Day 29: Seriously, though.

[crosswind 134]

"I know how it feels to distract others by making them laugh and the whole time crying inside and hope like hell no one can see it. It tears me apart to see you going through this. If you ever need to talk I'm a phone call away or feel free to send me a msg here, either way, please don't let it eat at you for too long...it's a deep dark place you're headed toward and I worry for you."

A darling, concerned person named Renee wrote this to me on another thread. I was surprised. I had to think about this; am I headed to a deep dark place? Maybe. The thing is no one has seen the deep dark place I was in before.

If you knew all the shit I've been through in the past five years- and I was almost going to say two because those were really the worst -- you'd probably be amazed I was still walking aorund forming words and paying bills. But I don't think it's just me -- I think anyone who is near three hundred pounds, four, or five -- well this is not a happy circumstance for anyone. How cheerful can you be when your appetite turns on itself and starts eating you?

Personally, before this surgery I was almost three hundred pounds, on my last marriage, without any family and basically, I think, I was trying to die. Or at least I did not want to *be* here; consciousness was just too tiring and painful.

Then I realized it was not going to work.

Or at least, not in a timeframe I was really comfortable with.

Every single person with an extreme weight problem has a painful story to tell. How their bodies betrayed them or their lives did, or their support system blew up one day when they were seven or eighteen or fifty -- every single one of us has that kind of thing going on and some of us, I guess walk around with waves of pain rolling off our bodies like steam off a radiator. And here's a tip; if you eat enough you can cover that up and redirect peoples' attention to that instead.

I guess. I mean I should probably say that every human being has a painful story to tell whether they have an extreme weight problem or not. Overeating might be a way to manage that pain. Maybe.

Maybe. As a person pretty much saturated with fat consciousness I've read all these books, heard thousands of metaphysical, psychological dramas. For some reason one day I was thinking about this episode of a very old tv show called the Professor and the Nanny. Ever notice how many Magic Nannies have been on TV? When I was a kid I didn't think too much about it but I watched a lot of TV and so some of these life observations and smalltime miracles kind of stayed in my head and looped into my childhood consciousness. This is what I got instead of math and science and money management.

This is the theme song from the Nanny and the Professor:

Soft and sweet

Wise and wonderful

Oooh our mystical, magical nanny.

Since the day that nanny came to stay with us

Fantastic things keep happening.

Is there really magic in the things she does

Or is love the only magic thing that nanny brings

You know our nanny showed us you can make the impossible happen.

Nanny told us have a little faith and lots of love

Phoebe Figalilly is a silly name

And so many silly things keep happening

What is this magic thing about nanny

Is it Love? Or is it Magic?

Nodnod. Yeah. Anyway one episode the Nanny was upset because she thought she was gaining weight. There was all this light comedy surrounding the Nanny getting fat and then somehow she manages to go on a date and go for a walk in the park and eat some ice cream. And she loses the five pounds or whatevever. And then she winds up the show saying, " I know how you solve a weight problem! Happiness!" or something like this. And I remembered it because I was seven at the tim and the Nanny had demonstrated how to conquer her problem. Ice cream and theme music. This is the kind of metaphysical crap people have been upsetting themselves with for years inside this topic.

It's not that i think that unhappiness is better than happiness or that people don't have weight problems rooted in their bad childhoods or traumatic love affairs or whatever, but take someone like Geneen Roth, who brings women on these retreats to teach them how to love God instead of a salami sandwhich. Fat in her opinion is a spiritual flaw. Or its a psychological flaw. So, dutiful and concerned as we are, we go through all this self-excavation, praying fervently, deeply wishing to know what is wrong with us, and we go to the therapist and we pay these fake weight loss priests to help us and at the end of all this, where are we?

Fucked up in the head is what I think. Just fucked up, I mean if you spend forty years in a state of severe anxiety over food, eating, and the condition of your body; convinced you have a "problem" that separates you from the rest of humanity; obsessed and freaked out every minute by your relationship to the scale -- how can a person *not* be?

So my point here is I have had kind of a shitty life. I am also so totally not the only one. But my decision to get WLS was more a statement that said: "Fine. But I'm not gonna be FAT." I'm not going to buy all that stuff right now, which may be perfectly viable stuff, it's just not practical. If I had to develop true happiness and and complete self-actualization *before* I lost a hundred pounds I'm not sure if it would ever happen.So forget it, my life is terminally screwed, I am 46 and at the end of my third marriage, my kids are grown and out of the house and I have no idea what I';m even still doing here but goddammit I lost 30 pounds this month.

To me the decision to do this was a decision to live. It's depressing to be me I guess but then I don't know you, it might also be hideously depressing to be you.

But there's one thing I do know if your stuff is as bad as my stuff: you are not suicidal. You're still fighting like hell.

[apple-saucy 17]

AMEN!!!!

I am no longer going to sit on the sidelines of my own life, I'm fighting my way into the game.

[swizzly 901]

I hear you. I also started on serious weight loss (years ago) with the unwilling but irrestistible, resounding phrase in my heart/head/soul of, I WANT TO LIVE. Without being conscious that I was dying or slowly killing myself.

I don't think of fat as any kind of moral failure. That I will not accept. So attempting to fix it that way leaves me cold. Trying to get happy and then skinny gives too much credit to fat. Fat is a symptom and I'd just as soon fix it -- I don't need to know what's causing my headache, I just need an aspirin. Maybe I'll also figure out what's causing the headaches...it's something to think about in life anyhow.

Great post, Crosswinds.

