“Don't Say You're Easy on Me; You're About as Easy As a Nuclear War.” – Duran Duran

I am addicted to magazines.  It’s true….they are one of my many addictions.  Since psychologists can’t even agree on whether or not someone can be addicted to food or sex, I’m pretty sure they would question whether or not a person can be addicted to magazines, but my “collection” is all the proof I need.  At least, it was…..until Tuesday. 

On Tuesday, the recycling guy came and took away 5 liquor boxes full of magazines.  The week before, he took away two.  I still have about 8 more to get rid of.  That is a lot of magazines.  But the pile is getting smaller, not bigger, and that’s the important thing here.

This addiction was born out of a love for music……or, at the very least, teenage lust.  In Summer 1982, my mom took me to my first concert ever – Blondie, at the CNE in Toronto.  Duran Duran opened.  I was 13 and that day changed my life.  Debbie Harry was my hero, but that day I became a true blue Duranie and started spending my allowance on Smash Hits, Creem, Tiger Beat and Rolling Stone so I could plaster my bedroom walls with posters of John Taylor.    

Then as I got a bit older, after I fell in love with NYC, I discovered Details.  That was way before it was a men’s style magazine.  Back then it was a low budget, black and white, non-glossy magazine dedicated to the underground music/party scene in New York City.  When Conde Naste bought Details in 1988, they turned it into something totally different and that killed my obsession with that publication but got me started on Vanity Fair, which continues to this day.  But eventually, I would buy any magazine if it had the right cover or byline…..I don’t care if it’s about celebrities, film, art, houses, horses, books, travel, food, cigars, liquor, music….I like them all.  

Listen, I can read some heavy duty, hard core literature.  I have read Stephen Hawking, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tolstoy…..all kinds of “serious” books, and many of them have encouraged my substantial fantasy life, but magazines are a completely different animal.   Books are about deep, respectful, beautiful love.  I take care of books and display them on bookshelves so I can admire them every day, and I certainly do not lend them to anyone…they’re mine alone.  Magazines are about lust, desire, and envy.  They are a guilty pleasure and stored in boxes hidden away from view until I go looking for them.    I bend their pages back, use them as I wish, rip out pages if I choose and toss them when I am done with them.  The printed word is totally unnecessary in a magazine…. I don’t really care what it has to say to me, unless of course it’s occasionally amusing……It’s all about the images.   Oooh - look at all the pretty pictures!   Shiny!!  Sparkly!!! 

There is something ultra-seductive about the allure of a beautiful cover; the smooth, glossy pages; the gorgeous photographs;  the high end product ads; the fluffy, meaningless articles you can’t take seriously (some of which are occasionally well written, but who cares?); and the easy banter of the one page, “Top 10” features of every magazine.  The artifice created in the pages of a magazine provides nothing less than hedonistic gratification.  You are immersed in another world you’ll never experience in your real life – a world that is whatever you want it to be. Pretty, fun people without a care in the world; creatively designed houses; beautiful, well-made furniture; the unattainable, well dressed  partner with a great car; spectacular food and cocktails; expensive  handbags and shoes ….all of it completely, perfectly staged and reassuring that yes, Utopia does really exist and you COULD have it if you wanted, ‘cos see….. it’s all just right there, ready for you to reach out and take it.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I thought had been able to keep my magazine “collection” down to what I considered to be a reasonable number.  But when I moved to Rochester, I brought with me 7 boxes of magazines, and I knew I had been kidding myself about how “reasonable”  that was when I realized how embarrassed I was that the people helping me move would have to lift and move all these heavy boxes clearly labelled “MAGAZINES”.  I thought if it were me, I’d be like, “move your own damn magazines, you hoarder.”  But that didn’t stop me from getting a whole bunch of subscriptions when I got here.  Magazine subscriptions are REALLY cheap in the States compared to Canada.   

After two years, it had gotten to the point where there were magazines in every room of the house.  They were everywhere…… I was constantly knocking over piles of magazines.  It’s not like I even made the time to read them or cared at all to read them, but still I “saved” them.   It became a really overwhelming problem, which is what happens when you don’t take responsibility.  If you aren’t responsible, then you have no control over this thing that happens to you.  You turn yourself into a victim.  Even if you want things to be different, you feel powerless to change.

I have said in previous posts that in the almost 10 years since I first got my lap band, I haven’t changed all that much which is why I didn’t pass the psych eval a year ago for the sleeve and why everyone, including myself, connected to my sleeve surgery was concerned that in the long term, I would not be successful with my second weight loss surgery.  I know that sounds defeatist and overly pessimistic, but consider this:  perspective isn’t what happens a few months after surgery, or even a few years.  My lap band surgery was considered successful for 4 years.  It is only in hindsight, after all the facts are revealed, that an assessment can be made. 

Personally, I do believe every single person having weight loss surgery should go through long term therapy.  I’m not saying everyone who is obese has the same story/history as me and that’s why they gained weight, but I do think the process of stopping and evaluating who you are, what you want out of life and how your thoughts and behavior help or hinder you in attaining those goals is a pretty worthwhile endeavor, and if everyone did that, then the stats for people who re-gain their weight after WLS would be much lower.  But it does take time to really grow from the process. 

I started my therapy over a year ago and even though the first 10 or so months gave me some great tools for growth, when I look back now, my actual growth didn’t start happening for me until a few months ago when I started to really pay attention to what I was thinking and doing, not just with food but with everything.  The stuff I learned from Jessica in those initial months helped me realize that I do need to pay attention and take responsibility for my own life and not just sail through and leave a mess for others to clean up while I skip on to the next adventure and in the meantime expect to be happy or find greater meaning in my life.  If I wanted my life to be meaningful, I would have to work at it and find the meaning.  It wasn’t just going to fall in my lap if I wasn’t living authentically.

