I went to see my endocrinologist about a month ago. It was my routine appointment (that is usually every 6 months or so), but it was a new doctor (the other one retired early). I had been anticipating going to see her because I was anxious to have her run extra blood work and give me an overall checkup because I have been exhausted since July.
I mean, at the time, I had mono and it was completely expected that I would be exhausted for a while. I spent two weeks pretty much in the bed. I spent two more weeks only working part time hours and sleeping the rest of the day. My regular doctor told me if I took it easy and got some rest that I should recover. But if I didn't seriously get some rest, it would linger.
I took her for her word. I did rest. I didn't overdo anything. I underachieved. I know it's hard to believe because I am usually stoking 85 coals in the fire, but I really didn't do anything. My husband took care of the house. The projects (kitchen and bathrooms) that we had been so diligently working on just went into a state of limbo. When my husband started walking 2 miles a day to get back into shape, I went a few times but ultimately decided it was too much. If I wasn't at work or asleep, I have pretty much been sitting in my recliner.
So here we are 6 months later and I feel like whatever lingering fatigue leftover from mono should be gone. I had decided in my mind that something must be off in my vitamin levels. Since my husband and I had gastric sleeve surgery nearly six years ago, it's really easy for some vitamin or mineral level to get out of whack. We take a lot of supplements, but over the years have had to change up the mix several times to get everything to stay around normal.
So I asked her to run several extra things on my blood work, and she wanted me to have an MRI to check in on my pituitary tumor. It was not visible on my last MRI, but that was over 10 years ago. Since I have some unexplained symptoms, it had been so long, and she was new to my case, she wanted a look. I went and had the MRI on Friday.
Today, the radiology report was available online and the blood work came back weeks ago. All of my vitamin levels are in range. Nothing is out of whack with that. The radiology report noted that my pituitary is still misshapen (as it was in the last MRI I had), but the tumor is not visible and overall my brain scan was unremarkable. They didn't only look at my pituitary, he noted that everything in my brain was normal.
So here we are. "Nothing" is wrong. But I am tired all the time and have the motivation of a rock. Not just regarding the unfinished projects on the house, but for pretty much anything. I do what I absolutely have to do, and the rest is falling by the wayside. I feel like I am disappointing people, but I am sure that is only in my mind.
I wasn't sleeping very well, so I decided maybe it was because I was drinking an afternoon coffee at work. It was mostly as a pick me up because I am so tired in the afternoons, but I sort of felt like if it was affecting my sleep, it was keeping me in a pretty vicious loop. So I cut out the afternoon caffeine. This usually means that by the time I go to bed (at least on work days), I am super exhausted. But I am not having trouble going to sleep (or staying asleep).
I started questioning if I needed a new pillow, or maybe we needed a new mattress. The thing is that I am not uncomfortable. Before we bought this mattress, I woke up aching all the time. Like I had to get out of the bed because continuing to lay there was painful to my hips, neck, and back. I don't wake up like that now. But I am still tired all the dame time.
I am supposed to go back to the endocrinologist on January 9th. I anticipate she is going to pull out my blood work and my MRI results and see the same thing I do: nothing. But where does that leave me? Going back to my regular doctor to follow up on mono that should have been resolved months ago?
The only other thing I can think of that could be a problem is my blood sugar and insulin levels. I have hyperinsulinemia, which means my body overproduces insulin when I eat sugar or carbs. So, if I eat sugar/carbs, my blood sugar spikes, my body spikes insulin (more than I even need), so my blood sugar drops. I will get the shakes and feel kind of faint which is easily resolved with eating some sugar, but that just starts the whole process over again. I don't usually eat a lot of carbs without something else to balance out what my body is doing (protein, fat, etc), so these drops in my blood sugar don't happen daily.
But I would say they happen weekly either because I only eat something sweet, or I don't eat (too much time has passed). I am starting to wonder if the highs and lows of my blood sugar roller coaster is causing the fatigue. I was doing pretty well with staying with a relatively low carb diet until I got mono. Carbs are my comfort food, so not feeling good usually leads to eating more of them. That's really the only other thing that is different since July.
I have already decided to go back to low carb after the holidays. I knew that it would be too difficult to do that at Christmas, so I just eliminated the battle and decided it would make more sense after all of the end of the year celebrations are over. I am hopeful that maybe it's just my diet that is the problem. Because at this point, it isn't looking like I have a whole lot of answers coming from anywhere else.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Nice To Meet You (?)
So, I don't post as much here as I once did. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I am doing better... in a myriad of ways. When I originally started writing this blog, I literally had a shit bag. And although we are coming up on the two year anniversary of the shit bag take down, and the three year anniversary of that time I almost died (mostly of stubbornness), it sort of seems like a long time ago at this point.
Every now and then, I will bend or twist the wrong way and I get a shooting pain in the spot where the shit bag was. There is a surgical hernia repair underneath my scar next to my belly button, and the twinge of pain reminds me of the hernia mesh just under my skin. I remember everything quite intensely if I look at my scarred up tummy. But I have kind of arrived at a place of it just being that crazy thing that happened that one time and it really doesn't define that much about me anymore. My immune system isn't what it used to be, but I guess that is a small price to pay if the alternative is being dead at 40.
The progress I have made with my therapist regarding my eating disorder (along with all the other things we talk about) surprises me sometimes. Particularly about changing behaviors that have been around for a really long time. One of the hold-outs is hiding food that I eat. I have been doing that since I was probably 3 or 4 years old. There wasn't a trauma (that I am aware of) that caused this. I don't remember there being a cause. But I would steal my grandmother's maraschino cherries from the top shelf of the refrigerator door and hide while I ate the whole jar and drank all of the juice. I was young enough that I had to drag a chair over to the fridge to get to them. I still don't know what prompted me to do that. But I am 43 years old and hiding food is still something that I have to make a conscious effort not to do anymore.
Sometimes I don't win that battle, but most of the time I do. A year ago, I couldn't make that statement if I was being honest with myself. At the time, every time my husband left to go somewhere (he was going to a lot more music shows at the time) I would eat until he either came back or I went to bed. It obviously wasn't bad enough that it caused me to regain weight, but it was something that I was constantly doing. I tried to identify what emotions were triggering this behavior (at the recommendation of my therapist), but I don't really think it had to do with emotions. It seemed more opportunistic. Like, ok, I am alone, I am going to eat all this food I love with no one here to judge me. At the time, I was also eating food in the car and hiding it. I am aware that no one was judging me anyhow, but that was just how I thought about it in my mind.
I sometimes still think about eating and hiding food. Like, I will think about stopping for fast food and eating it in the car. I go through this whole planning process of where I would stop, what I would get, how I would get rid of the food wrappers, if someone would notice (like are we supposed to eat dinner when I get home and I would be too full to eat or something), etc. I spend the time ruminating on all of this long enough that there isn't time to stop for food anymore. But there was a point in time where I was stopping for the food and hiding that I had eaten it. So I guess thinking about it but not doing it is an improvement over actually doing it?
I bought a jar of cherries a couple of months ago at the grocery. I have eaten maybe 10 of them but the jar is still in the fridge. I don't think about them. Correction, I don't obsess about them. But if I feel shaky (which sometimes happens) and I think it may be that my blood sugar has dropped (because sometimes it's protein instead), a few cherries soaked in sugar juice perks me back up pretty quickly. But I don't want to eat all of the cherries or hide that I ate them. So, progress I guess?
I have also been feeling better about my body and accepting that where I am at is a good place to be. Maybe accepting a little bit that I don't have to lose more weight to be considered a weight loss surgery success story. Learning to live with the fact that I don't have to have the extra skin removed from my body to feel sexy (or even be sexy). Accepting the idea that I can weigh 200 pounds and be ok with my weight and my appearance and still be a "success". Because even if I still weigh 200 pounds, I don't weigh 300 pounds. And even if I still think about food binges, I am not usually participating in them (most of the time anyways).
Well... this morning has been a challenge. My endocrinologist (who manages my pituitary gland tumor in my brain) decided to retire early and a new doctor came in to take over her practice. This morning was my first appointment with the new doctor. I don't particularly enjoy appointments with new doctors because I have such a long and complex medical history at this point. My brain tumor was diagnosed when I was 19, so we are talking about 24 years of treatment just for that. Not to mention everything else that has happened in the last 10 years or so (I have been under anesthesia 7 times since 2010).
Anyways, we are talking through my history with the tumor and everything it affects and I mentioned that I would like to have some blood work done on my vitamin levels because I have been really worn down since I had mono over the summer. I haven't been participating in my usual level of activities to give my body a chance to recover fully, but at the same time it has been over three months and I still feel tired all the time. I thought maybe it could be my B vitamins or iron levels or something so I mentioned that I had weight loss surgery in 2014 (which could be a reason why my levels are off).
Her response: "You know, you have to participate in your diet and exercise program for the rest of your life after weight loss surgery. You should still be eating low carb. Have you regained a lot of weight?" Followed by the elevator look. You know the one. The one where they lose eye contact to slowly go down your body and back up again.
In the moment, I explained to her that I had lost 100 pounds and was maintaining that with the exception of about 10 pounds of water weight I gained in the last three weeks or so thanks to lots of bags of fluids while dealing with the kidney stone (while simultaneously not being on the "water pill" I take). But I am stable around 200 pounds and have been for a couple of years. She ordered an MRI (because I haven't had one in 10 years or so and my tumor has been more symptomatic in the past year) and blood work and I am supposed to follow up with her in January (though I will be able to see the lab results online in a few days to see where I am at on my vitamin levels).
But after I left her office, her words started cycling over and over in my mind. All of these doubts crept in about not losing enough weight, not being "normal" what the fuck ever that means, still being overweight, and overall not being the success story that I had kind of decided in my mind I was. I mean I think I handled it in the moment with her in the best way I could have because I didn't take what she said as a criticism and just made clear what tests I definitely wanted added to my usual blood draw.
