  For those I just see – I will try not to assume.  The big girl that walks into the restaurant.  The slow, erratic driver in front of me.  The exasperated hospital admissions clerk.  And for those that are in my life – even closely in my life – I will still try to check my assumptions.  Ask them before I try to “help” them.  Give them space for their own perspective on life – including their perspectives on me.  And open those lines of communication so that they can let me in too.

Because part of “how this happened” was the stacking and winding tight of many little layers of impact and many assumptions.  All of which I thought I had a handle on and it was the true letting in of vulnerability that showed me how my control on the situation had gone very awry – and, in fact, wasn’t good control at all.  Too much control = wound too tight = rigid and unyielding.  More emotionally vulnerable = more loose (and maybe unsure?) = more open and pliable.  Imagine each of these taking a blow – which is more likely to break?  Hmm….lesson to be learned in my book!

 

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The Home Update and a Full Body Tour

This post will bring us up to current from arriving home from surgery (last Friday, 6/15) to today – with another long recounting of medical details.  Then, I hope to feel freer to tackle any of the other subjects that are waiting – more of the emotional impact, some history and lots of looking forward!

As we go along – I’m very happy to engage in conversation through this blog – answering comments or questions and expanding on topics or parlaying them to not just my life.  I don’t know if the comment structure through WordPress is the best, but if there is trouble with it – let me know!

There are two parts to a medical update – what I feel like and more describing of what my new body looks like.  Let’s do the new body first!

So…here I am at my post-surgery best!  We’ve been joking that it’s almost reminiscent of a quaint 1920s swimsuit.  Let me give you the tour:

First – my  6 little friends – the drains.  They look like clear rubber grenades attached to tubes which are attached to, well…me.  Two of them go into my breasts, two into my front abdominal area and two into my back.  The tubes are long enough that we can pin them all in front.  We keep them in this middle position that we’ve found – away from the sides so that I can try to sit/sleep on one side or another and not directly in front so that I can have my computer on my lap.  We empty and record the volume of them 2-3 times each day, which is really nothing more than tedious.  Yes, the concept of what’s going into them and where that is coming from is not very pleasant, but it’s relatively easy to ignore.  So – the big news!!!! – at my first post-op appointment this past Thursday (one week and one day out from surgery) – they were able to remove 4 of the 6 drains!!!  That’s more than we dared hope!  And the final two hopefully will come out next week.  you’ll hear more about the difference that this makes!

The tank top goes over the surgical bra (which is a velcro opening in the front) which goes over a layer of thick padding that protects my new boobs.  My new boobs (which I will not be displaying pictures of other than clothed!!) have an incision around the nipple area, vertically down the center bottom and then across the bottoms all the way over to the sides of my body.  I have NO IDEA what size they are – but not more than c-cup now and that’s a big difference.  We’ll talk more about that later!

The tank mostly serves to keep the abdominal binder (the white bottom piece) from riding up and creating an uncomfortable relationship between bra and binder.  This is especially important in the front center of my body – where I have my own version of the Mixing Bowl (if you are familiar with Washington DC traffic) – it’s where all kinds of roads meet up – mainly the incisions across the bottom of the breasts and the top of the long center vertical incision.  There is a small area – about 1″ x 2″ where it’s just a hot mess.  The skin is all bunched and stitches going everywhere.  Some of this will calm down as the swelling decreases and the incisions heal and then I guess we’ll see how it ends up and they may need to tweak it a bit.  More about that later too – I was not prepared to talk about tweaking!!!

So, yes, there is a long vertical incision down the front of my body where they both pulled and tightened all the skin, but also went deeper to tighten up the front abdominal muscles.  This part could easily have been the hardest to recover from – I might have felt so tight in that area that I wouldn’t want to stand straight and would have to retrain myself to do that.  Luckily, that’s been a fairly minor problem.  I have to work to straighten only a little bit.  The other fun thing about this incision is that it is pretty crooked!  And – I’m not exactly sure what the long-term fate of my navel will be.  There is a small area with more stitching around it that is supposedly where they saved the navel (and it’s connection down into my body?) and pasted it back on.  I, however, can’t yet see through the stitching to determine if there’s really much there.  Good thing I’ve never considered myself much of a navel-gazer!!  HAR!  Alright, whatever, back to the straight up reporting…yes, the incision is quite crooked.  At this week’s appointment, the surgeon said that they talked a lot about that in the operating room.  It came down to either being able to get a better “landscape” – meaning more excess skin removed and a leaner contour – or having a perfectly straight incision.  She’s a perfectionist and I think she regretted not being able to have both, but they went with the better landscape.  I’m fine with that – wasn’t planning on becoming a bikini girl.