This whole post makes me really uncomfortable to talk about because I am not talking about stuff from my past or stuff that I have no control over.  Suddenly I’m talking about right now…. within the last six months.  It’s easier for everyone, including myself, to say, “oh we’ll forgive her for ‘X’ because that was a long time ago, before I knew her and I don’t know that person.  The person I know is a good person and has battled those demons.”  But I’m saying, no – I hadn’t.  I hadn’t changed since I got my lap band!  Nothing about me had changed and I hadn’t grown and so naturally, when confronted with conflict and discomfort, I reacted the exact same way as I have in the past.

One of the biggest concerns with weight loss surgery is transference of addictions.    Weight loss surgery supposedly takes away your food addiction and you can become addicted to something else in the place of food.   This is a challenge for me for sure.  I have long believed that being addicted to food is the same as drug, alcohol, sex, cigarette…..ANY addiction.  It doesn’t matter the substance or behavior you’re addicted to, the behaviours are the same.  If you’re desperate enough, you’ll do anything for the next fix….lie, steal, cheat, beg, whatever degrading thing you have to do.  It’s really not an empowering thing to realize your entire life is centered on an unhealthy relationship with whatever thing you are addicted to.

Interestingly enough, last year John Taylor, my teenage crush, published a book about his fight to overcome drug and alcohol addiction.  The whole time I was staring at his pictures on my bedroom wall, he was fighting his own demons.  Addiction really is a universal challenge and I think there is no one right way to deal with it.  As they say, the first step is realizing you’ve got a problem.

About four months ago, in spite of my marriage breaking down, I started to feel really good about myself.   Finally, my sleeve surgery was going to happen and I was high on the promise of my future.  My therapy was going great.  I loved my job.   I had lost a bit of weight from my highest weight ever – without the lap band or the sleeve – so I felt pretty good about that even though I had a long way to go.  Things at home were awkward with Sam and I, but it felt good to have things out in the open and I really believed the decision I had made would be best for both of us.  Basically things were going very well.

However, I was ready to move on before Sam was and it did cause some friction between us.  Winter was setting in and the fears and worry I felt over losing Felix and not knowing what happened to him were again very raw.  While I should have been growing and thinking about myself, I was instead trying to squash my worries and fears and continue to feel good.    I thought I had done the hard work already and had earned some excitement.  I was wrong.  It should have been obvious that I was wrong when instead of food, I once again turned to casual sex to make me feel better.

It was history repeating itself.  Again, it wasn’t all that fulfilling. Again, I thought I was empowering myself and taking charge of my sex life.  And, again, I was sleeping with people I really wasn’t that interested in.  I talked to Jessica about what I was doing and she didn’t judge me but said I needed to think seriously about whether this was going to help me accomplish my goals.  I left my session that day not feeling great but not yet motivated to stop what I was doing.

A few days later, I met someone who stopped me in my tracks.  He was the personification of my ideal man….like he was put together just for me and I was powerfully drawn to him.  Within 5 minutes of meeting him, I could imagine him having dinner with my family and fitting right in.  But there were several problems.  I didn’t want to have casual sex with him…I wanted to know him and for him to be a part of my life and for me to be a part of his.  I couldn’t bear the idea that I would just be a nameless, faceless casual partner to him.  And then I started to imagine how I must look in his eyes with all the stuff going on in my life. Not that any of it mattered anyway, since he wasn’t interested in me.  This is when the idea that I don’t deserve to have the partner I want came up.  I had absolutely nothing to offer him. I was overwhelmed by my feeling of unworthiness......this had never happened before.

It was like a big red STOP sign had been put up in front of me, and I realized I kind of need things like that to happen.  When they do, instead of taking it personally and wallowing in my feeling of unworthiness, I need to pay attention to what’s going on and learn and grow from it.

That got me thinking about my relationship to alcohol.  My hard partying days of my early 20’s seems like another lifetime ago now…and I really have no desire to go back to that.  I was never truly into drugs or cigarettes - but I used them anyway back in those days – so it didn’t feel like “giving them up” when I stopped.  I just simply stopped using them.  But alcohol was something different….I loved drinking, almost as much as I love magazines, sex and food.  But still, I stopped drinking completely for a number of years – no AA, no therapy, nothing…I just stopped because I got angry that the police blamed me for the rape because I was drunk.  I stopped drinking out of spite, basically.

Years later – after I had started dating Sam - it occurred to me that I could probably handle having a drink on a social occasion and not let it consume me.  So I had a drink and it was fine.  I enjoyed it and didn’t feel like I needed to keep drinking.   I’ve been fine with alcohol ever since.    If I can do that with alcohol, then why couldn’t I take that same approach to magazines, sex, food or any other thing?  It’s not that difficult a concept.  It’s about really enjoying whatever it is.  Don’t do things just “because you can”, or because you’re bored or whatever.  Don’t “use” people, food, sex, magazines or anything else as a coping mechanism.  
 
At this point in my life, I am ready to be done with addiction of any kind.   And it makes sense to me to work on stopping ALL addictive behaviours now.  It doesn’t matter if it’s food, sex, drugs, alcohol, magazines…whatever the vice, I don’t want it to have control over me.  Having casual sex does not prove how liberated and in charge I am…just the opposite.  Overeating doesn’t prove how much I love food…it shows my lack of discipline.  Hoarding magazines doesn’t prove anything except that I like to waste money and collect dust bunnies.  I can and should enjoy all of these things for the right reasons and not be so desperate to consume.