But the weight of her words and what she was implying became more and more clear to me after I had left her office. I spent the better part of the rest of the morning battling with my eating disorder about behaviors that have the potential to derail me in some major ways. It is kind of disappointing that an interaction with a new doctor can still send me into the same mental spiral, but I guess it is encouraging that it didn't result in a binge on cupcakes.
I am just left with this overall level of self doubt. Maybe I am not doing enough. Maybe I should try harder to lose more weight. I mean, my husband and I still eat small portions and I cook something for us most nights of the week. But in the past few months or so, my lack of energy has led to more take out than I would prefer. And I have definitely let sweet treats and crunchy snacks back into my house like an old lover I just can't quit... the comfort foods providing that hit of endorphins that I am not getting from exercise because I just don't have the energy to do it.
I had planned to go back to keto temporarily after the holidays as sort of a brain reset. I didn't want to set myself up for failure by trying to do keto during Thanksgiving and Christmas because that is a mental load I just don't want to take on at the moment and I truly feel like it would be self-sabotaging to even try. But I am just sitting here thinking to myself that I am not doing enough. I am not enough.
I took a photo in the hotel room when I was in Wisconsin. I was feeling pretty good about the image in the mirror. I don't often look at myself and feel like a success, but I did that day. This morning I am just trying to get back to that mental place. Thanks, doc.
Every now and then, I will bend or twist the wrong way and I get a shooting pain in the spot where the shit bag was. There is a surgical hernia repair underneath my scar next to my belly button, and the twinge of pain reminds me of the hernia mesh just under my skin. I remember everything quite intensely if I look at my scarred up tummy. But I have kind of arrived at a place of it just being that crazy thing that happened that one time and it really doesn't define that much about me anymore. My immune system isn't what it used to be, but I guess that is a small price to pay if the alternative is being dead at 40.
The progress I have made with my therapist regarding my eating disorder (along with all the other things we talk about) surprises me sometimes. Particularly about changing behaviors that have been around for a really long time. One of the hold-outs is hiding food that I eat. I have been doing that since I was probably 3 or 4 years old. There wasn't a trauma (that I am aware of) that caused this. I don't remember there being a cause. But I would steal my grandmother's maraschino cherries from the top shelf of the refrigerator door and hide while I ate the whole jar and drank all of the juice. I was young enough that I had to drag a chair over to the fridge to get to them. I still don't know what prompted me to do that. But I am 43 years old and hiding food is still something that I have to make a conscious effort not to do anymore.
Sometimes I don't win that battle, but most of the time I do. A year ago, I couldn't make that statement if I was being honest with myself. At the time, every time my husband left to go somewhere (he was going to a lot more music shows at the time) I would eat until he either came back or I went to bed. It obviously wasn't bad enough that it caused me to regain weight, but it was something that I was constantly doing. I tried to identify what emotions were triggering this behavior (at the recommendation of my therapist), but I don't really think it had to do with emotions. It seemed more opportunistic. Like, ok, I am alone, I am going to eat all this food I love with no one here to judge me. At the time, I was also eating food in the car and hiding it. I am aware that no one was judging me anyhow, but that was just how I thought about it in my mind.
I sometimes still think about eating and hiding food. Like, I will think about stopping for fast food and eating it in the car. I go through this whole planning process of where I would stop, what I would get, how I would get rid of the food wrappers, if someone would notice (like are we supposed to eat dinner when I get home and I would be too full to eat or something), etc. I spend the time ruminating on all of this long enough that there isn't time to stop for food anymore. But there was a point in time where I was stopping for the food and hiding that I had eaten it. So I guess thinking about it but not doing it is an improvement over actually doing it?
I bought a jar of cherries a couple of months ago at the grocery. I have eaten maybe 10 of them but the jar is still in the fridge. I don't think about them. Correction, I don't obsess about them. But if I feel shaky (which sometimes happens) and I think it may be that my blood sugar has dropped (because sometimes it's protein instead), a few cherries soaked in sugar juice perks me back up pretty quickly. But I don't want to eat all of the cherries or hide that I ate them. So, progress I guess?
I have also been feeling better about my body and accepting that where I am at is a good place to be. Maybe accepting a little bit that I don't have to lose more weight to be considered a weight loss surgery success story. Learning to live with the fact that I don't have to have the extra skin removed from my body to feel sexy (or even be sexy). Accepting the idea that I can weigh 200 pounds and be ok with my weight and my appearance and still be a "success". Because even if I still weigh 200 pounds, I don't weigh 300 pounds. And even if I still think about food binges, I am not usually participating in them (most of the time anyways).
Well... this morning has been a challenge. My endocrinologist (who manages my pituitary gland tumor in my brain) decided to retire early and a new doctor came in to take over her practice. This morning was my first appointment with the new doctor. I don't particularly enjoy appointments with new doctors because I have such a long and complex medical history at this point. My brain tumor was diagnosed when I was 19, so we are talking about 24 years of treatment just for that. Not to mention everything else that has happened in the last 10 years or so (I have been under anesthesia 7 times since 2010).
Anyways, we are talking through my history with the tumor and everything it affects and I mentioned that I would like to have some blood work done on my vitamin levels because I have been really worn down since I had mono over the summer. I haven't been participating in my usual level of activities to give my body a chance to recover fully, but at the same time it has been over three months and I still feel tired all the time. I thought maybe it could be my B vitamins or iron levels or something so I mentioned that I had weight loss surgery in 2014 (which could be a reason why my levels are off).
Her response: "You know, you have to participate in your diet and exercise program for the rest of your life after weight loss surgery. You should still be eating low carb. Have you regained a lot of weight?" Followed by the elevator look. You know the one. The one where they lose eye contact to slowly go down your body and back up again.
In the moment, I explained to her that I had lost 100 pounds and was maintaining that with the exception of about 10 pounds of water weight I gained in the last three weeks or so thanks to lots of bags of fluids while dealing with the kidney stone (while simultaneously not being on the "water pill" I take). But I am stable around 200 pounds and have been for a couple of years. She ordered an MRI (because I haven't had one in 10 years or so and my tumor has been more symptomatic in the past year) and blood work and I am supposed to follow up with her in January (though I will be able to see the lab results online in a few days to see where I am at on my vitamin levels).
But after I left her office, her words started cycling over and over in my mind. All of these doubts crept in about not losing enough weight, not being "normal" what the fuck ever that means, still being overweight, and overall not being the success story that I had kind of decided in my mind I was. I mean I think I handled it in the moment with her in the best way I could have because I didn't take what she said as a criticism and just made clear what tests I definitely wanted added to my usual blood draw.
But the weight of her words and what she was implying became more and more clear to me after I had left her office. I spent the better part of the rest of the morning battling with my eating disorder about behaviors that have the potential to derail me in some major ways. It is kind of disappointing that an interaction with a new doctor can still send me into the same mental spiral, but I guess it is encouraging that it didn't result in a binge on cupcakes.
I am just left with this overall level of self doubt. Maybe I am not doing enough. Maybe I should try harder to lose more weight. I mean, my husband and I still eat small portions and I cook something for us most nights of the week. But in the past few months or so, my lack of energy has led to more take out than I would prefer. And I have definitely let sweet treats and crunchy snacks back into my house like an old lover I just can't quit... the comfort foods providing that hit of endorphins that I am not getting from exercise because I just don't have the energy to do it.
I had planned to go back to keto temporarily after the holidays as sort of a brain reset. I didn't want to set myself up for failure by trying to do keto during Thanksgiving and Christmas because that is a mental load I just don't want to take on at the moment and I truly feel like it would be self-sabotaging to even try. But I am just sitting here thinking to myself that I am not doing enough. I am not enough.
I took a photo in the hotel room when I was in Wisconsin. I was feeling pretty good about the image in the mirror. I don't often look at myself and feel like a success, but I did that day. This morning I am just trying to get back to that mental place. Thanks, doc.
Monday, October 7, 2019
You Ask A LOT From Your Body
I am admittedly a crazy person. So it probably shouldn't surprise anyone when I tell them about some Cuckoo Larue craziness that I do on a regular basis.
That said, I have a spreadsheet where I have been tracking my weight weekly since the beginning of 2016. There. I said it. I recall that we were doing a weight loss challenge at work around then, and I just kept recording it afterwards. I have a fancy scale that measures your body fat percentage, percentage water, bones, and muscle, along with your weight. Every Thursday, I weigh myself and record all of these numbers. With the exception of the entirety of 2017 when I was working from home, there are weekly weights recorded in this Excel file. Just to paint a picture of the level of nuts I am, I have been wearing the same dress every Thursday for quite a while to make sure I get a good measure.
Well... this picture popped up in my Facebook memories a few weeks ago from 10 years ago in 2009...
When I saw it that morning, I thought to myself, "What happened to *that* girl?" I feel like that girl was more confident, sure of herself and where she was going, proud of herself, strong, independent... not, well, so broken. Was it just denial?
Thinking back on who I really was in 2009... I was in therapy for the grief that nearly crushed me after Nana died (which was more about healing a lot of other things besides the grief). I was taking Lexapro to help with depression (which pretty much just turned off my feelings so they weren't overwhelming... good and bad). My relationship with my idiot ex-boyfriend at this point was resolved as being over and something I didn't want anymore, though he was still around (he was my roommate at the time - separate room, separate lives). I was in this place of being single and working on myself and being completely comfortable with that. I was working out pretty much 6 days a week and felt stronger (physically) than I probably had ever felt.
Life was pretty complicated. I had just moved out of the first house I had ever bought. A series of consistent gunshots (too close to our house for comfort) left me watching the coroner removing a body one bright Saturday morning and suddenly I didn't feel very safe. The housing market promptly crashed and I was left with an adjustable mortgage that was underwater in value to the house. It ended up working out for me financially, but at the time it was pretty stressful. The move to the rental was the worst moving day I have ever experienced. My brother dropped the piano on his toe, so most of it was spent at the ER while my friends and family (who I was and am still thankful for) unloaded our truck. When we got home, all of the furniture was in the wrong bedrooms, and everything was a wreck, but it was unloaded and my brother's toe was still attached, so... perspective. Life wasn't easy, but I was ok and I felt like life was looking up (although uncertain).
