I remember a year ago when I started this blog (one year ago today actually) how committed I was to working on myself, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be. I really had the best of intentions last year, but I didn’t take one thing into account; if you aren’t ready – you’re simply not ready.
I’ve had a bad habit of doing this my entire life. Whenever it comes down to me, I disregard myself– like a piece of junk. Apparently, I am not worth my own time. I find other things to keep myself busy so that I don’t HAVE to work on me. I wrapped myself up in books, TV, projects, work, school, did things around the house. I was done with school, so I didn’t have this option anymore. I would probably have gone back to school if I didn’t already owe so much in student loans. One more excuse to put me on the back burner. I did have one other option, and that was to feel sorry for myself, which I often did. I don’t know why I couldn’t just focus and work on this one thing that I wasn’t able to do. Lose weight.
I loved juicing, but I got bored. I would do really well for about a month or so, and then I would slowly lapse into normal eating. The weight I needed to lose seemed insurmountable. Once again, I went into it without realizing there were still things I had to deal with.
One of the main things that got me down over this last year were my legs. There really is no way to describe the pain I live with, and I just couldn’t figure out a way to get all this weight off if I can’t use my legs. The bone on bone on my ride side caused issues for so long was starting to affect the left side in horrible fashion and it required steroid injections every 4 months. The medicine wears off at about 2.5 months, and I live on daily hydrocodone pills until the next injection date. The pills make me tired, irritable….. and walking around those last 2 months on walking canes makes it difficult to go anywhere. Shopping and meeting clients take every bit of energy that I have. The idea of having to go grocery shopping can literally bring tears to my eyes. I wish I could swallow my pride and ride around in one of those carts at the store, but I can’t. So I walk down the isles and grit my teeth…. keeping my head down so they can’t see my eyes welling. All I feel most days is pounding in my knees. They see a fat person at the store. I’ve become a bit of a hermit, I will admit. I hate people staring at me.
Every doctor out there will tell you that to lose weight you have to work out. Work out…. That phrase became something I hated. I don’t use that word in my vocabulary, normally because its such a strong word. “Hate”. I HATE working out. It hurts just to walk around my house. It actually hurts just thinking about doing any kind of working out and that fear of pain in my legs that I knew would happen if I started moving kept me from doing it. I’ve been through a lot of pain in my life, and the self-inflicted pain wasn’t an option.
My doctors were a bit different. They were telling me that I needed weight loss surgery. If I don’t do something about my legs quickly, they are just going to keep getting worse.
It took me a long time to wrap my head around surgery. I hated the idea. I was scared that I wasn’t going to be the same person. The weight had become who I was. The idea of getting it all off actually scared the crap out of me. I realize that is challenging for many of you to understand, but it became part of my identity. I couldn’t see myself as a thin person. It’s a scary unknown. I didn’t want to trade one challenged body for another one. I’d seen so many pictures of individuals who lost weight that had tons of sagging skin. To me, that’s worse than being heavy.
My choices became – stay how you are or lose the ability to walk. Take the risks of surgery or bear the consequences of knees that can’t handle any more pain.
I did exercises that my therapist and doctors told me to do. “Try and visualize yourself in a thin, healthy body.”
Yea…….. I could never see myself in the vision. The only thing I thought of was “that small person isn’t you. She ain’t you”. Who the f*** are you kidding?
Needless to say. I guess you can say this has been my problem the entire time. I didn’t believe it was possible, and I just couldn’t bring myself to accept a new version of me. Scared the hell out of me.
A monster in head. I just couldn’t see it.