Just before my surgery - it occurred to me that I didn’t need magazines.   Having this huge collection of magazines no longer reflected who I am.  I let that idea kind of swirl around in my head while I recovered from surgery.  I couldn’t lift anything anyway so the magazines sat there and I grew more and more resentful of the space they were taking up in the house.  One of the techniques I have been working on with Jessica is, “What if…”.  Any time I find myself confronted with a feeling of discomfort, instead of trying to make myself feel better using whatever unhealthy instant gratification I can find, I ask the question, “What if…?”  in relation to whatever is happening.    You keep asking until you get to the root of the feeling. 

So:
What if I got rid of all these magazines?  Then I’d be upset.
What if you were upset?  Then I’d want to eat something or sleep with someone inappropriate.
What if you ate something or slept with someone inappropriate? 

You get the idea.  You keep asking, “what if…?”  until you uncover the truth of what’s going on.  This exercise really has been especially helpful to me in the last few months and it has been really empowering.  I have done this often enough now that I have realized that things are never as hard as they seem and that I have the confidence to confront really anything now.  And so, magazines and piles of clothes and all kinds of other crap I don’t need or want has been finding its way out of the house.

On Monday I had my meeting with my new lifestyle management guru and it didn’t go exactly the way I thought or hoped it would.  Normally that would have really disappointed me, but during the meeting I found myself adjusting my expectations and going with the flow and keeping an open mind and I think it’s still going to work out.  They will not actually be my personal trainers nor do they have a private gym but they have built me a depressingly boring but healthy diet.  Apparently, people who are in excellent shape eat the same kinds of simple things all the time.  I should have known this from seeing what my brother eats.  So apparently I AM the kind of person who drinks a protein shake…every day, for breakfast or a snack.  But I get to have a “cheat” meal – anything I want – once a week.

They do use a gym very close to my house - ROC Boxing - and I’m set up with a couple of trainers there.  It’s exactly like a boxing gym out of a movie and it’s a bit intimidating but also has a great vibe.  Lots of action.  I’ll be focusing on strength training, and I’m also going to try some boxing and see how I like it.  I get to hit things.  I think I’m going to like it.

On Thursday I had my 6 week post op follow up (although it’s actually been 7 ½ weeks) and my surgeon is very happy with my progress.  My incision sites are healing very well and my weight loss is average.   I kind of plateaued a bit in the last couple weeks and my surgeon was sure that would change with the new diet and exercise I am starting.   I’m feeling very energetic and am headed in the right direction.    

Everything in life really is timing.  I am here right here, in this emotional and physical space, at this point of my life and it all coincided perfectly with my moving to the States.  I admit, I never wanted to move to the States (even when I wanted to move to NYC as a kid – I didn’t think of that as moving to the States). I loved my life in Canada and did not want to leave my job, my house, my friends, my family, my doctor, my car.  It felt like when I moved here I gave up a lot.  Although I already had a lot of friends here and I tried to see it all as another adventure, it really felt like a sacrifice. 

But the people who have come into my life since I moved here have been instrumental in helping me rediscover my life and myself.  My new job, my friends, my health care providers, and everyone else I have met along the way have really touched me and offered me so much support even when I did not deserve it.  A bunch of Yanks have completely changed my perspective.  It no longer feels like moving here was a sacrifice…it feels like it was a gift that I will need to spend the rest of my life earning.  It feels like home now.  Timing.  It’s a beautiful thing.

"If You're Gonna Take That Step, Then Get Up Off of Your Knees.” - Bon Jovi

Well.  The last few posts have been kind of heavy.    So I thought I’d switch gears a little and talk a bit less about heavy emotional stuff and a bit more about physical stuff happening in the here and now.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty hard to get completely away from emotional stuff – this whole process is emotional for me.  But some stuff is easier to talk about and put out here for everyone to read about and judge than other stuff is. 

Not that I’m really worried about being judged.  Actually, that is the last thing on my mind right now.  At this point of my life, I could not care less what anyone is thinking about me. 

Actually, that’s a total lie……but I want it to be true!  The whole point of being brutally honest is to stop feeling troubled and embarrassed by my history and embrace it as the catalyst that brought me here to this moment.  And I am so grateful and happy to be where I am right now. 

This truly is the best time of my life so far and I feel like I’m giving myself a chance to “start over”.  I’m not allowing my history to eat (HA!) away at me anymore.  It has been an incredible release to admit how weak I became after I was victimized, admit all the bad decisions I’ve made, and feel like I can triumph over it.  And the private messages of support I’ve gotten have been really incredible.  I’ve heard from high school classmates who said they always admired me because I always seemed so confident (?!) and others who said they always wanted to ask me out but were intimidated (?!?!?);  others who confided their own stories of victimization and many others who told me they could really relate to my post about death.  Being so open about it all makes me feel like I am no longer an imposter in my own life.  I feel like I am revealing my true self. 

There are some pieces of me that have always been authentic….I never lost these pieces and I never will, weight loss surgery or not.  For example, I grew up in a family that was very heavily influenced by my dad’s parents - my Italian grandmother (Margie) and my Ukrainian grandfather.  Their house always felt very Italian - partly because my grandmother’s big family all lived in the same town as us, whereas my grandfather’s small family didn’t, so her brothers and sisters and close friends and all their families were always dropping in.  We were always at my grandparents' house to visit and swim and eat dinner.  My mom and dad both worked in the family plumbing business and the office for the business was in my grandparents' house so business associates, customers, employees and their families were also always dropping in.  There was always a bounty of amazing food and wine, and raucous “discussions” shouted around the kitchen table.  