I wonder now if being sure that life would work itself out was some sort of false sense of confidence. Or maybe it was just the Lexapro. Maybe it was youth. But I felt happy. I felt good. I remember one of the first dates my (now) husband and I went on was on Halloween of that year. We had both gone to separate parties and met up afterwards at Perkins. All of the women at the party were in sexy costumes, and I was in my bee girl costume...
But this was 100% something I would do... and feel totally comfortable doing. I wasn't the girl that would necessarily always wear a sexy costume. I was the girl that made her own costumes and made them as elaborate or simple and cute as I wanted... and felt good wearing them. My after party date at Perkins turned into a lot more than that. And my choice of costume was one reason he was interested. I was intriguing. Where did that girl go?
I think in the last 10 years, life has worn me down... for a lot of reasons. In that time I married the love of my life and that part of my life has been amazing (when it really was not in 2009). But so many other things have changed in the last 10 years, things that come with maturity, self-realizations, ugly pieces of the world that creep in on you, the list is long and varied... that I shouldn't really be surprised that maybe my eyes aren't as bright and hopeful as they were in 2009. My face is older yes, but most of the changes of time marching across my face have more to do with other pieces of life outside of whether I use sun screen or an eye cream.
Anyways... I got a little off track. So the picture from 2009 showed up in my memories, and I have been ruminating about how different I am now vs. then, questioning myself and my confidence, and how I feel about my body, blah blah blah, and thinking about how I constantly feel like a failure about my weight and my body because I don't feel like I succeeded with the weight loss surgery (for a lot of reasons), and I weighed in (like I always do), and opened my spreadsheet to record my weight. I decided right then and there to scroll all the way back up to the top of my spreadsheet to check out where I was in the beginning of 2016 and prove to myself what a failure I really am because the number from then was obviously going to be way better or different from where I am right now.
1 POUND.
My recorded weight from the beginning of 2016 was ONE (1!) POUND off from my weight last Thursday. Did I mention I am a crazy person? I know a lot has happened since the beginning of 2016. I nearly died of sepsis. I had a shit bag for almost a year. I lost 20+ pounds in a couple of weeks when I was so sick. I gained 40+ pounds at home eating my feelings when I had the shit bag. I did keto to take off the regain and get back to a comfortable spot. I started doing yoga and have a really strong core and awesomely improved balance. I can plank for over a minute after starting my plank challenge last month. I have been maintaining my weight, and getting stronger, and building muscle...
and simultaneously constantly feeling like I am failing.
I mentioned all of this to my therapist... even the neurotic ass spreadsheet. She said, "You ask *A LOT* from your body, and it constantly comes through for you. When are you going to have an appreciation for that?"
Maybe this was like an A-HA moment? I do ask a lot from my body. I have asked it to re-do entire houses. I have thought to myself, "You are not strong enough to do x-y-z," and then went directly and did x-y-z anyhow. Literally every week in yoga, my beautiful sister-in-law instructs us to take our poses to the next level (if we feel like we want to or are strong enough to challenge ourselves), and I try to do the things with my body fully expecting it to respond something along the lines of "this bitch is crazy" and instead it gives me "we can do that" or at least "we can almost do that". My body still manages to surprise me.
I think I got stuck in a pattern of feeling like I can't because for about 18 months after I nearly died I really couldn't. It took a long time to recover (fully recover anyways). I can still push myself and my body too far (and you know, end up with a recurrence of mono because I try to do all the things, as a completely arbitrary example). But more often than not, my body just says, "Fine... I guess we are going to do all the things, you insane person." And I clearly don't appreciate that enough, or show enough gratitude for it.
I feel like I could be on the verge of making peace with myself... and my body. Forgiving myself for nearly dying (mostly due to being hardheaded). And giving myself a little space of self-acceptance. I don't hate my body. I realized recently, that I never really hated it. I didn't entirely dislike it either. I just didn't really love it. Maybe the feeling was indifference?
I spent a lot of time thinking that it didn't matter if I didn't 100% love my body because I could always change it and love it more later. I could sit comfortably at 300 pounds and say to myself that it was ok to not be in a body I loved because I needed to lose weight first, then love myself. And after losing a lot of weight and realizing that my body still wasn't what I wanted, I said it was ok to not be in a body I loved because I needed to have some loose skin removed first, then love myself. But I have come to realize, that my body is not ever going to be exactly what I want it to be. The caveat is that I don't think anyone has a body that is exactly what they want. You ask any person if there is something about their physical body they don't like, and most have at least one thing (if not a list of things).
I ask *A LOT* from my body, and my body is asking me for very little in return... just acceptance and love. I give this so freely to so many people, it doesn't seem too far fetched to give this to myself, or at least start to do so.
That said, I have a spreadsheet where I have been tracking my weight weekly since the beginning of 2016. There. I said it. I recall that we were doing a weight loss challenge at work around then, and I just kept recording it afterwards. I have a fancy scale that measures your body fat percentage, percentage water, bones, and muscle, along with your weight. Every Thursday, I weigh myself and record all of these numbers. With the exception of the entirety of 2017 when I was working from home, there are weekly weights recorded in this Excel file. Just to paint a picture of the level of nuts I am, I have been wearing the same dress every Thursday for quite a while to make sure I get a good measure.
Well... this picture popped up in my Facebook memories a few weeks ago from 10 years ago in 2009...
When I saw it that morning, I thought to myself, "What happened to *that* girl?" I feel like that girl was more confident, sure of herself and where she was going, proud of herself, strong, independent... not, well, so broken. Was it just denial?
Thinking back on who I really was in 2009... I was in therapy for the grief that nearly crushed me after Nana died (which was more about healing a lot of other things besides the grief). I was taking Lexapro to help with depression (which pretty much just turned off my feelings so they weren't overwhelming... good and bad). My relationship with my idiot ex-boyfriend at this point was resolved as being over and something I didn't want anymore, though he was still around (he was my roommate at the time - separate room, separate lives). I was in this place of being single and working on myself and being completely comfortable with that. I was working out pretty much 6 days a week and felt stronger (physically) than I probably had ever felt.
Life was pretty complicated. I had just moved out of the first house I had ever bought. A series of consistent gunshots (too close to our house for comfort) left me watching the coroner removing a body one bright Saturday morning and suddenly I didn't feel very safe. The housing market promptly crashed and I was left with an adjustable mortgage that was underwater in value to the house. It ended up working out for me financially, but at the time it was pretty stressful. The move to the rental was the worst moving day I have ever experienced. My brother dropped the piano on his toe, so most of it was spent at the ER while my friends and family (who I was and am still thankful for) unloaded our truck. When we got home, all of the furniture was in the wrong bedrooms, and everything was a wreck, but it was unloaded and my brother's toe was still attached, so... perspective. Life wasn't easy, but I was ok and I felt like life was looking up (although uncertain).
I wonder now if being sure that life would work itself out was some sort of false sense of confidence. Or maybe it was just the Lexapro. Maybe it was youth. But I felt happy. I felt good. I remember one of the first dates my (now) husband and I went on was on Halloween of that year. We had both gone to separate parties and met up afterwards at Perkins. All of the women at the party were in sexy costumes, and I was in my bee girl costume...
But this was 100% something I would do... and feel totally comfortable doing. I wasn't the girl that would necessarily always wear a sexy costume. I was the girl that made her own costumes and made them as elaborate or simple and cute as I wanted... and felt good wearing them. My after party date at Perkins turned into a lot more than that. And my choice of costume was one reason he was interested. I was intriguing. Where did that girl go?
I think in the last 10 years, life has worn me down... for a lot of reasons. In that time I married the love of my life and that part of my life has been amazing (when it really was not in 2009). But so many other things have changed in the last 10 years, things that come with maturity, self-realizations, ugly pieces of the world that creep in on you, the list is long and varied... that I shouldn't really be surprised that maybe my eyes aren't as bright and hopeful as they were in 2009. My face is older yes, but most of the changes of time marching across my face have more to do with other pieces of life outside of whether I use sun screen or an eye cream.
Anyways... I got a little off track. So the picture from 2009 showed up in my memories, and I have been ruminating about how different I am now vs. then, questioning myself and my confidence, and how I feel about my body, blah blah blah, and thinking about how I constantly feel like a failure about my weight and my body because I don't feel like I succeeded with the weight loss surgery (for a lot of reasons), and I weighed in (like I always do), and opened my spreadsheet to record my weight. I decided right then and there to scroll all the way back up to the top of my spreadsheet to check out where I was in the beginning of 2016 and prove to myself what a failure I really am because the number from then was obviously going to be way better or different from where I am right now.
1 POUND.
My recorded weight from the beginning of 2016 was ONE (1!) POUND off from my weight last Thursday. Did I mention I am a crazy person? I know a lot has happened since the beginning of 2016. I nearly died of sepsis. I had a shit bag for almost a year. I lost 20+ pounds in a couple of weeks when I was so sick. I gained 40+ pounds at home eating my feelings when I had the shit bag. I did keto to take off the regain and get back to a comfortable spot. I started doing yoga and have a really strong core and awesomely improved balance. I can plank for over a minute after starting my plank challenge last month. I have been maintaining my weight, and getting stronger, and building muscle...
and simultaneously constantly feeling like I am failing.
I mentioned all of this to my therapist... even the neurotic ass spreadsheet. She said, "You ask *A LOT* from your body, and it constantly comes through for you. When are you going to have an appreciation for that?"
Maybe this was like an A-HA moment? I do ask a lot from my body. I have asked it to re-do entire houses. I have thought to myself, "You are not strong enough to do x-y-z," and then went directly and did x-y-z anyhow. Literally every week in yoga, my beautiful sister-in-law instructs us to take our poses to the next level (if we feel like we want to or are strong enough to challenge ourselves), and I try to do the things with my body fully expecting it to respond something along the lines of "this bitch is crazy" and instead it gives me "we can do that" or at least "we can almost do that". My body still manages to surprise me.