Okay – and down to the bottom.  The incision goes 360 around my body.  Very low (at the junction of torso and hips) in front and then a little higher around my low back.  It’s just a single line all the way around, but from there, they were able to remove and shape my body pretty much everywhere.  My butt is WAY flatter/tighter and the fronts of my thighs.  Of course the huge pouch of skin is gone – both the primary one and the smaller one above that.  In the pre-surgery appointments, she noted that the secondary roll presented one of the biggest challenges.  It’s just hard to get all of that surface smoothed down.  They did a great job – that’s very apparent.  And…there are places that aren’t exactly ideal.  Again – we’ll talk later about tweaking.  Apparently, they expect for there to be a tweaking process (!!!!!)

Right now I have padding over all that incision and then secured by both the tank top and the binder.  Soon, I think, I could just wear comfortable underwear and that will be the case then for six weeks.  Binder and surgical bra for SIX WEEKS – I think that will be half security blanket and half chomping at the bit to be done with them.

To end the body tour – of course the extremities beyond the torso are unchanged.  The extra volume on the thighs, the flaps under the arms.  I think we’ll just have to see how that all plays out.  I have had no intentions of being a surgery addict.  I don’t want the physical experience and I don’t want the emotional need either.  But it is a reality that my body will have different issues and different proportions than it would normally and I’m sure that I will have a host of reactions to that.  I’m a conductor and I don’t want to worry about how my arms look if I wear something sleeveless.  Right now, I don’t really worry, but I also have to tell myself not to worry.

Okay – to finish the update – just a bit about the physical experience and challenges in the first week after the surgery.  For the most part, it’s just about negotiating movement and energy.  Everything feels fragile at first – will I feel pulling on the stitches?  How can I pull or push myself in and out of chairs and such (and accept any help offered!) without something pinging. Can I move around – particularly up or down stairs or at any length and not feel dizzy.  Well, this all changes and improves every day.  I’ll give you a couple bookend examples:

Day One at Home – in the afternoon we decide to do the first changing of the dressings – maybe a modified shower – and let me see my body in the mirror for the first time.  And we decide that the place to do this is upstairs in the bathroom – so first time up the stairs too.  BUT…surely we will take this all very slowly and Mom and Nelson will do most of the work around me.  So it will be okay, right?!  Not so much.

I take a couple percocet and head upstairs (not thinking to take time to let the percocet have it’s impact – both for pain lessening and the dizziness that we weren’t really realizing could accompany it).  Mom is imploring me to stop after every few stairs, but it feels fine and I just keep going slowly and steadily.  My legs are very strong (thanks to all the climbing and such pre-surgery!) and the stairs are all about the legs.  W e get into the bathroom and start gingerly pealing the layers back.  The bra and binder, the pads, the drains – which have to be constantly paid attention too – Good GOD don’t drop them!!  So, we’re basically there with me in the nude, someone holding a collection of 3 drains on each side and we’re about to start figuring out how to proceed.  I can see everything for the first time – all the angry incisions – the immense bruising – dark brown along the whole underside of my breasts – the hot mess referenced above – tightness – boobs I don’t recognize.  Mom and Nelson have seen this a couple times and they are beyond the harder impact of these things.  They see the huge change in shape and are excited for me to see that and they see improvements in the incisions and bruising from what they saw in the hospital.  They ask me what I think.

I’m not exactly sure of the sequence of events after that.  I did realize that I wasn’t responding and I did realize that the room wasn’t quite clear. I heard Mom say, “Oh my God” and I felt a little stumbly.  Apparently I went completely white and somehow my husband dimension-blinked into the next room and got a chair under me as I started to go down.  I know he moves fast – but I had no idea!  But it’s a very good thing – because there is NO good place to hold onto me if I go down.  That’s a sure call to 911.  So – the next 45 minutes were simply spent putting everything back together and getting in my face and telling me I was okay.  We decided that a shower would wait for at least a couple days!

Today (Day 8 at Home) – Mom and I walked around the block for the first time – slow, but pretty steady!  Then, on a bit of a lark – we got me ensconced in Nelson’s

convertible – with pillows around every side of me and went out to the bank, the Farmer’s market and Starbucks.  I got in and out of the car 3-4 times on my own, walked around the market and in and out of Starbucks.  I was definitely tired and my body was pinging all over the place, but no pain and energy level was still pretty good.

As for the in-between, well, there’s a lot of course.  The worst is at night when I end up feeling like a stuffed burrito – all stiff and round and immobile.  I spent the first few nights downstairs – switching between the couch, the recliner and the big chair – surrounded by pillows of all sorts and getting assistance for any major move.  Now, I’m sleeping in the bed and gingerly switching my own position every couple hours.