Food is important in all cultures but honestly, none more so than in Italian culture.  Everyone who has seen the Godfather knows the Italian way is about generosity, loyalty, good food, love, family, and passion and these themes were abundantly present in my family.  From the time I was old enough to walk, I was in the kitchen with my grandmother for all family celebrations, helping her prepare the meal.  It was always just me and her. In that kitchen, I learned to speak Italian; I learned to cook and I learned all the scandalous family secrets.  Her attitude towards food, family and life revealed by the stories she told. As she got older, I took over the cooking while she sat in a chair and “supervised”.  Sharing those times with her was so special…. Margie’s kitchen was home for me. 

That feeling of “home” is now sadly gone.  My grandmother passed away in the kitchen, sitting at the kitchen table, in 2007.  The last time I saw her alive was also sitting at that kitchen table….just her and me.  We ate lasagna together but the silence was unbearable.  She had recently been diagnosed with cancer at the age of 85 after a lifetime of no health problems and she just could not feel anything but fear, regret and depression.  She had no stories to tell, she had no fight in her spirit, I could tell she was not even enjoying her meal…she was just simply waiting to die.  And then she did, two days later.

Her passing left a huge void in my heart and caused a terrible rift in the family which has, thankfully, since been repaired.  I still cook in her kitchen with her pots and pans for family dinners but it’s definitely not the same.  However, I carry her and her Italian way with me always.  Having weight loss surgery is not going to change that for me because it IS who I am.  I am always going to love food.  I am always going to be offended if I cook for someone and I don’t think they eat enough.  I am always going to think I need “more” on the table. 

As a result, I am never going to be the kind of person who snacks on protein bars (ie “cardboard”) or uses protein powder (ie “chalk”) or tries out juicing, like a lot of weight loss surgery patients do.   I hear a lot of weight loss surgery patients talk about how difficult it is to get the proper amount of protein from food so they supplement with extra protein products…..this seems to be a real struggle for most people.  So far, I have had no trouble at all getting enough protein and it’s not like all these protein supplements actually taste good so I’m not sure why people eat them.

Just as an aside - both the lap band and the gastric sleeve are restrictive types of weight loss surgeries, whereas gastric bypass is a malabsorbative surgery....they work differently. Restrictive weight loss surgeries work by restricting the amount of food that can be consumed.  In essence, they work by encouraging the patient to eat less.   Malabsorbative weight loss surgeries work by decreasing the amount of nutrition the body is able to absorb from the intestinal tract.   Technically they should all result in weight loss (but it's possible to NOT lose weight after WLS) so selecting which surgery is right for a patient takes some thought.  I already have severe vitamin deficiency from having the lap band for 9 years so the sleeve was a better choice for me.  (Why did I get the lap band…that’s another story entirely and I wrote a whole blog post about it back in September.)

Since the band and the sleeve are both restrictive, I was expecting my body's reaction to food consumption to be the same with the sleeve as it had been with the band…….not that I was looking forward to that.  From the very beginning, even when my lap band was working the way it should, I had a very rough time with the band.  At best, I always had to take very, very tiny bites of anything I ate.  I always had to chew a million times until whatever I was eating was completely liquefied before swallowing.   As a result of both of these things, I ate really, really slowly.  Even though I ate so slowly and took tiny bites and chewed so much, food often got "stuck" which would lead to being sick.  There were certain things like bread, eggs, pasta, shell fish and meat that my band was totally intolerant of, which was so sad because I love all those foods. I always had to make sure I stopped eating many hours before bed or I'd have horrible acid reflux.

But so far, having the sleeve is a very different experience for me than having the lap band was…..I have been very, very happily surprised so far!  I haven't been sick at all and food doesn’t get "stuck".  Now I actually feel full.  For the first time in my life, I am not a bottomless pit incapable of feeling full...I actually get REALLY full – like, it’s Thanksgiving dinner and I’ve had too many helpings of everything, kind of full - rather quickly…..after eating about a cup of food. I haven’t found one thing that I could not eat so far.  I’ve tried shellfish, sushi, dim sum, bread, deep fried and fresh spring rolls, eggs, pad thai, pasta, pizza, salad, raw fruits and vegetables, nuts, pork, beef, chicken….I’m pretty much trying everything at this point (and there isn’t much I don’t like!) and so far, there has not been one thing that has given me problems.  I don’t have to eat super slow…I can eat at the same pace as everyone else; I just get full and stop eating faster than everyone else.  I don’t need to take tiny pea sized bites.  I can just eat like a “normal” person.  I am very, very happy about this and I hope it continues.  The sleeve is making social situations so much easier and more pleasant for me than the band did.

The biggest challenge for me right now is drinking as much water as I should.  I like water….I drink a lot of water……about 70 ounces of water/day.  But that’s probably about half of what I should be drinking.  My eyes, skin and nose have been incredibly dry the past few weeks and I sometimes feel dizzy or faint if I forget to drink for an afternoon.  When I start to exercise, this could be a problem!

Speaking of which, on Monday I have my first appointment with Dr. Comella, which I am super excited about!  You may recall from one of my previous posts that he and Anthony Caruso, a body builder, have a lifestyle management clinic and I am going to be their client.  The first appointment will be for building a nutrition and exercise base plan that will help me work towards my fitness goals.   Then they'll function as my personal trainers and nutrition coaches.  I’m not interested in just going for walks.  I want to try and sculpt my body the way I want it to be and that means strength training in addition to other stuff.  I had to wait 6 weeks after surgery to begin strength training but I knew all along I wanted to do it.