I think I got stuck in a pattern of feeling like I can't because for about 18 months after I nearly died I really couldn't. It took a long time to recover (fully recover anyways). I can still push myself and my body too far (and you know, end up with a recurrence of mono because I try to do all the things, as a completely arbitrary example). But more often than not, my body just says, "Fine... I guess we are going to do all the things, you insane person." And I clearly don't appreciate that enough, or show enough gratitude for it.
I feel like I could be on the verge of making peace with myself... and my body. Forgiving myself for nearly dying (mostly due to being hardheaded). And giving myself a little space of self-acceptance. I don't hate my body. I realized recently, that I never really hated it. I didn't entirely dislike it either. I just didn't really love it. Maybe the feeling was indifference?
I spent a lot of time thinking that it didn't matter if I didn't 100% love my body because I could always change it and love it more later. I could sit comfortably at 300 pounds and say to myself that it was ok to not be in a body I loved because I needed to lose weight first, then love myself. And after losing a lot of weight and realizing that my body still wasn't what I wanted, I said it was ok to not be in a body I loved because I needed to have some loose skin removed first, then love myself. But I have come to realize, that my body is not ever going to be exactly what I want it to be. The caveat is that I don't think anyone has a body that is exactly what they want. You ask any person if there is something about their physical body they don't like, and most have at least one thing (if not a list of things).
I ask *A LOT* from my body, and my body is asking me for very little in return... just acceptance and love. I give this so freely to so many people, it doesn't seem too far fetched to give this to myself, or at least start to do so.
Monday, August 26, 2019
GOOFY AND AWKWARD AND NOT SEXY AT ALL
"In July?" he asked.
I know, I know. But it isn't like my body has a history of handling things normally. So I went home and went back to bed and by the afternoon I had decided I should probably visit a clinic considering I had chills and felt like I had been hit by a truck. The clinic confirmed I was ill, but it was not the flu.
Apparently, I am one of the lucky few to get mono more than once in this lifetime. Since it's a virus, it's always in your body after you have it (I was a senior in college on the first ride). And if you really overdo it and wear your immune system down enough, the virus can reactivate and voila - you are sick again.
So, trying to redo an entire house - including a complete kitchen renovation and a partial bathroom do-over - in about a month can result in your immune system going on a quick vacay. Particularly when your partner in crime broke himself physically on demo day and you are down one man. I worked myself to the point of having mono again. I was out of work the rest of that week as well as the following one. The following two weeks I worked half days. This past week was the first one where I put in close to 40 hours.
Of course, all of this happened about 10 days after we moved into the new house. The kitchen isn't finished (no back splash, trim, filler panels, toe kicks, cabinet pulls - like hella not finished). The wallpaper in the bathrooms isn't up. The hallway needs to be painted. The painted rooms need to be touched up. My husband's music room is full of tools. My sewing room is just boxes. You get the picture. So, my husband broke himself, and then I broke myself, and then we just had to sit there and look at everything that wasn't finished while we are both healing and can't do anything about it... and not go insane. I may have failed on that last one.
In the middle of this, on top of breaking himself on demo day, my husband was diagnosed with a diseased gallbladder (full of stones) and needed surgery to remove it. I mean, gallbladder surgery isn't a major thing anymore if you can have a laparoscopic surgery, but since he nearly died of pulmonary embolisms (yes plural) when he had surgery 8 months ago, the prospect of this was wrecking both of our nerves.
So, he was prepping for surgery and we were both broken. I couldn't kiss him and risk making him sick with mono on top of everything else. I mean, you would think that not kissing him wouldn't be a huge deal, but we kiss a lot. And (more so than I even realized prior to this point) it is a really big part of the intimacy between us. There is all this stress, and the house is chaos, and we're both broken, and he needs to have another surgery, and I can't even kiss him.
I just wanted to set a clear stage for everything before I proceed with how I went nuts.
Switching gears (it will come full circle momentarily)... in general, I do not think of myself as being sexy... or really even as being a sexual being most of the time. I know that when I was in high school and college it was totally a defense mechanism because I was one of the few obese chicks around at the time (it was the late 90s and Kate Moss and her waif body were the "norm"). I just automatically put every person in the friend zone because I assumed that was where they were putting me. I did not want to express an interest in someone and be cruelly rejected in the ways I expected that I would be.
Fast forward twenty years and I never really acquired any capacity for flirting or really expressing myself as being sexy. I am usually completely unaware when someone else is flirting with me. My husband just sort of embraced this as some (additional) odd part of my personality and it was never really an issue. Although sexually our relationship has never been lacking, when I specifically try to be sexy, it's mostly just awkward. Sometimes I think I am accidentally sexy, but it became sort of a running joke between us that we could both laugh about.
Well... we could both laugh about it until all of a sudden stress overload showed up coinciding with illness and a lack of intimacy because I couldn't kiss him and I was feeling really insecure. I decided I was going to be super sexy and I put on an outfit for him the night before his surgery. I'm not going to lie, the trauma of what happened last time he went in for surgery left the possibility that he may die lurking in the back of my mind, and I wanted to make sure he didn't go out of this life sexually frustrated because his dumb ass wife worked herself into a second round of mono (at the worst possible time).
Well, it went as poorly as you can imagine it would. Not overly sexy woman puts on sexy outfit in the middle of a period of super low confidence and insecurity and lack of intimacy with her husband. Yeah, great idea. My husband handled it as well as he could, but there was a lot of laughing. I mean, I was laughing too, but my laughter was coming from this other "OH MY GOD WHY CAN'T I DO ANYTHING RIGHT" nervousness of like if I don't laugh right now I am going to cry instead sort of place. His laughter was coming from the same place it always had, and where mine used to reside. (If any of my close friends want details and particulars of how exactly horribly wrong this went so we can laugh about it - as I can laugh about it now - feel free to message me.)
The following morning, a plus sized model that I follow on Facebook (who he also follows) posted this photo of herself mostly naked and styled as a pinup. She works on the campaign for Dita Von Teese's lingerie line, so it isn't like this is the first photo styled in this way that she has posted. It isn't like this is the first photo of her that my husband and I have discussed. None of this is new. He showed me the photo and smiled and casually said something like, "She knows how to be sexy."
I snapped back something to the effect of, "I would know how to be sexy if I looked like her." His response included commentary that the sexiness conveyed in the picture more so comes from her confidence, not necessarily her body. But my reply was, "And I would feel confident too if I was walking around in her body!" And I went to the bathroom. To cry.
I knew he didn't know how much he upset me. And I didn't want him to know because we were literally getting ready to go to the hospital for his surgery... where I was petrified something was going to happen to him. I didn't want my last interaction with him to be an argument about me feeling insecure about my body. No thanks. So I cried in the bathroom, regained my composure, and wiped my face.
Well. I let it build up in my mind for over a week. I didn't know how to talk about it or how to even bring it up. I just knew that it was turning into this whole other thing. By the time I did tell him how I felt, I had decided that he didn't find me sexy at all, and that he thinks I'm goofy and awkward, and that he laughed at me when I tried to be sexy for him, and not only am I not sexy, but I also have a body that is damaged and broken from nearly dying that will never be attractive again, and I don't even know why he is with me.
If you are a woman reading this, you are probably thinking... well I could see how all of that would kind of lead you down this path to feeling really insecure, even if it wasn't true. And if you are a man, you are probably thinking... how the hell did she decide that the man who *married her* didn't think she was sexy?
When all of this came flying out of my mouth, with tears streaming and snot everywhere... to be honest he looked blindsided. Because he kind of was. This thing that was sort of this joke between us, was beaten and broken down into wreckage by a battle that was only happening in my mind and with myself. To him, I was still the same quirky weirdo that he calls his cute bean. Our interactions about me being awkward were the same lighthearted silliness that they always were. The lack of intimacy because we couldn't kiss each other on the lips was being propped up by all of the other ways we show that we totally dig being married... specifically to each other.
In retrospect, I don't think that my internal battle really had anything to do with something he did. I recently came to the realization that I am probably not going to have surgery to fix my body from the damage from nearly dying. When I look in the mirror, I see someone who looks like they were broken and glued back together. I don't like the way my body looks. The thing is, I never have. The only difference is that now, there isn't some future date when I think I will like my body.
When I weighed nearly 300 pounds, I decided it wasn't important for me to love my body because I would love it when I lost weight. When I had the gastric sleeve surgery to lose weight and all I saw was loose skin, I decided it wasn't important for me to love my body because I would love it when I didn't have loose skin anymore. When I nearly died and had multiple surgeries that left scars scattered among the loose skin, I decided it wasn't important for me to love my body because I could love it when I had a tummy tuck to fix everything. And here I am, in the same body that my mind sees as broken and ugly, trying to accept that it will more than likely never be "fixed". There isn't a future end date for when I can just love my body. I have to accept it as it is. Which is what I should have been doing all along, but that is a story for another day.
And that, I believe, was the bigger source of my insecurity. If I don't love this body, why in the world would my husband? If I stand in front of a mirror naked and I hate what I see, why wouldn't he see me the same way?
The thing is, he has loved me and my body all along. When I was morbidly obese, he loved me and my body. When I lost weight, he loved me and my body (even the loose skin bits). When I nearly died and ended up scarred for life (in more ways than just on my skin), he loved my body even more for being *alive* and scarred. And when I went nuts and accused him of not thinking I am sexy at all, he still loved my insane ass. Sometimes, I am not sure why.
My therapist, when I unloaded all of this on her, asked me to name one thing I like about my body specifically. I responded that I think I have pretty eyes. So she said, "That is a place to start." It is the tiniest thing, but I guess it is a place to start...
Monday, July 8, 2019
Crossover Episode
You know how TV shows on the same network will do weird-ass crossover shows sometimes with characters from two different popular series? That's this blog today. Today we talk about the house blog *AND* emotions in the same place.
So I went to see my therapist last Saturday and basically balled my eyes out for an hour. I am pretty sure I have posted about my inability to express and define emotions before. Nana and her "never let them see you cry" advice carries over in the long term in my life. So even when I am sitting in my therapist's office, it is not super common for tears to show up. I am still the logical vulcan you all know just sitting with her and rationalizing emotions that I am refusing to actually feel.
