I went back and read my third post...wow I was so much deeper when I was considering what life now would start to be like. Now I'm just a bundle of stuff. Lol I actually told a friend the other day I didn't want to explore certain emotions, that they were too hard and they had no structure. For those with delicate sensibilities close your ears. What a punk ass wuss I was that day! Phew, glad to get that off my chest. I am an adventurer. I was a scaredy cat as a kid, so when I hit college I decided to be scared but do it anyway. That's how I ended up in the river trying to remember all my white water rafting training. I had fallen out of the raft and I was the guide! It was a simple river clean up on a river on the Indian Reservation where I was living and interning. My field placement supervisor her fiance and a few students were in the raft with me. We were rolling right along when we got stuck on a rock. Yes, as guide, I should have steered us around it, but since I didn't, I felt obliged to stand up in the raft and push us off the rock. Foot slipped and down I went into the water. First thing I did was try to swim and fight the current...that's a no no. Remembered that and then tried to keep my eye on the raft as they tried to get to me...that's a no no. First thing they tell you. If you fall out of the raft float AND turn your feet facing down stream. Why? Because if you are on a river with lots of falls and/ or rocks the rivers gonna carry you and you'll tire yourself out maybe even hit your head on a rock in your futile attempt to swim. Now once you start floating, if you float trying to keep an eye on the raft, again you could hit your head and drown. If your feet are first you see whats coming at you and can possibly guide yourself to a safe spot where you can re-enter the raft or simply get to safety and meet up with the group downstream. I was scared you-know-what-less. But I had a group depending on me, so I kept my fright to a minimal and was able to regain command of my ship within a short amount of time and everyone seemed to think it was a great ride. Sure when you are younger the reality of death is not as vivid, but what makes us so timid about living and taking chances. It can't be the skinned knees or the embarrassing falls. I mean we survive those so we know we are resilient. What is it that stops us, holds us back, keeps us for saying and doing those things we want to? Why does fear grip us so successfully or cause us to hide behind things like weight or the abilities, charms and looks of others? How is it some "just do it"? I don't know what it is, but its what I'm trying to discover in myself.
I shared with a co-worker, I cry more now than I've ever cried, I'm not gonna beat myself up about it, cause I guess I'm feeling what I stuffed down with food before. Sad things are truly sad to me now and funny things are funny. I got irritated more easily and depressed. That wasn't even in my vocabulary before. I told someone I get why suicides go up after weight loss surgery. You have been waiting to live...without the weight that is. However, these first few months can be disappointing, frustrating and anti-climatic from what you expected. You are suddenly cut off from the love of your life, but otherwise life is still the same. You fail and succeed just as before, and you don't see a huge change for a while. So you wonder what were you thinking to have done something so drastic. You wonder will you ever feel okay again. You wonder whats the big deal when you look the same and in my eyes I was even bigger (swelling from the surgery)! So much for beginning to live. Its those times you REALLY need a support system, somebody cheering you own saying you can do it, its gonna get better, just hang in there, you are awesome for taking this step. And it doesn't hurt to have that song from the animated Christmas stories: "Put one foot in front of the other". Seriously stuff like that will get you out of bed, to the bathroom, the kitchen and back to the bed. Before you know it literally, "you'll be walking out the door." That's how, in this instance you develop the courage to start living and stop waiting. There have been days I just wanted to crawl under the bed, but that darn foot was tapping that tune and the other foot would catch the bug and there I was walking to the closet, to the bathroom and before I could mount a good argument we were out the door. It didn't happen super fast, but it happened. I'm not 100% now, but I'm a long ways from ground zero. So don't focus on the fear, the pain, the risk. Focusing on the here and now, getting that one foot on the floor, followed by the other. Come with me, lets stop waiting to start living and lets live.
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