I’m trying really, really hard to not think about how difficult it will be for me to become the kind of person who exercises regularly.  I really want to exercise…in fact, I’ve been itching to start for the past month.  It was a fantastic thing that I healed so quickly from surgery but it meant that all these weeks, I have been dying to do much more than I should.  It speaks volumes that I did not start exercising early but I chose to do other things earlier than I should have.  Jessica told me how hard therapy would be and how hard doing the emotional work I needed to do would be…and yeah it was and is.  But in some ways, the exercise thing is even harder for me.  I can handle emotions.  I’m an emotional Pisces; born in the Water element…I feed off emotion, I live for it.  I do not feed off of exercise.  My brother got the jock genes in my family, I got the bookworm genes.  So right about now, I feel like Felix Baumgartner standing in a helium balloon in the stratosphere looking down at Earth.  My ideal body just seems so far away and the route to getting there so very daunting.

But the good news is I knew I would feel this way, which is why I chose to not join a regular gym.  I knew if I did, I would never start to exercise, never get close to the body I want or get physically fit.  I know myself.  Every day I would tell myself that tomorrow would be the day I’d start and it would go nowhere.  And then there’d be no roller derby for me.  No pole dancing classes, no horseback riding, and no improvement in my sex life, no hot clothes, no beautiful canvas for the many tattoos I covet…and on and on it goes. 

So this is important and it’s probably going to be expensive and I don’t care.  I already decided to cancel my Direct TV subscription to pay for it.  That $160/month can do me more good than it currently is.  I’ll have a team that is specifically focused on keeping my diet and exercise plan on track and will smack my ass into shape (a girl can hope!) if I lose focus, which I will.  I’m simplifying my life.  My energy and attention need to be on people, things and experiences that are positive, supportive and allow me to be the person I am.  Anything that weighs me down, holds me back or causes me self-doubt has just got to go.  Anything that builds me up has got to be incorporated.

It really is amazing how quickly things can change when you are open to it.  One person, one thing can change your life forever in a split second, without you even realizing it’s happening.  It’s so quick…you blink and it’s happened….and then you notice.    The key is to be open to it.  When you allow new people and things into your life, extraordinary things can happen.

“My Whole Existence is Flawed; You Get Me Closer to God.” – Nine Inch Nails

If you know me or have read my previous posts, you know that Sam and I are separating.  Romantically, we have been very distant from each other for quite some time, but we still live in the same house while we both figure out what each of us wants for our future and pay off our shared debt (ironically, our wedding, among other things).  We remain very good friends and have had many post-mortem conversations about our relationship, what went wrong and why and I think we are both at peace with it being over.

This whole post is about love and sex, and the thoughts in my head about these subjects.  It’s not meant as a commentary on Sam in any way.  Many people who have weight loss surgery find their relationships are changed after surgery.  Some people find it improves their relationship, many others find their relationship is over after the weight comes off.  For Sam and I, it happened before my surgery, probably because I had long term therapy for the year before surgery whereas most people don’t, so I think that hastened the process for me.

This post, just like all the others, is about me thinking critically about myself as I progress through the weight loss surgery experience.  Anything I say here is not a reflection of Sam’s shortcomings, but rather my own.  It’s just rather difficult to discuss sex and love without mentioning Sam in any way since he has been in my life for the last 7 years.  My relationship with him was only my second relationship that lasted more than 2 dates. 

He said something to me a while ago that has really haunted me these past few months and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.  He told me that I push everyone who loves me away because I think I’m not lovable. 

When he first said that, I really just kind of brushed it off.  I didn’t really think about it a lot but then one day, something happened and it was like a stone hitting the windshield.......you think it’s nothing but it completely cracks your window.  That insignificant thing that happened in my day suddenly made me realize there was something to what he said.  So I found myself re-examining my life, yet again, in this context.

When I was 14, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  My family doctor had referred me to a specialist because I started to develop hair growth on my face.   The endocrinologist gave it to my mom and I straight:  I have too many male hormones;  will always have cysts on my ovaries which means I am probably infertile and probably won’t ever have kids;  I’ll need to be on birth control pills for the rest of my life to balance my hormones, and I will probably always struggle with my weight. 

So at the age of 14 I started on the pill and electrolysis treatments.  That also set the expectation that I carried with me throughout life that I wouldn’t have kids.  I never thought about whether or not I wanted them…I didn’t want to get excited about something that would never happen.

At this point in my life, several things were already true:  I already felt different than everyone else even before this, and even more so afterwards.  I already knew that other people thought I was fat and that it was a bad thing.  I had been on several diets, and generally felt that I was not acceptable the way I was.    Other people’s fear of my becoming fat leeched into me and started to shape how I felt about my body and myself. 

At the same time, I also became aware of how powerful my body was.   My classmates, my family members, advertising and media - everyone - seemed to have such strong reactions to and opinions of the female body and what was and wasn’t ok.  I mentioned previously that by the time I was 14, I looked 19.  I got a lot of attention from older guys.   I was already obsessed with sex and the attention I got was kind of scary to me.  I knew I was way too young for sex.  But still, I was curious so I would raid my dad’s porn stash and watch his VHS tapes until he’d realize one of his kids was seeing stuff they shouldn’t and try and hide them somewhere else, which didn’t work ‘cos I just found them again.  He probably thought it was my brother – not that he ever asked - but nope, it was me. 