Welp, not this week. Apparently, this week was vent-fest. Tear-fest. Ugly cry-fest. Snot-fest. I guess I have been retaining a lot of emotions throughout the house project that exploded out of my tear ducts in that hour. I kept starting sentences with, "I am sure I am just overwhelmed, but..." as if I had to give a reason for being emotional to my therapist. I'm nuts, I know.
I am usually pretty good at keeping my shit together to a ridiculous, anal-retentive degree. But I have noticed in the past week or so that things like "it is what it is" or "I don't really know what to do next" are coming out of my mouth in an alarming frequency. I am kind of used to Plan A not working out in my life. I mean, Plan A rarely works for me. I guess I am just not used to being on like Plan M because honestly, that just feels a whole lot like no plan at all and I am just winging it.
I am a person of extremes: truly anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive plans OR flying by the seat of my pants. Is there a form of bi-polar planning? That's what this feels like.
Backstory: my husband and I closed on our new house on 05-23. We ripped out the kitchen two days later. Like, we removed the kitchen cabinets and the furdown above them and you could see into the attic level of ripped out the kitchen. It was necessary because we needed electrical work done in those walls prior to installing a new kitchen, and we wanted that to happen before we moved in. So mission accomplished.
I went back to work for the week and we returned the following weekend. The plan was to replace the tile floor in the main bathroom over a few days (I had Friday and Monday off). But what should have been a simple remove the tile, put down self-leveler, lay the tile, and grout the tile, turned into something else entirely. The subfloor was rotted. So we had to rip out everything down to the floor joists, resupport the tub under the house, and replace the rotted wood. So instead of having a new tile floor at the end of that weekend, we had a new subfloor.
 |
| yeah that's me sitting under our tub |
It was at this point that my husband started talking about his abdomen hurting. To make a long story short, he needs to have his gallbladder out and we think he has a hernia. So he has excruciating pain, alternating between his right side (gallbladder) and left side (hernia). Our little house project that we were so excited about doing together just kind of got trampled on by 43-year-old bodies. It wouldn't have been a big deal if there was an unlimited timeline on this whole thing, but we were supposed to move in at the end of June.
Fast forward through a lot of days of sanding, priming, painting, tiling, grouting, tile and grout repair on the existing bits, waiting on work to be completed by other people (electrician and plumber) and the end of June move-in did not happen. So we asked for an extension on our current lease for an extra couple of weeks and we move on July 12th instead.
In the middle of all of this, the main sewer line to the project house I did in 2016/2017 (where my sister currently resides) caved in and required replacing. Like dig up the yard and replace the whole cast iron drain pipe level of replacing. This was on top of us renovating our new house and paying rent and a house note simultaneously. I started describing our reality as a state of hemorrhaging money because we were free-bleeding at that point.
And this is how I arrived at my current state of overwhelmed and the ugly-cry fest with my therapist. I guess the good news is that I did feel better when I left her office (and drove to the house to work on it). I think I was trying to be super strong for my husband who is pretty much devastated that his body failed him and we aren't doing this together like we intended.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. The house is pretty much in a state of readiness for us to move in at this point with the exception of a few things. We still need to organize and remove all of the tools and construction supplies from my husband's music space. The privacy film I bought for the front windows needs to be put up in the living room. And everything needs to be cleaned up from construction dust as well as the previous owners.
They were nasty, y'all. And I am not fucking Martha Stewart or anything, or typically judgey about a mess. I would say I usually live in a state of organized chaos. It looks messy, but I know where everything is. But they were just gross. Like I thought the tile was ruined in the shower but it was just dirty gross. Like they must have some really strong immune systems gross. Like I thought it was weird they left their brooms and other cleaning supplies but I have realized it is because they never actually used them anyhow gross.
I digress. I am still overwhelmed. Mostly because we aren't really packed yet. There is still a lot to do before the projects are complete. I have been saying this sentence a lot: "I can do that after we move in." So I will be a busy little bee for quite a while.
But one super positive note (and sort of the point of this post) is that I haven't been binging on food every day as a coping mechanism. Pizza day at work was still a challenge I failed. My boss buys pizza for the office on the first of every month. And it sits there smelling up the office all day and I have this 7 hour battle with myself about eating more pizza all afternoon. I ate 4 pieces of pizza that day. I realize that is not a lot of pizza for a person with a normal sized tummy. In fact, that is probably the number of slices that everyone in my office ate that day. But it was way too much for me and I felt ill and regretted it. So, I'm putting that day in the L column.
But there have been plenty of other opportunities for me to just EAT. And I haven't. So I guess I have worked myself into a place of being able to be overwhelmed and not always binge. And I have progressed into having some emotions leak out.
Conclusion: replacing your rotted psyche is a lot harder than a rotted bathroom floor.
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Success Story?
So, March of 2019 marked five (5!) years since I had gastric sleeve surgery. I can't believe that my husband and I have been going through this process of change together for that long. It sometimes seems like it was forever ago that we looked like this:
It probably seems this way mostly because I don't feel like my weight loss journey was a success or that it is even over. I lost the most weight in the first seven months post-op. I remember specifically that when my brother got married in October of that year, I weighed 193 pounds. It was the first time in my adult life that my weight had started with a 1. I was just a matron of honor in a wedding, not the fat matron of honor in a wedding. It was definitely my lowest adult weight and I hadn't been at that weight since probably the age of 16.
During that first two and half years after surgery, my weight settled in around 205 pounds. At the time, I was working on the project house and super strong. I felt like I wasn't doing everything I could possibly do to continue losing weight, but I was also pretty satisfied with my progress so far. I definitely did not feel like a success story because I still fell into the "obese" category on the BMI chart. I realize that is a really arbitrary unit of measure, however it was the one my weight loss surgeon drilled into my head. I would have to weigh 150 pounds to be "normal". After having surgery, losing 100 pounds, gaining a lot of strength and muscle, getting off of most medications, and being able to physically do most anything I wanted... I was still not "normal".
Of course, in December of 2016, all of that changed. When I got really sick and almost died, I lost a lot of weight pretty much over the course of 6 days (26 pounds). When I left the hospital, I looked ill (because I was). During the first visit with my home health nurse at my mom's house she took my weight. It was 179 pounds. I remember walking back to my mom's scale after the nurse left because I assumed something must have been wrong with hers. It was accurate and I was shocked. The first time I got to take a shower, I remember it took every ounce of energy I had at the time just to make it through. My mom (thankfully) had a seat I could use so I didn't have to stand up the whole time or I wouldn't have been able to do it.
It is a crazy place to be when you are 40 and at the healthiest and strongest you have ever been in your life, to then be instantly so sick you can't stand up for a few minutes. I caught a glimpse of my naked body in her very large bathroom mirror. I looked like I was 80 years old, just skin hanging on bones. I had never thought that I looked too thin in my life until that moment.
For the first time ever, I had a doctor asking if I was eating enough. I realize in hindsight that he and his team needed to make sure that I was getting enough nutrition to help my very sick body heal from all of that trauma. He had removed part of my intestines, my abdomen was full of abscesses, I was fighting off system-wide infection, I had a huge incision, and a brand new shit bag. There was a lot that needed to heal, and I had a tiny tummy. Him asking to make sure I was eating enough was just an inquiry into nutrition, but I took it as a green light to eat whatever I wanted for the first time in a long time.
2017 was a really hard year for me. Of course, for the first two months, I was staying at my mom's house to recover (particularly because I was on IV antibiotics). When I returned home and started back to work, I was working from home. I was very thankful that my bosses allowed me to do that because having a shit bag was not super conducive to being out in public, not less in an office environment. I realize that there are plenty of people who have a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives, I am just really glad I am not one of them. It makes fart noises whenever it likes (you have no control over that). I could smell poop pretty much all the time (although everyone else around me claimed they couldn't). The clothes you wear are completely dependent on whether the bag is accommodated or not. And if you got any of the chemicals from the bag on your clothes they were ruined (it acted like bleach).
But working from home when I was incredibly depressed and suffering from PTSD was not the best situation for my eating. I pretty much binged on food for the entire 325 days I had the shit bag. I would skip out on drinking water and keeping hydrated just so I could eat more food (I mean, there's only so much room in a tiny tummy, and I was reserving that room for chips and ice cream). I sought out a therapist in the late summer of 2017 because my husband was worried about my behaviors. I had started to try to drink more water just so I would be ready for the colostomy bag reversal surgery, but 11 months of eating this way resulted in me gaining 40 pounds (back up to 225).
I knew I needed to make a drastic change to get me back on track, so when I returned to working in the office in January of 2018, I did strict keto for 10 weeks to detox from sugar and carbs and lose the weight I had gained. I ended up around 200 pounds when I was finished with the keto. Since then, I have been doing low (ish) carb to maintain that. I have continued my treatment for binge eating disorder and although the progress on that front is slow, I do see differences in how I think about the food I eat and the choices I make. It is a lot of work to unravel a lifetime of using food for more than just nutrition.
But small victories add up over time. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to the zoo. It rained a little in the afternoon so most everybody left. We were in the petting zoo area and there is this statue of a cow in there for kids to climb on for photos. Since there wasn't really anybody there, I wanted to get on the cow and take a picture. My eating disorder was loudly shouting that I couldn't get on the cow because I am a cow... that I am fat and would look ridiculous. I quieted those thoughts long enough to fucking climb up on that cow and take a fucking picture. When I told my husband what I was thinking after the fact, he noted that he thought I looked cute with my flower tucked behind my ear, and that I appeared really happy when I was up there. I was happy... more so because I won that internal battle and got on the cow. As a bonus, I can look at that photo and see that I *am* happy, and I am not judging whether or not I look fat.
