Stages of Isolation

It’s Saturday morning and I’m engaged in my typical weekend routine -  sitting at my kitchen island drinking coffee, surfing Facebook and very much enjoying the absence of any pressure to get in the shower, get dressed and paint my face for public scrutiny. Normally on a Saturday I don’t have an agenda for my day. At least this has been the norm for a few years now. I typically like Saturdays to be as lazy as possible. There are days when staying in my pajamas, especially during the winter months, has been perfectly acceptable. I do my morning thing on my computer, and then move a few steps to the couch and plant myself for hours. Some days it even feels like I’m growing roots. I like to blame it on how tired I am, even though it’s more than likely that I got anywhere from 8 – 10 hours of sleep the night before. Meanwhile my husband is out taking a run, doing the dishes, stacking wood, taking care of the dogs, etc. In other words, I go into a hibernation state while the rest of the world runs circles around me.

Today I actually do have to get myself up, showered and looking presentable. My friend Margaret is having a party at her place, and it starts at noon. (That’s definitely a tell-tale sign I’m hanging out with an older crew today, if there ever was one). There was a time that the sheer mention of a party would send jolts of electric excitement into my body. Historically speaking, I’ve always been a big celebration girl. My philosophy is any reason is a good reason to get together and hang with friends. Laughter, food, drinks  - all in excess? Yes freaking please.

But my mindset has been different lately. I don’t look forward to gatherings as much as I used to. In fact, sometimes I absolutely dread them.

At first, the shift in my attitude was subtle enough that I attributed my lack of desire to be social to being run down from work. Managing a group of nineteen 5 and 6 year olds all day isn’t necessarily rocket science, but it does drain a person. Teaching is an exhausting occupation and anyone who hasn’t spent 7+ hours a day inside a classroom has no idea just how much energy it takes to be “on” all day. Except, being tired was never an excuse not to party before. Something else was definitely different. I realized it wasn’t necessarily the party I wanted to avoid. It was the people -  people I loved and who were my close friends. People I had spent a great deal of time with in my past. It made no sense to me as to why I wouldn’t want to hang out with them now. Why, all of a sudden, did my love of couch and pajamas trump a good time?

Embarrassment. That’s why.

There are many stages I’ve gone through on my journey to weighing 250 pounds. And it’s amazing how each increment of 10 - 15 pounds from 200 on changed how I looked and felt. Not that I was ever ok with being 200 pounds, especially at my height, but that was an adult “low” weight that I was sort of used to and, dare I say, somewhat comfortable living with. As I creeped into the 2-teens, it was scary and uncomfortable, but still, I felt like myself and could “manage” at that weight and felt I had not drifted so far off the mark that I couldn’t find my way back to 200. The 220’s were much harder to accept. New size, new discomfort, new self-image, and not a positive one. The 230’s were of course, even more awful to bear. How the hell did I get here? I was sure this is where I would draw the line. Things are starting to hurt. I can’t believe I allowed myself to get to this point. Lots of anger started to seep in, especially as I went from the lower 230’s to the upper end. Crossing the threshold to 240 was like the worst gut punch you can imagine. My arthritic knees requiring cortisone shots was the last draw. This cannot be happening! Once I hit 244, I raised the white flag, stopped weighing myself, and like an ostrich, paralyzed in fear, stuck my head right in the sand. When I finally was forced to pull my head out at a doctor’s appointment, I was 250 fucking pounds. Ding! Ding! Ding! Highest. Weight. EVER. Lowest. Self-Esteem. EVER.

Do I want to go to this party today? Yes and no. I want to see my old friends, but… I do not want them to see me. Even though I have my plan of action in motion in terms of my surgery, I still am hovering in the upper 240’s which is probably about 30 or more pounds heavier than I was the last time I saw most of them (with the exclusion of Margaret). Will they care that I am fat(ter)? Probably not, and chances are maybe some of them are heavier than when I saw them last too. But I don’t care about that. I only care about my own discomfort with being at a place I never thought I’d be. I don’t want to have to explain that I’m having surgery because that too, is still tough to deal with mentally and although I know it’s the right thing for me, I wish like hell it wasn’t.

What I do know is that I am tired of letting life pass me by. I want couch and pajama days to be a thing of my past (unless we have a snow day – then all bets are off) and I want more active, social fun days in my future. I want to be comfortable in my own skin and stop feeling like the elephant in the room at social gatherings… Literally, I feel like a damn elephant.

This surgery is going to help me get there and I’m so excited for that. In the meantime, I’m going to try to put on my big-girl pants and go out and have fun and laugh, no matter how much my belly rolls jiggle when I do. I have to keep reminding myself that my friends don’t care how I look. They aren’t judging me for the size of my ass, even if I judge myself that way. Although the surgery is months away, I’d like to start trying to live the life I want to have post-surgery, now. Today seems like a good day to start.