Today, or rather yesterday, I came clean to my Facebook Friends that I am getting weight loss surgery. Last week I came clean to my co-workers. I was met with the usual responses, most give me encouragement and support, some begin suggesting diets that may or may not have been successful for them, some try to scare me. I am numb to it all. Not because I can't deal with it but because I have been on this road for so long! I was a chunky baby and it never got any better. My grandmother, bless her soul, put me on my first clinician supervised diet when I was 14. I was 214 pounds then. I lost 15lbs over the next year with walking with my uncles, her neighbors, and alas even my grandmother, the 5'2" stick swinging virago. It felt great but was shortly followed by the worst year of my life. My grandmother's breast cancer returned, if it was ever really gone, my mother moved us to Jacksonville, FL, into a trailer park and every black man within a one mile radius began making passes at me. While I was only 15, I looked "old enough". By the time I was molested for the second time in my life, I began eating myself into an asexual state of mind. I don't think I talk to anyone outside of family who knew me from back then but that woman that was awakening in me died, she was smothered by all the food I was eating. By the time I arrived in highschool I was more alone than I had ever felt in my life. I spent all of freshman year sitting alone in the cafeteria or outside on the patio in a dark place, praying for answers. God sent me good friends, great friends that calmed the beast and I muddled through a lot of personal drama focusing on college and the beautiful life waiting for me after I was done with school.
Only nothing went the way it was supposed to. I went to college and struggled to work (in order to pay for the classes) and make it to the full time schedule of classes. I never learned to relate to the vapid youth I took classes with. I didn't understand them and they didn't understand me. I dropped out and went to work at Walmart full time. The following year I got the job at Citibank and was fooled into the idea I didn't need college, that I could do this for a while and publish a few books by the time I was 30 and I would be alright. Sit down job plus fat friends who love to eat plus credit cards and 90% of your income to spend on food and travel only packed on the pounds. I looked into the Roux-N-Y for the first time at 22. I was 377lbs at weigh in with a doctor doing the surgery in Celebration, FL. My brother Jeffrey was against me having the surgery because he knew so little about it and he was afraid for me going under the knife. For the first time my brothers expressed love for me...within months of this my brother was brutally murdered. I felt it was a sign from God for a long time that I was not meant to have the surgery.
It's been almost a decade since. I have still continued to view myself as an asexual person, I have somehow found myself taking care of my disabled mother, watching over my baby brother, and taking on the burden of my new nephew, who is not himself a burden but his well being and happiness weighs heavy on my mind. I digress.
I quit Citibank after they began moving me towards selling to elderly or confused people to make a paycheck. I worked at Washington Mutual, my dream job, all the OT I wanted, a position of seniority, and a false calm. The mortgage portion of the company went belly up after 2 years and my eyes were suddenly open to the struggles of the working class my ancestors had struggled through my whole life. A long dormant dream came to mind and caught fire then. I had wanted to be a nurse but my low self confidence and fear of math had stopped me. I felt I owed my baby brother something to look up to though and my mother something to be proud of. I began taking prerequisites for it and signed up for MRC, a metabolic diet plan that cost a fortune but WORKS. I went from 368 to 299. It was the best thing that ever happened to me and I began to feel like a woman again. It gave me the confidence to pull through school and get my current job...then I became sick. Two years ago, I lost my right kidney to the protein overload of the diet I had been on. I don't blame the company, I blame myself. I went hard...too hard.
So that leads up to my current situation. I am back up to 375, all the health problems I had at 22 and this weight are back as well as some new ones now that I am an RN that abuses my body as an occupational hazard AND my diabetes type II has set in. Exercise doesn't seem to work and with my only workout partner I feel like I'm actually hurting myself. My stress is way higher than it was back then with my family looking at me as "the responsible decision maker". My uncle, with whom I had a strained relationship at best because of issues he had with me being biracial, died in a freak accident in February, my aunt was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, and lastly my mother began dialysis. I began to eat again and the weight I had staved off at 320-330 suddenly spun out of control in response. That leads me here, making a decision to drastically change my life.
I want this more than anything right now. I see it as an escape from floor nursing. I see it as a way to be a woman again, not just a counselor, support system, or martyr for her family. I see it as an escape from the health problems that plague my mother, and finally I just see it as freedom. I want this and even more important, I deserve it. This is not a spur of the moment decision but rather a painfully life long destination I am tired of visiting. I leave you with this quote, "If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things." --Albert Einstein
Goal On,
Fat Girl
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