But am I a success story? I am a member of a few Facebook groups for people who are post bariatric surgery. Overall, there is the full gamut of people within them. People who have had the sleeve like me, bypass, lap-band, and a couple of other less common procedures. People who have reached goal (BMI chart goal) and had the full range of plastic surgery to "fix" everything (arms, thighs, stomach, boobs, neck, face, you name it - one even had a calf lift). People who never lost the weight they were expected to lose. People who lost a lot of weight and regained a lot of weight. People who lost, regained, and lost again. People who count macros, calories, carbs, fat grams... and people who don't track anything.
A lot of people would call me a success story because I am 5 years out from surgery and still maintaining a 100 pound loss. A lot of people would say that I am not a success story because I never made it to my surgeon's goal of 150 pounds. Some people would say I am a success story because I am in treatment for binge eating disorder and am starting to win that battle more days than not. Some would say I am not a success story because I still have days where I binge on food.
But what do I say? Every day is different. Am I a success story because I haven't gone off the rails binging on food in several days (and for the most part just one incident in the past few weeks)? Am I a success story because of what the scale said this morning? Am I a success story because I am none of the places I have been before?
There is a part of me that still feels like I haven't done enough. There is a voice in my head that says I am never going to be good enough because I am never going to weigh 150 pounds like a "normal" person. The ironic part is that at this point, I have seen what my body looked like at 179 pounds and I hated it. So 150 pounds isn't even a goal that I logically want for myself anymore. But there is still this voice that says 202 is too much, and that I have failed on the weight loss surgery journey because I never made it to goal.
I don't see myself as I was before my husband and I started this process. In my mind, the photo below is not the image I picture in my mind of either of us, and of course it isn't the image I see in the mirror anymore.
But whatever ideas I have about my self-worth or self-identification are 100% attached to the image above, even if the image below is the reality I am living in. If I refer to myself as the fat girl, or my eating disorder is yelling about me being a cow, or any number of behaviors I identify as being a part of "fat girl syndrome" come out (from being a people pleaser, to being the comedian, to not being able to say no, take your pick, etc, etc, etc)... it derives from living in the body in the image above for the majority of my life. Being in the body in the image below does not make me a success story. Taking care of myself because I feel like I am worth it and deserve to feel positive about my body (no matter what it weighs) is 100% the criteria for identifying myself as a success. I don't think I am at that place, but every day I feel like I might be a little bit closer.
It probably seems this way mostly because I don't feel like my weight loss journey was a success or that it is even over. I lost the most weight in the first seven months post-op. I remember specifically that when my brother got married in October of that year, I weighed 193 pounds. It was the first time in my adult life that my weight had started with a 1. I was just a matron of honor in a wedding, not the fat matron of honor in a wedding. It was definitely my lowest adult weight and I hadn't been at that weight since probably the age of 16.
During that first two and half years after surgery, my weight settled in around 205 pounds. At the time, I was working on the project house and super strong. I felt like I wasn't doing everything I could possibly do to continue losing weight, but I was also pretty satisfied with my progress so far. I definitely did not feel like a success story because I still fell into the "obese" category on the BMI chart. I realize that is a really arbitrary unit of measure, however it was the one my weight loss surgeon drilled into my head. I would have to weigh 150 pounds to be "normal". After having surgery, losing 100 pounds, gaining a lot of strength and muscle, getting off of most medications, and being able to physically do most anything I wanted... I was still not "normal".
Of course, in December of 2016, all of that changed. When I got really sick and almost died, I lost a lot of weight pretty much over the course of 6 days (26 pounds). When I left the hospital, I looked ill (because I was). During the first visit with my home health nurse at my mom's house she took my weight. It was 179 pounds. I remember walking back to my mom's scale after the nurse left because I assumed something must have been wrong with hers. It was accurate and I was shocked. The first time I got to take a shower, I remember it took every ounce of energy I had at the time just to make it through. My mom (thankfully) had a seat I could use so I didn't have to stand up the whole time or I wouldn't have been able to do it.
It is a crazy place to be when you are 40 and at the healthiest and strongest you have ever been in your life, to then be instantly so sick you can't stand up for a few minutes. I caught a glimpse of my naked body in her very large bathroom mirror. I looked like I was 80 years old, just skin hanging on bones. I had never thought that I looked too thin in my life until that moment.
For the first time ever, I had a doctor asking if I was eating enough. I realize in hindsight that he and his team needed to make sure that I was getting enough nutrition to help my very sick body heal from all of that trauma. He had removed part of my intestines, my abdomen was full of abscesses, I was fighting off system-wide infection, I had a huge incision, and a brand new shit bag. There was a lot that needed to heal, and I had a tiny tummy. Him asking to make sure I was eating enough was just an inquiry into nutrition, but I took it as a green light to eat whatever I wanted for the first time in a long time.
2017 was a really hard year for me. Of course, for the first two months, I was staying at my mom's house to recover (particularly because I was on IV antibiotics). When I returned home and started back to work, I was working from home. I was very thankful that my bosses allowed me to do that because having a shit bag was not super conducive to being out in public, not less in an office environment. I realize that there are plenty of people who have a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives, I am just really glad I am not one of them. It makes fart noises whenever it likes (you have no control over that). I could smell poop pretty much all the time (although everyone else around me claimed they couldn't). The clothes you wear are completely dependent on whether the bag is accommodated or not. And if you got any of the chemicals from the bag on your clothes they were ruined (it acted like bleach).
But working from home when I was incredibly depressed and suffering from PTSD was not the best situation for my eating. I pretty much binged on food for the entire 325 days I had the shit bag. I would skip out on drinking water and keeping hydrated just so I could eat more food (I mean, there's only so much room in a tiny tummy, and I was reserving that room for chips and ice cream). I sought out a therapist in the late summer of 2017 because my husband was worried about my behaviors. I had started to try to drink more water just so I would be ready for the colostomy bag reversal surgery, but 11 months of eating this way resulted in me gaining 40 pounds (back up to 225).
I knew I needed to make a drastic change to get me back on track, so when I returned to working in the office in January of 2018, I did strict keto for 10 weeks to detox from sugar and carbs and lose the weight I had gained. I ended up around 200 pounds when I was finished with the keto. Since then, I have been doing low (ish) carb to maintain that. I have continued my treatment for binge eating disorder and although the progress on that front is slow, I do see differences in how I think about the food I eat and the choices I make. It is a lot of work to unravel a lifetime of using food for more than just nutrition.
But small victories add up over time. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to the zoo. It rained a little in the afternoon so most everybody left. We were in the petting zoo area and there is this statue of a cow in there for kids to climb on for photos. Since there wasn't really anybody there, I wanted to get on the cow and take a picture. My eating disorder was loudly shouting that I couldn't get on the cow because I am a cow... that I am fat and would look ridiculous. I quieted those thoughts long enough to fucking climb up on that cow and take a fucking picture. When I told my husband what I was thinking after the fact, he noted that he thought I looked cute with my flower tucked behind my ear, and that I appeared really happy when I was up there. I was happy... more so because I won that internal battle and got on the cow. As a bonus, I can look at that photo and see that I *am* happy, and I am not judging whether or not I look fat.
But am I a success story? I am a member of a few Facebook groups for people who are post bariatric surgery. Overall, there is the full gamut of people within them. People who have had the sleeve like me, bypass, lap-band, and a couple of other less common procedures. People who have reached goal (BMI chart goal) and had the full range of plastic surgery to "fix" everything (arms, thighs, stomach, boobs, neck, face, you name it - one even had a calf lift). People who never lost the weight they were expected to lose. People who lost a lot of weight and regained a lot of weight. People who lost, regained, and lost again. People who count macros, calories, carbs, fat grams... and people who don't track anything.
A lot of people would call me a success story because I am 5 years out from surgery and still maintaining a 100 pound loss. A lot of people would say that I am not a success story because I never made it to my surgeon's goal of 150 pounds. Some people would say I am a success story because I am in treatment for binge eating disorder and am starting to win that battle more days than not. Some would say I am not a success story because I still have days where I binge on food.
But what do I say? Every day is different. Am I a success story because I haven't gone off the rails binging on food in several days (and for the most part just one incident in the past few weeks)? Am I a success story because of what the scale said this morning? Am I a success story because I am none of the places I have been before?
There is a part of me that still feels like I haven't done enough. There is a voice in my head that says I am never going to be good enough because I am never going to weigh 150 pounds like a "normal" person. The ironic part is that at this point, I have seen what my body looked like at 179 pounds and I hated it. So 150 pounds isn't even a goal that I logically want for myself anymore. But there is still this voice that says 202 is too much, and that I have failed on the weight loss surgery journey because I never made it to goal.
I don't see myself as I was before my husband and I started this process. In my mind, the photo below is not the image I picture in my mind of either of us, and of course it isn't the image I see in the mirror anymore.
But whatever ideas I have about my self-worth or self-identification are 100% attached to the image above, even if the image below is the reality I am living in. If I refer to myself as the fat girl, or my eating disorder is yelling about me being a cow, or any number of behaviors I identify as being a part of "fat girl syndrome" come out (from being a people pleaser, to being the comedian, to not being able to say no, take your pick, etc, etc, etc)... it derives from living in the body in the image above for the majority of my life. Being in the body in the image below does not make me a success story. Taking care of myself because I feel like I am worth it and deserve to feel positive about my body (no matter what it weighs) is 100% the criteria for identifying myself as a success. I don't think I am at that place, but every day I feel like I might be a little bit closer.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Never let them see you cry...
I haven't posted anything in a while. I could say I have been over here kicking ass and taking names, rocking my eating plan, living my truth, and dominating self-care, but that would be a big ass bag of lies.
REALITY CHECK:
1. I have gained 10 pounds. Although I realize this is not the most important thing in the grand scheme of things, it is the one that came to mind first, so that should tell me something about my warped sense of self worth. (GAH)
2. Reading where I was when I posted the last blog... the nutritionist did not help at all. After discussing what she told me to do with my therapist, more than one doctor, a trainer friend, and literally anyone who would listen to me, the conclusion was: she cray-cray. Anybody who recommends margarine in 2018 is cray-cray.