The only other thing to talk about, most unfortunately, is the other scary set of moments at home.  I think I really must choose to generalize this for you – I just can’t go into details.  But for 18 hours I experienced the most painful and scariest physical period of my life thanks to a single, ugly word – constipation.  We knew what it was, we knew it was a possibility and we had taken some proactive measures (Colace) but had we known what would happen – we would have taken far more proactive measures.  Probably too many and I would have been miserable in another way, but I just can’t see how it could have been worse.  All I can say is – you can know what’s going on, be reassured that you’re doing the right thing and that everything will be okay – and still be completely convinced that a horrible, embarrassing, disaster is in your future and your body is, in fact, going to rip apart.  And you say “for better or for worse” to your husband and that your mother has been through it all with you, but still have to work really hard not to die of embarrassment before the aforementioned ripping apart takes place.  If you are going to go through this surgery – please, PLEASE consider your proactive measures seriously!

Okay.  That’s done.  I knew I had to include it, but I was dreading it!  Maybe I’ll ask you not to bring this one up in polite conversation.  If you must ask questions – I’ll entertain those individually!!  And – after just sleeping and existing for a day after all that resolved – we’re back to steady improvement – including convertibles and farmer’s markets!

And…we’re caught up!  Finally!!  Did I mention that you should expect details?  Read of your own volition.  All 487+ of you…which jumped from 8 followers just a couple days ago…which is freaking me out…but I’m determined to write this blog the way I want to!  I’m sure I’ll blog about that later.

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Second Update Post Surgery

Okay – this is a continuation of the physical details of going through the surgery.  The first update really just recounted details in getting to the surgery itself and so now we’ll pick up from the actual post-surgery.  These blogs, again, will be much more about reporting and less reflective, though I will report both physical and emotional process.  I want this information to be available to others who go through this!  And so – more impolite details…just warning you!

I have a couple flashes of the various stages of post-surgery.  I remember seeing Dr. Lenert briefly in the recovery room – just telling me that all had went well and that I’d lost 18.5 lbs that day.  Then she was headed down to my family.  They say that I came out of anesthesia quickly – which they had kept as close to waking as they could and did so successfully.  Nelson and my Mom came in for a few minutes – very relieved since the surgery had taken significantly longer than estimated.  In the weeks before, we had heard 8-9 hours, then 10 hours from Dr. Lenert in the pre-op appointment and 11.5 hours was the final number.  THEN the waiting for the recovery and room transfer, etc.  We had started our day at 4:45 to be at the hospital by 6:30 and it was past 10:00pm before Nelson and Mom were seeing me in my room.  Midnight before they were back home.

I didn’t have to deal with movement or food or really anything that first night.  I had the techs checking vitals and drains, the nurse giving me heparin shots.  And I had my morphine PCA – the little button for pain meds that I can click as often as I like but will only deliver every 8 minutes.  And so began a really interesting and really kind of wonderful night.  I would awake – feeling like I must have been asleep for hours, but it would only have been somewhere around 45 minutes.  I would click the pain button and get a spoon of ice chips and then fall into a bizarre sleep-wake state where there were tons of things going on – but I don’t remember any of them.  I only know that every time I would click the pain button within the 8 minutes again and hear the beep that said that nothing was delivered.  Then, as soon as I could get a true second dose, I would fall asleep for another 30-60 minutes.  Each time I woke up from those longer periods, I would feel these huge rushes of positive emotion.  Relief, accomplishment, excitement – all felt very deeply, not just thought.  I felt the 10 year task of losing 150 lbs and the hugeness of being on this end of it – and having coming through this surgery and all that was ahead of me.  I smiled a lot through those hours.

Then, things turned as we went towards morning.  I think because the night felt like it lasted a week – I finally began to wonder and worry about what was coming next.  When would I have to move and how would that go?  When would Mom and Nelson get there and could I wait until then to try anything?  I realized that while I had all these complete thoughts – my verbal communication was very poor.  The nurses would ask if I needed anything and I couldn’t think of what to say or what to ask – so I thought they weren’t communicating very well.  When I talked on the phone (including mom and Nelson to ask where they were!) – all I really could convey was scattered anxiety.  I ordered breakfast.  I think, in the end, we concluded that the Morphine was contributing a lot to this.  It definitely made me foggy and I know it helped with the pain, but it would fairly quickly make me anxious and unable to communicate well.  They wanted me to get through the lunch meal and keep that down before switching over to Percoset.

So, we endured the morning – me using as few pain clicks as I could.  The getting up was definitely a process, but it went without incident and we were all surprised to see that I stood straight right off – not hunched over as they said I likely would be from the abdominal tightening.  I got through lunch and was able to switch the pain meds – and that was a relief.

