Keeping it real

Driving home last night, my cousin told me she would be reading my blogs. I didn't think much of it at that moment, but today I began to think about people I know reading what may be some very high highs and some very low lows, as well as lots of dark thoughts. Then I thought good, its too damn hard trying to keep that stupid curtain closed pretending to be the great wizard of my own dysfunctional oz. I can only be me. Whether its whining, crying, fussing, laughing, loving, fearing, cussing or committing crimes its me and either folks can understand that or hopefully they'll just move on.
So, I'm reading Geneen Roth's book, When Food is Love. I am thoroughly enjoying it. Its actually a quick read, but its so filling for me that I read a bit and stop to process it. For years I looked for a man who would love me so good that I would feel whole and complete. Then I started looking for other things to make me whole. Things like the perfect job, the right car, the perfect friends, the perfect piece of clothing and when that didn't seem to be working out, I looked to weight loss to be the avenue to feeling complete. This is my paraphrase (get the book for her exact words). Geneen tells a story that her husband had issues with his feet. His mother made his shoes, and his family had no really significant dysfunction. Her mother on the other hand was twisted. Get the book if you want to know what I mean by twisted. She says that the opportunity for that kind of nurturing and parenting has passed. Man I did not want to hear that, but its true. Life is not fair. Let me repeat that for those of you, who like myself can have grand pity parties about stuff. Life is not fair. Suck it up and accept it. What you didn't get at that time is gone. Even if my dad had lived, gotten sober, and taken parenting classes, the opportunity to impart certain things into me that I would need in life would be gone. We would forge a new relationship based on who we both are as adults. So where do I go from here? According to Geneen, (let me add right here, I don't hold anyone as the final authority on anything. Information gathered from other human beings is like eating fish. You eat the flesh and spit out the bones.) you are now responsible for getting you what YOU need. To make this relevant for me. When I start feeling insecure because I don't feel loved the way I think I need to be, but whats actually going on is that the 10year old me inside wants someone to tell her that she is worthy of time, attention and love, I can't pass her off to someone else. It is on me to acknowledge that I am important and a person deserving of love. If someone is truly not loving me in a healthy manner than I have to rectify the situation. That may mean asking for what I need, giving it to myself or removing myself from a relationship that is not able to give me love. Now the catch here is that I have to distinguish if what me and/or the 10 year old is asking for is a reasonable request. Make me feel good enough is an unreasonable request for someone else to fill. If my childhood was twisted enough I may not even have it within myself to give and require assistance in developing it.
Easier said than done. Especially when there are so many messages coming at us everyday to do whatever it takes to make us happy...of course the majority of those messages are focused on acquiring something or someone that will make us happy. Buy the right mini-van so that your family will travel peacefully and happily wherever you go. Buy the right flea collar and your dog will love you so much he will sing. Buy your clothes at the trendiest store and you will look smart, dance with other attractive people...stop right there. Same folks selling you this bill of goods also takes it upon themselves to tell you what attractive IS, and more than likely you don't fit the definition. You wouldn't need what they have to sale if you did. Anywho, listen to music with the latest electronics and you will exercise, be wise, more productive and all sorts of other things. My favorite is when a particular person says read a book you MUST read that book!!!! This one never ceases to amaze me. You don't become rich, you don't get to have a personal chef, you don't get to be the only person on a particular major airline that can purchase a first class ticket for your pet...you just get to read the book and talk about it with others who HAD to read it too. WTF!!??? Don't get me wrong, if I ever complete my book I'd sit right there on the couch smile and silently pray my book will be the next IT book. Momma didn't raise no fool.
I have conquered a couple of my "get this it will make me happy," voices, but still got lots of work to do. That's the thing most people don't want to do. Speaking of what would make me happy right now, I gotta go snatch those red ruby slippers from that ditsy chick with the hairy dog, but I want to get a little irreverent next time and talk about work, God's part, our part and what we like to shove off on Him in the name of religion.

I get it, but it got me first

Have you ever watched one of those health shows with a really really really morbidly obese person bedridden and gaining more weight everyday? I've seen a few and the first thing I think is at least I'm not that big. Then I think WTF (that F stands for "freak" for my mild-mannered friends)? How could anyone allow themselves to get that big?!! Didn't he or she feel the bones start to ache, the heart beg for space to beat and the feet crying under the pressure? Yep, I've sat there and smugly said THAT could never happen to me... today I walked into the building at work, looked into the security camera and wondered who would see my tubby body waddling into the building and notice that I was breathing heavy. I use to measure how fat I was by the fat that I didn't waddle. I am...was a bouncer. You know the folks that bounce when they walk. When I am conscious about it, I walk...walked with twist. So there I am in the camera and a voice that has been quietly whispering a sing-song chant in the back of my head like Rafiki in the Lion King, suddenly starts yelling. It shouts in that sing-song taunt "Now you know, don't cha? Now you know, don't cha?" What is it I'm suppose to know? You know what its like to see your body get out of control, to feel the disgust with yourself, to wonder what's wrong with you, to know that you are not this person you are slowly becoming, to want to yell for someone to pull you off the cliff you are hanging from, and to tell the people who rudely look too long or stare at specific body parts, that this is just a momentary lapse in judgement. Yes, I know now.
The main reason I started this blog was to process what's about to happen in my life. I am about to have bariatric surgery. Its been 10 or close to 10 years in the making. When 9/11 happened, I spent days like everyone else trying to grasp the enormity of the event. After several days I remember talking to 3 other ____ (you fill in the blank, fat is like the new Black you never know what to call yourself or others) friends of mine. Everyone had the same thought, "would I have survived the building only to die of a heart attack on the trek across the bridge out the city?" Like my psychologist said no gets to be over 250 just because they like potato chips. No one wants to die on a bridge leaving family, friends and a life not led. But somewhere along the line the stars align themselves in a way that the fat monster seems to run faster, plan strategies better, and mount massive attacks that you FEEL you can't possibly beat. To me the fat monster is a mix of my seventh grade classmates who put a tack in my chair and waited for me to sit on it, a bit of my well meaning relatives who said wait until she meets a boy she likes she loose it, a bit of my pediatrician who always looked disapprovingly at me as though I were the only fat kid in the world, a bit of my mom who rewarded me with fattening food for being good (quietly sitting in my room reading, basically invisible) a bit of my brother who looked at his wife and disgustingly said, why ain't somebody taught her not to smack like that, momma lets her eat whatever she wants", and there's a bit of the first boy that ever told me he would never date a fatty like me, but mostly the monster looks like the face I see in the mirror. The one that has failed over and over again at millions of diets real, made up and just plain insane.

So as I begin this journey, I begin with a very clear understanding that I'm no better than the bedridden soul who's been beaten longer or harder by the fat monster and is holding on to a rock or a tree root on the cliff edge just like me. I get it, but not before the fat monster got me too.

Okay, I'm too much of the family clown to let it end like this...I don't believe in saying die, uncle or giving in when its this important. The fat monster has me in a corner but I firmly believe that I'm about to open a can of you know what on him/her. So stick around and watch the fur fly.