3. I feel like life has stagnated in a lot of ways. I am not sure what sort of progress I am really making with therapy since my opinion of my body, my self worth, and my world view in general seems to be kind of stone like in its strength (I guess I need a sharper chisel). My self care (whatever that looks like) has been floundering since my one constant yoga class was cancelled (as well as my therapy group) and I am kind of flailing about trying to find my footing. I'm not doing keto, or really anything with my diet other than eating all the foods, as if the holidays were some massive mental excuse for indulging in every food ever.
4. I am exhausted. This is probably going to sound really whiny, but I've gotten used to having a house husband. With him out of commission and healing at the moment, I am literally doing all the things (at work, inside the house, outside the house, in the litter box, everywhere). In addition, since he has been having trouble sleeping comfortably, I haven't been sleeping either. It's like life is throwing a Muhammad Ali one-two combo in my face of no rest for the wicked.
5. This is by far the most important, even if it is at the bottom of this list: my husband almost died on me and I am not coping with it very well. That pulmonary embolism could have been the end of him and I think we are both still freaking out about it in a lot of ways. This combined with a lack of sleep, lack of self-care, and garbage diet has created this little shit-storm of bad habits I am struggling to get out of.
But all of that is not why I decided to write today, it's just a blow by blow of how life is punching me in the face at the moment. Today's blog is about something else I've been thinking a lot about recently.
Nana grew up incredibly poor. Kids threw insults at her regularly based on all the things that go along with being poor. I have this mental image of her being this skinny little ferocious thing with fire in her eyes (and holes in her shoes). She said she had to be "mean as a yard dog" because of how they treated her. And she created this safe space for herself with the mantra "never let them see you cry". I guess it worked for her (well in a way it did). She presented this hard exterior of a girl (and then a woman) who wouldn't be brought down by whatever mean shit other people had to say about her or to her face.
But it was something that carried over into the rest of her internal life as well. I think granddaddy knew her. I think I only knew her partly. But I don't think she allowed anyone else to know her, not really know her. Not all the squishy bits. She didn't trust anyone to know her. Wait, no, it's more than that. She didn't trust anyone (period). Not even me.
I know the ins and outs of lots of reasons why she didn't trust people. She left home at 18 from a strained relationship with her father. He told her if she left not to come back. She didn't go back home to even visit for over a decade. She never let him see her cry. She was married before granddaddy to a man who cheated on her with her cousin. He continued to call her throughout her life until she died. I guess he realized after he messed things up what a woman she was. She never let him see her cry. Before she met granddaddy, she jumped off a pier (yeah, literally) and nearly drowned. Her family (still incredibly poor) told the doctors at the hospital to turn off the machines because they couldn't afford her care. The waitresses at the restaurant where she worked collected money from her regular customers to keep her in the hospital (and alive). She never let her family see her cry.
She always said her life didn't really start until she met granddaddy. But if your mode of survival for 25 years is a tough exterior to not let anyone know they've hurt you, you can't just turn that off because you found a life partner who loves you. She told me she didn't really know what love felt like until she met him. She never got any sort of therapy for all of the shit that happened in her life. She just never let them see her cry. And then she cried alone.
She gave me those words of advice as a child. For the kids who say mean things to you or make you feel like you don't belong... never let them see you cry. For the family member who makes you feel (whatever way)... never let them see you cry. I just needed to hold it in, and push it down, and keep my shit together... and then I could cry with Nana. And so that's what I did. And then Nana died.
When I say that I feel like a lot of people don't really know me, I think it comes from this place. If someone upsets you with something they say or do, just "let it slide off of you like water off a duck's back" (her words). Yes, this does take away their power, or at least their perception of their power over you if they were trying to hurt you on purpose. Their words or actions appear to go unnoticed and if they were looking for a reaction, they aren't given one. But really, it doesn't take away the power of your feelings about the situation. It just stifles them. And it creates this weird dynamic where this person thinks they can do or say these things all the time because it doesn't seem to bother you anyhow.
I guess that since she didn't really trust anyone, her assumption was that everyone was always trying to hurt you on purpose. But that really isn't the case. If anything, it's more so that everyone else is just bumbling through life in the same ways, and sometimes they say or do stuff that is selfish and don't take your feelings into consideration. The thing is, if you never allow yourself to tell them that, they may not even be aware of it. Aware that they hurt your feelings, or aware that they were being selfish. Some people aren't self aware at all, and even for the ones who are... denial is a very comfortable chair to sit in.
Me thinking about all of this comes from something that happened over the holidays. I have spent a LOT of hours for the last year (probably closer to two years) working on my family tree on ancestry.com. There were two women who were DNA matched to me on there who didn't know their birth family. I made it my mission to try to figure out how they were related to me, and who their parents are. It was a long road. It was slow and frustrating, and sometimes seemed like I was just spinning my wheels. I came up with some pretty inventive ways to figure it out. And I actually did. I danced around my living room that day. It was like putting together the most complex puzzle I have ever done.
And I wanted to tell one of my family members about it over one of the family dinners. It was interesting and something I was really proud of doing. I wanted to tell them about the ingenuity I had to come up with to even get to the answer. Figuring out these missing pieces for these women made me happy. One of them literally got to call her birth mother the second week of December. She is 61 years old and only now knows who her mom is and only because of the research I did. I was so excited that I was the one that figured it out for her. I wanted to toot my own horn.
So, at dinner that day, I started my story and I got as far to say that I had tested my DNA through ancestry and there were two women who were related to us that didn't know who their families were. I paused slightly before continuing when I was interrupted with the following, "I have a cousin on my other side of the family who researched their family tree and she found a N*GG*R in the family." The emphasis on that word was verbal and not mine.
So, there I am, sitting there in my Colin Kaepernick jersey (like I was literally wearing it at that moment), and this is what was so important to interrupt me to say. I just sat there with my jaw gaping. This relative finished a pretty extensive story and then looked back at me. So I started back into what I was trying to say, when I was interrupted again (almost immediately) with some additional information about how this black woman's family had money. I guess it makes it ok for her to be in the family tree if she has money? After this additional information, they then looked back at me. "I spent over a year researching it and I figured out how they were related to us," I said. The excitement I had for telling the story was gone, and it was clear that what I had to say didn't matter anyhow. All of the wind was sucked out of me, and out of the room.
When I told my therapist about this situation, she asked me, "how did it make you feel?" I know this sounds very stereotypical of an interaction with a therapist, but she has been doing this on purpose over the past several sessions because we have discovered that I have a really hard time verbalizing how things make me feel. I can tell you all day long what I *think* about something. But I can't tell you how I *feel* about it. Never let them see you cry makes feelings a virtual minefield. I seem unable to identify what the feeling is (first of all) not less express it.
I am angry at myself that I didn't address the fact that I was interrupted. I am angry at myself that I didn't address the fact that it was completely unacceptable to use that word that I (and most of the free world) find highly offensive. But how do I feel? I mean really feel at the core of it?
Unheard.
Unimportant.
Invisible.
Ignored.
And stuffed back into that little box where my emotions are allowed to reside (and not escape or be shown to anyone else). From everyone else's reaction who were sitting at the table with me, it was reinforced (again) that my words are not important. Or at least not as important as the other person who interrupted me. That my feelings about using a word like n*gg*r are unimportant and it's more important to keep the peace and not cause problems or confrontations with family. That my opinions and feelings are (in general) to be kept to myself.
I realized, after thinking about this particular interaction for a few weeks, that I quite frequently do not express how I feel. I also frequently do not finish stories that I start to tell. I have, over the course of a lot of reinforcing interactions, given other people permission to interrupt me and never return to what I was trying to tell them. I realize that in the course of a conversation with a group of people, it ebbs and flows in unpredictable ways. I am not suggesting that I should be monopolizing every conversation. What I am saying is that quite often, I don't even finish a thought before people feel free to ignore what I am saying and start talking over me.
This does not make it any easier for a person who is not used to allowing herself to express emotions outwardly to start doing so. If anything, this particular situation was another example of why I do this. I've heard lots of people say to me that I don't have to say how I feel because it's usually written all over my face. But, honestly, I think they aren't actually seeing how I feel about anything. I think they are seeing what my face looks like when I am actively stifling emotions and putting them into little boxes to be dealt with later.
I am sure that the interaction noted above will be put into the reel of memories of "situations I wish I had handled differently" to replay (incessantly) when I can't fall asleep. I will kick myself over and over again for not saying something and just sitting there like a deer in headlights. I will say to myself that next time, I will say something. Next time, I will allow myself permission to express that I feel disrespected (in a myriad of ways).
The thing is, we all know there won't be a next time for this interaction. This particular thing won't happen in this particular way again. This other person has already been reinforced that their words are more important than mine and that nothing notable happened at the dinner table that day. They probably don't even remember the story I was trying to tell them.
In addition, my perception that my feelings need to be boxed up and kept to myself have been reinforced. If anything, it means that the next time I am placed in a similar situation, I will probably do the same thing. Sit there frozen while I put all of my screaming rage into a neat little box and in my back pocket.
And then later, cry alone.
Post Script: If I am really, truly honest with myself, this blog is supposed to be a piece of my self care. Writing something in this tiny little box of an internet blog is supposed to help me first of all feel, and second of all express how I feel. It is supposed to be a safe place for me to do that. But even here, it really isn't. I don't write what I really feel because I censor myself on the off chance that particular people may be reading this. I am working really hard to hold up a mirror to myself and figure out changes I need to make for my own sanity. But holding up the mirror to someone else gets really uncomfortable really fast (for both parties). Other people don't like it when someone else reflects their bullshit back at them. I am on this path because I choose to be and I want to try to do better. The words that I would put here uncensored would be more like a nuclear bomb going off and end relationships pretty swiftly. All of this to say, at the end of the day, even in this little corner of the world that is supposed to be my self-care blog... other people's feelings are more important (even to me) than my own.
REALITY CHECK:
1. I have gained 10 pounds. Although I realize this is not the most important thing in the grand scheme of things, it is the one that came to mind first, so that should tell me something about my warped sense of self worth. (GAH)
2. Reading where I was when I posted the last blog... the nutritionist did not help at all. After discussing what she told me to do with my therapist, more than one doctor, a trainer friend, and literally anyone who would listen to me, the conclusion was: she cray-cray. Anybody who recommends margarine in 2018 is cray-cray.
