I stand in front of a mirror in a small exam room around 3:00 pm, nude under a cotton robe. This place has to be fancy, I think to myself; Normally I was handed a stiff tissue paper smock. Even the floor here is carpeted, and not the cold linoleum of so many doctor's offices. It took three hours to get here because I got horridly lost trying to make the other surgeon's appointment, which needed to be canceled. I am a little road weary and feel ridiculously comforted by these small details.

I look at myself, holding the robe closed. I see a girl with a thin neck and angular face, who sort of resembles me. She has a neat sunny, lemony bob haircut, blown straight until it's soft and shiny and moves with a turn of the head. I've seen this girl a lot the past few years, but am always startled that it's actually me. With the June humidity, I can see evidence of natural curls trying to reform by one temple, as if trying to remind the world that it had been there 100 lbs ago, and will not be forgotten and denied like the plus sized shirts I once had to sport. This has been a long journey; longer than most.

Plastic surgery signals the end of this road. Three and a half years after surgery I am still dragging on and somehow prolonging the end, for no reason I can figure out. But I will put one foot in front of the other, and continue to try to decipher the internal love language between my body and emotions that produce food cravings as their child. I will never stop trying to intercept their messages. I believe this will occupy me the rest of my life. Fortunately, it has become a background murmur, and is manageable.

This search for a plastic surgeon to tie up the loose ends, as it were, feels as much surreal as it does mechanical. I'm going through motions. I'm going through emotions. But I don't feel present. It's as if someone else is pulling me along, lifting my hand to pick up the phone to make an appointment, tearing off my clothes in rarely expressed comfort, with more faith in a surgeon I'd just met than men I take to my bed.

I'd been to three plastic surgeons in the past year, looking for someone who would inspire me as both an artist and a surgical genius. So far, no dice. But the goal of a tummy tuck and a breast lift seems to be the last piece for lasting peace. Once I have this, I tell myself, I can't keep holding off on dating, waiting, ignoring I'm 32 and alive under this two-sizes-too-big skin that kept me alive during a slow and imminent suicide attempt. I can't keep hiding from life, or being angry when I'm hit on, or being sad when I'm alone, or continue to justify food as an acceptable source of intimacy. Once this surgery is done, I must live with it; it's me. There is no more fantasizing about how I could look. I'd look the way I would continue to look well into my elderly years.

Kind of frightening for someone who spent her life since age 12 writing romance fantasies where she was a slim, normal bodied girl with no scars. I'm well aware of this body image issue, and I'm becoming aware that I'm keeping myself from the end so I don't have to face an unknown and possibly different future than the one I'd obsessed over and wrote about in as many incarnations as I had inches of unnecessary skin.

Here I am at the last office I plan on being in for a while. Plastic surgeon #4.

And I'm looking at my naked body, imagining what he will tell me that I haven't already heard before from the last 3 surgeons. I wonder if he will treat me like a self-indulgent headcase, or a low intelligence moneybag, or condescend when I play dumb and ask him the same basic questions I ask all my surgeons, like I haven't already done all my research.

A funny thing is happening. I open my robe and stare at the body that I like more than I used to, a body I actually look at more than I used to. I see myself differently today, and I'm not sure why. I look at my large breasts, showing the effects of being a D cup and sagging more than I'd like, but relatively youthful and full. My belly actually has deep grooves in the abdomen of a 4 pack I have been building through core exercises, but which is muffled by the layer of belly fat I still need to lose. I poke at the indentations where my skin is attached to my muscle, amazed at the slightly distorted evidence of my health bursting through. I do work out; I finally noticed it shows. Perhaps it shows like an overstuffed favorite loveseat who has lost its buttons but still holds the pillowed indentations, but it shows.

For the first time in my life, I think, "Wow. Not bad." I'm not looking at my flaws, like the dimpled orange peel flesh of my abdomen, or the way the flesh pulls out like silly putty from being stretched beyond saving. I'm looking at the beauty of me just as I am. It's comforting and weird.