I was confused by the dichotomy between being told I wasn’t good enough and all the attention I got.  It made sense to me that I wasn't good enough for love or real interest but I was good enough for sex.  Those guys probably gave that same attention to every girl, hoping someone would sleep with them, so I tried not to rely on it for my feelings of self-worth. I tried to not want that attention.  I tried to see it as not important.  Instead of trying to be sexy and attractive, I tried to focus on other things like being stylish, smart, mysterious, cool, a rebel.  In a previous post I mentioned how I had a lot of male friends in high school and how I thought dating was a big waste of time.  That’s all true, but the more complete story is, I didn’t think any guy could ever actually be interested me.  

I knew I didn’t want to ever get married.  I saw what being married looked like all around me and that wasn’t how I wanted to live, even as a kid.....that just wasn’t how I saw myself.  Being married seemed…….safe and "normal" I guess, to me. It just wasn't the kind of life I imagined for myself.  But I am a total romantic and wanted a relationship someday.  I just wanted the intense, passionate, transcendent, rock n roll, soul scorching kind of relationship poets write poems about and Led Zeppelin wrote songs about.  I wasn’t interested in a safe life…. I wanted a partner as tempestuous, irreverent and challenging as I was and our relationship to reflect that.

But I grew up hearing from everyone around me – especially from well meaning people who loved me - that I would be alone for the rest of my life unless I lost weight.  No man – certainly not the tall, fit, handsome men I was always attracted to - would want a fat girlfriend.  I grew up hearing I had such a beautiful face, which sounds like a compliment……. but the unspoken “but” is, “shame about the body”.  I grew up hearing, ‘you’d be perfect if only you lost weight’.  I grew up hearing that a woman is only worth something if she’s desirable to men and fat women are not desirable to men.  The conclusion I drew:  You are fat and don’t deserve to be loved or desired.

I wish I could go back and take that girl under my wing and tell her to not buy into the bullshit she’s hearing all around her….to REALLY not buy it.  I wish I could cover her ears and shout, “la la la, she can’t hear you and shame on you for being such an asshole!”  The awful thing is, you hear something often enough and you start to believe it and tell it to yourself over and over and pretty soon, it’s your truth.  All these years, I really believed I had ignored these messages.  But I can see now that was not the case.  Not only did I not ignore those messages but I absorbed them like a sponge.  I still don't believe anyone is ever actually attracted to me.  I always think there must be some other reason for their attention.

In the late 90's, I started to realize my 20's were almost over and the idea of turning 30 hit me HARD.  I had been living back at home at my parents' house after I was raped and had gained a lot of weight after trying to compulsively eat my anger away.   I had still never had consensual sex in my life and had still only ever been kissed by one guy.   It was depressing, embarrassing and I was tired of it, so I decided to start seeking out sex on the internet.  I don't remember the first guy I slept with.  I took what I could get.  Over the next several years, I would have long periods of total celibacy.  Then suddenly I’d get the itch to explore and would sleep with lots of people in a short time. I sometimes slept with several people a week and they were always one night stands.    None of those experiences were very satisfying.  Wars were waged on sex, myths were built on it…I was convinced there had to be more to it than what I was seeing and this thirst for the discovery of the magic I was sure existed drove me on to sleep with more and more people.

I was never really attracted to anyone I slept with.  What I mean is, they weren't physically my type.  But they were willing to sleep with me and that was all I thought I could hope for.  I didn't think anyone I wanted to have sex with with would ever want to have sex with me. I didn’t feel like I deserved to ask for what I really want.  I didn’t think I deserved to be loved or desired.  I didn’t think I was good enough to get the partner I want.  

I have no idea how many people I slept with.  I don't remember names, I don't remember faces (except the guy who used my toothbrush without asking...THAT guy I remember.  I was SO pissed.)  I put myself in some ridiculously dangerous situations.  I don't even know why I did all of this.....because I could?  Because I hated myself?  Because I was so numb and disconnected from my body that I wanted to feel something...anything?  Because I wanted control of my sex life back after having it taken away by the guy who raped me?  Because I was desperate for human contact?  Because I was just horny?  Maybe all of the above. 

Back to Sam's comment that I push everyone who loves me away because I think I’m not lovable. Honestly, I am not sure about the “pushing away” part yet.  There have not been that many people in my life who have loved me - in a romantic sense, I mean….two people.  And I’m not sure that’s enough to make it a pattern.   But I do think fear ultimately plays into this “pushing away” business. 

But do I think I’m unlovable?  The more I think about that, the more I know Sam is right.  I know I am terrible with money.  I am demanding and irresponsible.  I have a quick temper.   I’m impulsive and impatient.  I’m selfish.  I always try to be in charge and then resent my partner for not being strong enough to tame me.  In addition to everything else... my history, my obesity struggle, my medical issues….. who would want to put up with all that?  Who would want to love or have sex with someone like that? 

So yeah….I think I am pretty damaged and fucked up…….and unlovable.   I guess I have things to discuss in my next therapy session!

I just can’t believe I didn’t see all this myself years ago and do something to change it.  It took a passing comment from Sam, who obviously saw it so clearly, and an insignificant "stone" to make me stop and think about it.  Realizing all of this has helped me feel totally confident that Sam and I ending our marriage is absolutely the right thing for both of us.  Sam is a great guy and will make a great partner for someone else.  But I could never make him happy, and he could never make me happy......we both should have known that a long time ago.  Neither of us did anything wrong…we just need different things from our partner than the other is able to deliver.  We’re all looking for different things out of life, love, sex and a partner and what I wanted as a kid from a partner is what I still really want.  Splitting up doesn't mean “you suck and are unlovable”, it just means, “I don’t see what I’m looking for in you, but someone else will”.