3. I feel like life has stagnated in a lot of ways. I am not sure what sort of progress I am really making with therapy since my opinion of my body, my self worth, and my world view in general seems to be kind of stone like in its strength (I guess I need a sharper chisel). My self care (whatever that looks like) has been floundering since my one constant yoga class was cancelled (as well as my therapy group) and I am kind of flailing about trying to find my footing. I'm not doing keto, or really anything with my diet other than eating all the foods, as if the holidays were some massive mental excuse for indulging in every food ever.
4. I am exhausted. This is probably going to sound really whiny, but I've gotten used to having a house husband. With him out of commission and healing at the moment, I am literally doing all the things (at work, inside the house, outside the house, in the litter box, everywhere). In addition, since he has been having trouble sleeping comfortably, I haven't been sleeping either. It's like life is throwing a Muhammad Ali one-two combo in my face of no rest for the wicked.
5. This is by far the most important, even if it is at the bottom of this list: my husband almost died on me and I am not coping with it very well. That pulmonary embolism could have been the end of him and I think we are both still freaking out about it in a lot of ways. This combined with a lack of sleep, lack of self-care, and garbage diet has created this little shit-storm of bad habits I am struggling to get out of.
But all of that is not why I decided to write today, it's just a blow by blow of how life is punching me in the face at the moment. Today's blog is about something else I've been thinking a lot about recently.
Nana grew up incredibly poor. Kids threw insults at her regularly based on all the things that go along with being poor. I have this mental image of her being this skinny little ferocious thing with fire in her eyes (and holes in her shoes). She said she had to be "mean as a yard dog" because of how they treated her. And she created this safe space for herself with the mantra "never let them see you cry". I guess it worked for her (well in a way it did). She presented this hard exterior of a girl (and then a woman) who wouldn't be brought down by whatever mean shit other people had to say about her or to her face.
But it was something that carried over into the rest of her internal life as well. I think granddaddy knew her. I think I only knew her partly. But I don't think she allowed anyone else to know her, not really know her. Not all the squishy bits. She didn't trust anyone to know her. Wait, no, it's more than that. She didn't trust anyone (period). Not even me.
I know the ins and outs of lots of reasons why she didn't trust people. She left home at 18 from a strained relationship with her father. He told her if she left not to come back. She didn't go back home to even visit for over a decade. She never let him see her cry. She was married before granddaddy to a man who cheated on her with her cousin. He continued to call her throughout her life until she died. I guess he realized after he messed things up what a woman she was. She never let him see her cry. Before she met granddaddy, she jumped off a pier (yeah, literally) and nearly drowned. Her family (still incredibly poor) told the doctors at the hospital to turn off the machines because they couldn't afford her care. The waitresses at the restaurant where she worked collected money from her regular customers to keep her in the hospital (and alive). She never let her family see her cry.
She always said her life didn't really start until she met granddaddy. But if your mode of survival for 25 years is a tough exterior to not let anyone know they've hurt you, you can't just turn that off because you found a life partner who loves you. She told me she didn't really know what love felt like until she met him. She never got any sort of therapy for all of the shit that happened in her life. She just never let them see her cry. And then she cried alone.
She gave me those words of advice as a child. For the kids who say mean things to you or make you feel like you don't belong... never let them see you cry. For the family member who makes you feel (whatever way)... never let them see you cry. I just needed to hold it in, and push it down, and keep my shit together... and then I could cry with Nana. And so that's what I did. And then Nana died.
When I say that I feel like a lot of people don't really know me, I think it comes from this place. If someone upsets you with something they say or do, just "let it slide off of you like water off a duck's back" (her words). Yes, this does take away their power, or at least their perception of their power over you if they were trying to hurt you on purpose. Their words or actions appear to go unnoticed and if they were looking for a reaction, they aren't given one. But really, it doesn't take away the power of your feelings about the situation. It just stifles them. And it creates this weird dynamic where this person thinks they can do or say these things all the time because it doesn't seem to bother you anyhow.
I guess that since she didn't really trust anyone, her assumption was that everyone was always trying to hurt you on purpose. But that really isn't the case. If anything, it's more so that everyone else is just bumbling through life in the same ways, and sometimes they say or do stuff that is selfish and don't take your feelings into consideration. The thing is, if you never allow yourself to tell them that, they may not even be aware of it. Aware that they hurt your feelings, or aware that they were being selfish. Some people aren't self aware at all, and even for the ones who are... denial is a very comfortable chair to sit in.
Me thinking about all of this comes from something that happened over the holidays. I have spent a LOT of hours for the last year (probably closer to two years) working on my family tree on ancestry.com. There were two women who were DNA matched to me on there who didn't know their birth family. I made it my mission to try to figure out how they were related to me, and who their parents are. It was a long road. It was slow and frustrating, and sometimes seemed like I was just spinning my wheels. I came up with some pretty inventive ways to figure it out. And I actually did. I danced around my living room that day. It was like putting together the most complex puzzle I have ever done.
And I wanted to tell one of my family members about it over one of the family dinners. It was interesting and something I was really proud of doing. I wanted to tell them about the ingenuity I had to come up with to even get to the answer. Figuring out these missing pieces for these women made me happy. One of them literally got to call her birth mother the second week of December. She is 61 years old and only now knows who her mom is and only because of the research I did. I was so excited that I was the one that figured it out for her. I wanted to toot my own horn.
So, at dinner that day, I started my story and I got as far to say that I had tested my DNA through ancestry and there were two women who were related to us that didn't know who their families were. I paused slightly before continuing when I was interrupted with the following, "I have a cousin on my other side of the family who researched their family tree and she found a N*GG*R in the family." The emphasis on that word was verbal and not mine.
So, there I am, sitting there in my Colin Kaepernick jersey (like I was literally wearing it at that moment), and this is what was so important to interrupt me to say. I just sat there with my jaw gaping. This relative finished a pretty extensive story and then looked back at me. So I started back into what I was trying to say, when I was interrupted again (almost immediately) with some additional information about how this black woman's family had money. I guess it makes it ok for her to be in the family tree if she has money? After this additional information, they then looked back at me. "I spent over a year researching it and I figured out how they were related to us," I said. The excitement I had for telling the story was gone, and it was clear that what I had to say didn't matter anyhow. All of the wind was sucked out of me, and out of the room.
When I told my therapist about this situation, she asked me, "how did it make you feel?" I know this sounds very stereotypical of an interaction with a therapist, but she has been doing this on purpose over the past several sessions because we have discovered that I have a really hard time verbalizing how things make me feel. I can tell you all day long what I *think* about something. But I can't tell you how I *feel* about it. Never let them see you cry makes feelings a virtual minefield. I seem unable to identify what the feeling is (first of all) not less express it.
I am angry at myself that I didn't address the fact that I was interrupted. I am angry at myself that I didn't address the fact that it was completely unacceptable to use that word that I (and most of the free world) find highly offensive. But how do I feel? I mean really feel at the core of it?
Unheard.
Unimportant.
Invisible.
Ignored.
And stuffed back into that little box where my emotions are allowed to reside (and not escape or be shown to anyone else). From everyone else's reaction who were sitting at the table with me, it was reinforced (again) that my words are not important. Or at least not as important as the other person who interrupted me. That my feelings about using a word like n*gg*r are unimportant and it's more important to keep the peace and not cause problems or confrontations with family. That my opinions and feelings are (in general) to be kept to myself.
I realized, after thinking about this particular interaction for a few weeks, that I quite frequently do not express how I feel. I also frequently do not finish stories that I start to tell. I have, over the course of a lot of reinforcing interactions, given other people permission to interrupt me and never return to what I was trying to tell them. I realize that in the course of a conversation with a group of people, it ebbs and flows in unpredictable ways. I am not suggesting that I should be monopolizing every conversation. What I am saying is that quite often, I don't even finish a thought before people feel free to ignore what I am saying and start talking over me.
This does not make it any easier for a person who is not used to allowing herself to express emotions outwardly to start doing so. If anything, this particular situation was another example of why I do this. I've heard lots of people say to me that I don't have to say how I feel because it's usually written all over my face. But, honestly, I think they aren't actually seeing how I feel about anything. I think they are seeing what my face looks like when I am actively stifling emotions and putting them into little boxes to be dealt with later.
I am sure that the interaction noted above will be put into the reel of memories of "situations I wish I had handled differently" to replay (incessantly) when I can't fall asleep. I will kick myself over and over again for not saying something and just sitting there like a deer in headlights. I will say to myself that next time, I will say something. Next time, I will allow myself permission to express that I feel disrespected (in a myriad of ways).
The thing is, we all know there won't be a next time for this interaction. This particular thing won't happen in this particular way again. This other person has already been reinforced that their words are more important than mine and that nothing notable happened at the dinner table that day. They probably don't even remember the story I was trying to tell them.
In addition, my perception that my feelings need to be boxed up and kept to myself have been reinforced. If anything, it means that the next time I am placed in a similar situation, I will probably do the same thing. Sit there frozen while I put all of my screaming rage into a neat little box and in my back pocket.
And then later, cry alone.
Post Script: If I am really, truly honest with myself, this blog is supposed to be a piece of my self care. Writing something in this tiny little box of an internet blog is supposed to help me first of all feel, and second of all express how I feel. It is supposed to be a safe place for me to do that. But even here, it really isn't. I don't write what I really feel because I censor myself on the off chance that particular people may be reading this. I am working really hard to hold up a mirror to myself and figure out changes I need to make for my own sanity. But holding up the mirror to someone else gets really uncomfortable really fast (for both parties). Other people don't like it when someone else reflects their bullshit back at them. I am on this path because I choose to be and I want to try to do better. The words that I would put here uncensored would be more like a nuclear bomb going off and end relationships pretty swiftly. All of this to say, at the end of the day, even in this little corner of the world that is supposed to be my self-care blog... other people's feelings are more important (even to me) than my own.
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