[Hip 2]

I think we can all relate in some way to your story. Hang in there.

[Beadingnurse 116]

Wow. What can one say in response to your heart-felt sharing of soul and pain except thank you. I read somewhere that the biggest crime we do to one another is to pretend to be "normal" and to pretend that everything is okay in our world when the reality is VERY different for some of us.

I've said this before but it bears repeating that those of us who are fat might just have incredibly efficient bodies at finding and storing food as our biology and genetics has programed us to do. We evolved in a food scarce world and our bodies (and brain) still function as if we live in that world. The sleeve (bless it!) lets us get around that drive to keep the tank stocked with any food we find.

What if being fat is NOT a moral failing, a lack of will power, a sign of weakness but just our bodies efficiently trying to gather and save all of the food resources available to us???

[kelli 3]

Definately can relate to you on this Crosswind, although I am on my second marraige, my first one ended in the death of my husband and left me with four very young children..and thats just the tip of the iceberg! We are expected to be strong no matter what.. and food somehow is something to turn to like a friend.

For me it is time to let go of the past and look forward to the future!!

I

[fatBgone 6]

Oh how true, we all have our issues in our own ways. I appreciate how well you articulate them for us all. It's therapeutic for us all! Amen!

[emily_0192010 168]

First I want to say thank you for posting this. I can relate to your post in so many ways. Maybe not the specifics... since I am only 20 and have never been married... but about the life sucking part? Yeah, I get that. I have always said that in my life there is not such thing as the "second shoe"... for me it was always the entire closet avalanching over my head. One thing would go "right" and inevitably a storm of bad luck and disasters swept it right from under my feet. I stumbled upon a quote a long, long time ago and it stuck and by keeping it in my mind it has helped me "fight like hell". "Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts". Thanks to you I think I just added in "Fine. But i'm not going to be fat" right there with it. I don't think I am ever going to forget that line. The fact that you have already pushed through a "deep dark place" proves just how strong and courageous you are... and I think everybody can learn something from reading your post. Thank you for being strong enough to post it and I hope with all my heart that you continue to fight like hell.

[feedyoureye 3,087]

Well whoever thought up the "Seven Deadly Sins" needs a spanking. Gluttony has really given centuries of people a "good and moral" reason to act like assholes to others who are fat. I personally think that being fat has made me more compassionate and caring...I don't judge others by how they look quite as much.... except perhaps myself at times... Who is that girl in the photograph? For the first time in a long time, I look in the mirror, and recognize myself. The weight that has lifted off my shoulders gives me the physical and mental strength to face my sadness and fear again, with more maturity and compassion for myself and others. I think there is a huge story here, on this forum. A story that is stronger and ultimately more elegant and true than the stereotype of the fat lady at Wallmart who can't keep her pants on because she is stupid, ugly and FAT. The stories on this forum are honest, funny, intelligent , personal and refreshing. They are the stories of the heroic... who have lived to return home with treasure. Your company allows me to tell the truth, without feeling guilty or afraid of ridicule. Thanks CW and thank you all.

[pneal 5]

Where's the "like" button on this here Vertical Sleeve Talk?

"LIKE":thumbs_up:

[meggiep 57]

Although I of course can feel the pain that is the double edge of your incredible humor, I have never thought of you as headed for a dark place. I see a shining light in you, and of course also the pain. In fact it is only since I started being on this forum that a lot of my lifetime of pain about weight has been given permission to come out. We all do a pretty good job of stuffing it down, don't we?

Then we decide to have WLS and for the first time in a long long time many of us have hope - hope! What a thought! And in having hope we feel the pain too.

Aside from the depression of seeing our thriving wedding photography business go down the tubes in this recession, as we face losing everything...mine has a lot to do with just being pissed off that I got dealt the hand of being fat. f**k! I said it- that is all I can say about that. I have three thin siblings and I got to be the fat one. Me, the one with the best taste in clothes! It is unfair. To put it midlly!

All of it is unfair , and so is everything that has happened to all of us around it, and around our depression.

Still there is that fiicker, our hope, our thought that there is a possibility we have finally found a way to lose the weight and that if we have then no other problem will seem nearly as grave. I for one can say this is the first HOPE I have felt in a long long time.

I am with you sistah- and I am here for you. I am a loyal true friend and you have me.

BTW- we are effin' awesome photographers. It is a true tragedy that our business is slipping away.... check us out at www.megandmichaelweddings.com ... sigh. Well I may be soon unemployed but I will be thin!

[wishes 125]

Exactly, there is nothing that gets me down like giving up. You ever remember that movie, Galaxy Quest? Well, if you don't it still had one great line... "Never give up and never surrender." It has been my motto for school, but for my weight, I've let that fall on the wayside. Thank you for writing this.

[tntransplant06 20]

I love your posts. Period. I've printed this one and stuck it in a safe place. You are truly a gifted writer and your message is getting through (at least to me) I could have said a lot of this myself. Just not so eloquently. Thank you.

[new_beginnings_ 16]

Crosswind, thank you for this post and I really admire your courage to put your pain out here for all to see. Even though I don't comment on most of your posts, I read them and they inspire me and make me laugh and I wanted to thank you for that. Hopefully this surgery will help us all sort through and recognize the emotional and physical bullshit that is keeping us fat and miserable.

:hug:

[sleevemeplease 1]

Wow! Good for you! I am so proud of you for posting as many of us have already stated we can relate and appreciate your honesty in putting it out there. I too have had some really crappy years 06 - 10 and said I am taking 11 to take of ME! Thanks for posting. Your words really hit home for me.