Recently I read an article on Inc.com titled, “The One Behavior That Guarantees failure”.  Although the article was geared towards succeeding in business, the crux of the argument was this:  letting fear of failure stop you from asking for what you want ensures you won't get it. 

Yeah, I found this article helpful for me in my job, but more importantly, I found it really hit home when thinking about my personal life.  While I was reading, a fairly simple concept became clear to me - fear of failure holds people back and stops them from truly fulfilling who they are and getting what they want in life.  It certainly has done that to me in my life.  That has to change.  Starting now.

The interesting thing to me about this is I always thought it was love that holds people back and stops us from truly fulfilling who we are.  Clearly I have some work to do in this area.
 

“For Life is Quite Absurd; And Death's the Final Word.” –Eric Idle

My very first memory in life is being at my grandfather’s funeral visitation, which was two days after my fifth birthday.  My grandfather – my mother’s father - was 48 when he died.   Just three years older than I am right now.  I can still see him in his coffin.  I can see my grandmother having a meltdown and my mother, trying to comfort her, telling me to go find my grandmother’s doctor in the crowd.  I can see the crowd as I move through it in search of the good doctor. 
I have been obsessed with death for as long as I can remember….maybe ever since that day.  Maybe I was already obsessed with death before that but I don’t remember anything before that.

After that, I hated being in the dark as a kid…I was afraid of the dark.  I thought Death would come and get me in the dark.  I had dreams of bodies rotting in the ground…bugs crawling in and out of empty eye sockets.  Long hair and finger nails and ratty clothes hanging off corpses.  Sometimes the body was my grandfather, sometimes it was me, sometimes it was someone else I knew.  I would wake up screaming in the night with leg cramps because the nightmares were so intense and  my dad would come and give me a leg rub until I calmed down and went back to sleep.

I actually had a very sheltered childhood.  Yes, I was at my grandfather’s funeral but my parents did not talk to me about the details of death.  How I knew about rotting bodies, I don’t know.  But at a very young age, I figured out that everyone – including me, including my parents, including my baby brother – everyone, would die someday, and that terrified me.   I could not understand why anyone would want to have kids if they were just going to die someday….born to die, how cruel!  My mom’s explanation that we would all be with God someday did nothing to make me feel better….it just led to more questions and if you read my previous posts, you know how that turned out.

When I got a bit older, I started reading the obituaries in the newspaper.  My favourite ones were the ones with a picture of the person and a write up that talked about who the person was, who their family is, what they did for a living, the important things they did with their lives, the things they cared about.   I still always go to that part of the paper first if I read a newspaper.  My roommates in college thought I did this just to be morbid or as a pretentious show of appreciation for the goth/alternative lifestyle we were all entrenched in, but no….I was really curious and interested who these people were and felt compelled to honour them in death.

Since I was a kid, my mom always told me I trust too much, let people in too easily, reveal myself and get close to people too quickly.  That’s just naturally the way I am.  I’m a good listener…and most people like to talk about themselves if given the chance, so I let them.  Pretty soon they’re telling me their secrets and they feel close to me, I feel close to them, and a connection is formed.  My obsession with death has always made it difficult for me to let go of people once that connection happens. I feel like I need to know where everyone is….my friends, my family, people I talked to once, people I dislike….everyone.  I just need to know where everyone is all the time….because otherwise, what if they die and I never find out?  What if I never see them again?  It’s not logical, I know this.

I’ve lost a lot of people in my life…I’ve been to a lot of funerals and have been present when several people died.  But they were always older people.  Even the ones who were young were still older than me and although it was very sad and triggered my death obsession, it never really hit close to home.  It wasn’t someone my age who could have been me.  

Until 2009, when an amazing woman, a co-worker and great friend, only a couple years older than me, died rather suddenly.  She had a larger than life personality that could not be stifled.  We bonded over our love of cats, good food, bawdy jokes, our lifelong battles with obesity and our freedom loving single lives.   During a work fitness challenge two years earlier, we went to the YMCA together and gossiped and laughed while we walked on treadmills.  (Rather, she gossiped and I laughed until I couldn’t walk anymore.)  She had a way of creating a pop-up, chaotic, loud party everywhere she went.  She was full of life. 

Then one day she died.  Just like that.  Out of the blue.  On a day in January just like any other, except on this day, my friend died.  Her sister told me afterwards it was from a pulmonary embolism. 

I remember when she died, I struggled to make sense of her sudden death.  At the time I worked a steady midnight shift…I spent the majority of my time – at work and otherwise - alone and in darkness.  I was terrified it would happen to me too. At this point, I had started to re-gain the weight I had lost with the lap band.  I wasn’t the heaviest I had ever been but still, she was a comparable size to me and I felt incredibly guilty that it happened to her and not me.  It should have been me – she was so well loved and, I thought her life had more value than mine.  Suddenly death seemed a very real possibility and I worried constantly.

During my next visit with my doctor, I asked him what a pulmonary embolism was, if it has anything to do with a person’s weight and if it could happen to me. 

Dr. Rivers, my PCP before I moved to the US, was amazing.  I had become his patient when I returned to the Niagara area after my disastrous decade (the 90’s).  He was just out of medical school and had just started a practice.  I did not want to go back to the family doctor I had grown up with so I went to him as one of his first patients. 

