Necessary Mutilation

Weight: 183.2 lbs.

…and if this is true, womankind everywhere is screwed!

Through the history of this blog I have been either touted as the kind of everyday post bariatric woman that others can relate to, or villified as the bariatric antichrist. I believe that those who struggle, admit their foibles and are aware of their undertow, are most inclined to accept and understand me and what I write. I have gotten praise for my honesty, and admissions of how hard everything can be, and have been told that it is just this degree of genuiness and poignancy that speaks to them in ways that other blogs do not.

But, of course, I have also gotten flack for not working the program, my “tool”, and myself harder, having a controversial title that some have found insulting and horrifying, and for being too open or opinionated about certain things. Although I don’t take all this dislike lightly, I just don’t know what to do with it or how to please everyone. And the bottom line is that I can’t not be true to myself and who I am, including where and when I am “stuck” or struggling or awash with inner conflict. In fact, I have never been able to understand or relate to those who make this journey sound easy by dropping weight like rocks, never seeming to look back, or referring to what they have lost as “forever”. And those who run marathons and embrace lifestyles as skinny and fit people in ways that seem effortless…or at least congruent with their new selves, stymie me even more. Its not that I don’t wish for what others seem to have found or have, its just that I can’t find any resemblence to me now or ever in all this, despite some efforts to be all that. Perhaps the bottom line is that I am a weight loss fraud, lazy and too messed up to reach any real goals….

But at least I am authentic in saying so, and don’t hide or minimize the ways in which I am my own worst enemy. And if I make excuses for myself, they are usually tongue in cheek, and I am well aware that I am really just a bum who easily finds complacency with a job half done, and doesn’t mind resting on my laurels way before the “finish line”. In fact, truth be told, if I were to be skinny now, I fear that I’d have to work harder to maintain it and truly give up aspects of a more liberal lifestyle, that I am just not willing to do. Basically, I want my cake and to eat it too, and am not ready to embrace a cake free lifestyle to be thin, as it is just not worth that much to me. I see the trade off, and have made my decision.

At least for now. At 300 lbs., the trade off was NOT worth it, as my life was being compromised in too many ways. But at 183, I CAN have my cake and eat it too. Not as a voluptous slender woman with maximum health and vitality and confidence. But as the frumpy, plump, middle aged (yikes!) me that I know and recognize, who draws outside the lines, finds my way only in fits and starts if at all, and is relatively content with myself, my lifestyle and choices most of the time.

And thems the facts for all those who write me behind the scenes or question me about what I say or are silent observers of my diatribe. And, with my 2 year surgical anniversary looming, its also time that I sum up where I’ve been in this journey, and why I’ve allowed myself to stall in my 180’s.

 Etc.

And for those I horrify or offend or upset along the way…sorry that my truths shake up yours, but if you stay true to your own goals and journeys, and more power to you to do so with me in your rear view mirror, you shouldn’t mind so much that we aren’t all the same.