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.
Or maybe that’s just me.
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.
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