I turn to the side and am shocked to see that the normally flat butt I complain about and lack of lumbar curvature that lends one a perky bottom are actually acceptable, passable, and rather curvy. Totally no J Lo, but not a wan Kate Hudson either -- or the back of Jessica Simpson. Maybe slightly Julia Roberts, or a younger Diane Keaton. I lift the robe. Are you kidding me? Really? Is this what I look like? This isn't horrible at all. Certainly I need the post weight-loss nip/tuck but what the hell have I been---

Dr. Capella asks if I ready, voice distant through the door.

"Come on in," I said loudly.

He sits down on his rolling stool and we get right down to it. I open the robe. He does not fall off his stool, crying out in horror, clawing at his bleeding eyes. This is a great start. I feel something a little foreign wrap around me. Body confidence. I am in front of a huge mirror that covers the wall, fluorescent lighting and a man I just met is not only looking at my nude body, but touching it and seeing possibility that I would never even entertain.

"This," Dr. Capella said, tracing a light line over a good handful of my midsection. "Is all coming out. You probably have about 15 lbs of skin on you, actually."

Fifteen? Fifteen? I start doing calculations. I'm technically 15 lbs lighter and without the skin would probably be in a 12, not a 14. Holy crap!

He goes on to tell me, " You're young, and you're going to not only heal well, but fast. You're a perfect candidate for the body lift and mastopexy."

"Can I stay a D cup, do you think?" I ask nervously. Some doctors recommended I get a reduction and implants.

He actually snorts like an amused horse. "Your breasts are gorgeous. Look. Here's what they'll look like. The skin is great." He proceeds to manipulate my breast and shows me the plump, round, perky profile I've been fantasizing about since I was 10 and got my first underwire bra.

He goes on to look at my behind, flanks, back, and commented several times on the good condition of my fair skin (I believe it's because I turned vampire and simply never set foot in the sun). He shows me how when he pulls up the back of me, how it will dissolve the annoying roll under my bra, how contouring the top of my hips will accentuate my womanly curves just sitting there waiting to be unearthed.

"I am interested in looking good in tailored clothes," I say, continuing to look at my body. "I've long given up on looking gorgeous naked, but I want to be smooth and lean and proportionate in clothes." I'm turning this way and that, sucking in my belly and marveling at the cut of my ribs showing for the first time in my life. Marveling that none of the bone-crushing shame at looking at myself, much less with another person there, was choking me.

He gives a strange, rueful little laugh, shaking his head a fraction, and then catches himself. As if he knows I don't yet see what he sees. "You're going to be gorgeous. You've got relatively minimal sag, and you're young. I can give you a flat, contoured belly, smooth buttocks and thighs, and your breasts are going to look fantastic. You have the raw materials already here. And," he adds, gesturing to my face. "You're beautiful. Just...believe me. Total package. You are going to love the results."

You're beautiful.

I stared at him for a long moment. I expected a little bit of ego stroking. After all, for $15 - 20k for the procedures I wanted, I anticipate a bit of salesmanship. But there I was, flat-haired from driving in the humidity, purple circles under my eyes that my hastily applied concealer didn't actually conceal due to my late rise that morning. And I had to be one of thousands of women who walked through there. And why even bring my face into it? We're talking about my body. He's only getting paid from the neck down on me.

I look back at the mirror.

I believe him.

The first person, really, I believe. I feel like, for the first time, I am being truly seen under the loose skin and the belly pouch and the arms that totally need a lift down the line. Someone actually sees me and I don't have to scream, or be funny, or be "life of the party", or overly intelligent, or anything else to get noticed. He isn't stroking my ego; I feel like a piece of clay out of which he sees the swan, and he knows exactly how to mold the clay to get the result. And he's humble enough not to slap my face off my skull for being dense about it.

I dress and we reconvene in his office, looking at pictures again. "Now that I know what you look like before," he says. "Here's what you'll look like after." He proceeds to fill my eyes with round, perky, natural looking D cup breasts. Flat bellies that would allow me to wear hip huggers, belly shirts, hell, even a belt. Natural looking waists, not the "tube" effect of some body lifts. Scars in proportion to pubic hair line and belly button. Picture after picture after picture. Very few asymmetries. I think there was one out of the bunch.

I found my surgeon.

I might have found something else, too.

Very moving post. I am so glad you have seen the real you. Life should be very different from now on.