Hope. I get it.

How did I get here? A few months back, I remember being wide eyed and starry.  I was so determined to lose this weight on my own.  I’m not sure what’s changed but I will tell you how I feel anyway.

Things were going along pretty well in August and I’d fall off here and there but I took a nose dive later that month and I haven’t seemed to recover.

My legs are in terrible condition really. The bow on my right leg (since I was 11) has been so bad for so many years that my left one tried its hardest to compensate and I think they are both getting tired.  Some days I can walk just fine and others I try hard not to cry when I’m walking around a store.  I wake up sometimes in the morning and the pain is already there. I begin most days choking back pain just to start my regular routine. The doctor has tried all kinds of pills to try and cushion the space between my knee joints. Cortisone shots work for a few months but inevitably, it wears off.  Steroids cause a litany of other problems – weight gain being one of them. Shooting up on the scale 10-15 pounds after taking these pills isn’t out of the normal. It’s a standard I just can’t deal with anymore. I’m not giving up, but I need another route.

I lost one of my brothers in the late fall. I wasn’t very close to this brother but I can’t tell you how many times I wondered could I have helped him more?  Was he screaming for help and I couldn’t hear him? I wish I had the power to make it better, I wish I could have been someone that he called. I didn’t even know where he was for 10 years but I thought of him so often. It’s haunted me.  How many people out there just need help…… help they were too proud to ask for. God bless you brother.

This event awakened my soul to something I never considered before; I might just need more help than I was willing to admit. I might not have all the tools in the arsenal to get it done and I know I don’t. I simply don’t.

So for the last two months, I have been going to Doctors, in preparation for Bariatric surgery. I didn’t come to the decision lightly; in fact, I have been against the surgery my whole life. I thought people who had the surgery done were weak and they’d given up. I learned during the last couple months that it’s not a weakness at all. To the contrary, it’s hope. It really is……… I get it now.

I hope that maybe I will find my authentic self. Do I wear the bullshit I wear now because this is me, or is it because it’s what fits? Do I avoid situations because I’m just uncomfortable? I hope that maybe I will be to walk around the entire Mall of America. I hope that I will be able to go jet skiing! I hope that I will be able to go to the beach!  I hope that I will be able to go to the Faroe Islands. I hope that I will be able to have kids one day. I hope that I can run for city Council next year. I hope that I will finally feel confident enough just to just ask that damn guy out. For fu**s sake. 

Surgery will be in May. Cheers to hope………….. on a night like this.