So, the big question to address – what about the body!!  Did I see it?  What does it look like?  Well, we’ll report on this in stages.  In the hospital is a very different experience than home.  As first the doctor and then the resident/interns came in to check and change my dressing – there were various reactions.  Their reaction was very technical – they were pleased with the incisions and the state of them.  My mom and Nelson could see everything and it was hard to read their faces totally, but their general reaction (and Nelson’s verbal reaction to me) was that it was a huge change in the shape and they thought I would be really amazed.  I couldn’t see anything below seeing the breast shape and nipple and the skin in between the breasts.  And there were so many things to take in – the fact that the breasts were small cones – no sagging – not even softness, really – just triangles sticking out.  The fact that the meeting of incisions between my breasts is a mess that the doctor says will calm down – that’s always a complicated spot.  And just seeing stitching and bruising everywhere.  I think I kept myself pretty neutral for these viewings.  The most emotion was when the residents and interns whirl winded through their mid-day check and moved WAY too fast for me – taking of the binder and the bra and whipping dressings off and on.  It was good that they felt so confident about the incisions, but it ramped me way up and after that, I was determined to just have everything go at as calm a pace as it could.

And, in that mindset, we passed the rest of that day – getting up a couple more times and I decided to stay the second night.  I just went with the flow through that and into the morning and was ready to make the trip home and stay calm!  We were out by 10:00am – and getting into the car was nowhere near the difficult event that I had worried about.

That’s a good place to end this portion – hospital and surgery are done and the reality of home and recovery begin.  Let me know if you have questions that I haven’t addressed or if there are things you wanted me to talk more about!

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Layers of Demons

It’s hard to know where to start to explain the “demons” that have become apparent to me through this process.  They come in several forms – from little instincts that make me change my behavior to fully-integrated personality traits that started as good things but now really get in the way.  They have been the back-seat drivers of my life and, in some times, I think they outright took the wheel.

Until 6-7 months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to name anything that I would have called a demon.  I  wouldn’t have said that I had “a thing” either – emotional baggage, something to overcome that was holding me back.  I could easily joke about my propensity to be “a little intense” – over-controlling of logistics and details.  My penchant for doing 400% of the work until I couldn’t sustain it anymore.  My lack of delegation skills and pickiness about the small stuff.  Sure, it would cause working dreams and moments of exasperation among my friends, colleague and family.  Stress?  Yes.  Demons?  No.

Demons are way underneath all that.  For example – I carried around  disgust, infuriation and embarrassment about my weight and as those feelings became ingrained (became demons), I shoved forward everything that I wanted the world (and myself) to see instead – a bright, funny, kind, talented, competent, successful woman.  Now, I hope and trust that I am those things.  In fact, I need to say that it was my passionate focus on those things that built so much of who I am and who I want to remain.  It’s the ensuring and shoving and maintaining of those things that creates the problem.  I realize now my demons of disgust, infuriation, embarrassment (and more) – nearly had me convinced that it was how I acted in the world  – how I displayed those good qualities and how I convinced people of them – that were why people responded to me so well.  Being those things could make them overlook my physical body and the ways that I had failed there.  People loved me for the reasons that I made them love me.  And from here, the demons can choose lots of different places to go – that I need people to love me.  That it’s my strength and success that they love and therefore vulnerability and failure become opposite and now we’ve set up absolutes and black/white, good/bad parameters.  And we’ve set up doubt that it’s any other way.  That people could just love me – all of me and even the parts that I’ve locked away.  That Nelson married a woman that he loved – not parts of that woman.

There are many, many blogs that could come from here – and some of them will be written.  But here is the other thing about demons.  They live underneath and they can find many, many ways to stay in the shadows so that they can hang around.  When my demon of disgust was brought into the light in December – it took a big hit just by being seen and named.  And, as I’ve come to face this demon over the past many months, I’d like to think that I can say “thank you” for being a driver of “how I am” and then let it go.  I’m finding, though, that I have to be pretty deliberate and firm about that.  If I keep talking about it or get at ease with that word, “disgust” and use it lightly – that’s a way for that demon to stay around.  As I’ve been looking at my new body – all stitches and bruises – I find I have to bandy with that word.  Is my new body disgusting because it’s now unnatural?  Oh demon…good try!

I think this is a place for some wholesale attitude adjustment – not to shove those feelings down…but to make that demon unwelcome.  This change in my body has been fought for long and hard.  The methods that I used were researched, debated and decided upon with great care and enormous effort – never the easy way out.  The state of my body – with so much excess skin – was already “unnatural” and this surgery gives me the freedom to use and enjoy my body in the way that I have earned.  It is nothing but a positive!   Entertaining this demon of disgust – even arguing with it – keeps it in play.  Clearly, we have identified one antagonist who is not going to leave gracefully.  And it’s time here is done.  No more negotiating.

So if you hear me talk about disgust – feel free to get up in arms with and for me.  Help me turn that cold shoulder and don’t be too nice about it!  And for those of you in my life that are holding up this particular mirror – I am so grateful for you!