On this visit, he listened to my concerns and answered my questions.  He told me a pulmonary embolism can happen to anyone, regardless of their weight.  He also reminded me how healthy I was, in spite of my obesity.  He was working towards becoming a body builder and had a really low body fat percentage and was extremely fit, but my blood test results were still better than his and every time he tested me, he’d be amazed by that.  He told me if he had to choose between being me and being a thin smoker, he’d pick being me because I was super healthy.

He was always very empathetic but firm and supportive regarding obesity.  He was the only doctor – one of the only people - I had met up until then who didn’t “fat shame” me for my weight. He didn’t say it was ok, and encouraged me to lose weight but supported me in whatever weight loss methods I wanted to try and he knew, better than me, that losing weight was not just about diet and exercise for me.  He didn’t automatically jump on the “you’re obese so of course you could get a blood clot and die” bandwagon.  I felt reassured.  I trusted Dr. Rivers, maybe because he told me what I wanted to hear.

The blood clot possibility came up again last year when I was at my heaviest ever.  My new PCP’s reaction was a sharp contrast to the reaction I got from Dr. Rivers.  My new PCP positively flipped out when I went to see him in March about a swollen foot/leg.  I told him the foot/leg had been bothering me for about 6 months on and off.   He asked me, in a near hysterical voice, why I waited so long to see him about it……did I want to die from pulmonary embolism?  He  sent me for 3 rather invasive tests immediately (as in, “get in your car and go get these blood tests done and then go immediately to ACM and have your X-ray, MRI and CT Scan….I’ll be waiting right here for the results…..GO!”)  Trashed another entire work day.  I was annoyed at him for being such a drama queen…there is no way I could have a blood clot….I’m perfectly healthy!  At the same time, I left his office hiding my tears, my worry, my fear.

The next time I went to see Dr. DiBenedetto, he asked/told me in a very nonchalant way during our consultation that he’d like to implant a vena cava filter in me during my lap band removal to keep me safe from blood clots during surgery.  Dr. D has a very mellow, but direct, confident way about him.  He spoke in a soft voice, looking over his glasses at the end of his nose, and did not in any way, except that he asked the question/made the statement, give me a sense that he was really all that concerned about my getting a blood clot.  The fact that he even mentioned it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. 

After I left his office, I was curious about this mysterious filter so I looked it up on Wikipedia and what I read really kind of worried me….the process of implanting it in the groin, the process of removing it.  It sounds silly, but part of me was happy to be ridding my body of a foreign object – the lap band.  My white blood cell count has been escalating for years since I got the band and I was anxious to see if removing it would resolve that issue.  I wasn’t all that excited to have another device implanted into me.

So I called Dr. D’s office and spoke with one of his lovely and talented assistants who explained more about the filter to me and told me it was really no big deal…that it is usually implanted using local anesthesia and it was perfectly safe to leave it in.  The filter basically “catches” any large blood clots if one does form and starts to travel to the heart or lungs, which can kill…...a pulmonary embolism.  The filter is designed to stay in the body, like a pacemaker, so having it removed would be my choice in years to come, but if I did want it removed, it would be fished through the body and removed through the carotid artery. 

Gross.  I decided I didn’t want to know any more and put my trust in Dr. D.  It really ended up being no big deal.  I still have the filter in me and I don’t know it’s there.  And it turned out I didn't have a blot clot but I do feel safer knowing the filter is there.

Death still terrifies me.  Not a single day goes by that I don’t think about dying at least once.  I obsess about my death and what it will be like, how it will feel, not just to die, but to be dead.  Will I live to be an old woman?  Will I have any impact on the world at all or will it be as though I was never here?  Will I be afraid when the time comes?  And, most terrifyingly, will I have regrets?  Will I just simply run out of time like my friend did?  Will my consciousness really be gone or is there something else?  I can’t fathom the world going on and me not in it or even aware of it.  Or will I be aware of it?  Will I live long enough to be a role model for my niece?  I have more questions than answers.

A palm reader once told me I would live a lot longer than I wanted to.  She meant this to be reassuring but ever since she told me that, I worry even more.  Will I be in a horrible accident and in pain for hours before my body finally dies, or some other equally gruesome scenario?

I’m not embarrassed to say that if vampires were real, I would trade my mortality in a second for an eternity of blood drinking.  I don’t want to die…ever.  What’s more is I don’t want anyone I know to die either.  I just cannot handle the cycle of life.  I know that is an extremely immature point of view, but there it is. 

I have no control over death and I don't have answers to my questions.  The only thing I know for sure is I do not want to regret anything when that moment comes and that is all on me.  I have been living under a rock of fear for way too long.  So fuck fear!  Fuck doubt!  I've got my life and confidence back, and I’m not holding anything back.  It’s full steam ahead….adventure, pleasure, and passion on the horizon for as long as I have this life.  I’m not waiting for it to come to me….I’m going to get it!

Random stuff:

·        I love variety in all things except pizza.  I always get/make thin crust with mushrooms, onions, bacon (or sausage) and cheese.  And I'd rather make my own with homemade sauce 'cos I can't stand tomato sauce from a jar (thank you, Italian Grandma!)

·        I will be a roller derby girl, even if just for one season

·        My top travel destinations before I die:  Italy, Britain, Africa, China, Hawaii

·        I spent a Christmas Eve once on an empty beach in West Florida and it was glorious

·        I have been whale watching twice and I want to do it again

·        I love boats

·        I hate mountains.  I spent a week in the Poconos once and felt nauseous the entire time