Body Image

While self-esteem and confidence have never been my strong suits, I do a fairly decent job of pretending. Shockingly, I've even had several people tell me over the years that they were intimidated by me, particularly before really getting to know me. I find this absolutely preposterous, mainly because I have never been sure of myself, never felt good enough. Apparently, I am a much better actress than I thought.

So much of my idea of self-worth is wrapped up into my body image that it's almost hard to distinguish between the two, even now. I have never been happy with my body...or myself. Never. I remember going to a pool party in third grade and feeling absolutely disgusting, hating myself and not wanting to go. Being slightly bigger than many of my classmates never helped matters. When I say "slightly" and look back, I can honestly say that I do mean only slightly. I wasn't obese or even really all that overweight, but I wasn't perfect and thin. From then on, before I was even 10 years old, I knew that I hated myself. I knew that how I looked directly correlated to how people thought of me, how they treated me, and ultimately, how I treated myself.  

I've said this a million times over the years, but I would give anything to be as "fat" as I thought I was in high school. I see pictures of myself then and my heart hurts for the pretty blond girl who hated herself so much and could see only flaws. It breaks for the girl who thought her only redeeming quality was a huge pair of boobs and believed that she could use them to her advantage to find "love". My heart shatters into a million pieces when I think of the girl who pretended to be so cool, more one of the boys than a bitchy girlfriend. I thought that being the good-time girl was the ticket to love. Ha. That got me absolutely nothing but use and abuse.  I read Gone Girl earlier this summer and   Gillian Flynn hit the nail on the head with this one:  

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes and burping, plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang-bang while somehow maintaining a size 2 because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don't mind. I'm the Cool Girl'. Men actually think this girl exists...” ― Gillian Flynn

That was me. I was Cool Girl. The drugs, the booze, the sex. Always a Cool Girl, never a girlfriend. The Cool Girl image morphed out of my own self-hatred, which I know after many a therapy session over the years. I honestly thought that was the only way to love and attention. What I wouldn't give to go back and be able to save myself. Yes, I had a lot of fun. I had enough fun for myself, for you, for your best friends, and your entire graduating class. I don't remember much of it, to be honest.  Much of it has been blocked from my memory entirely. I can't even count all of my "conquests", and frankly, I don't honestly think I'd want to know. SHAME.  

I only felt attractive when someone wanted to sleep with me. It was approval.  It told me that my body wasn't freakishly awful, that I wasn't enormous, and that someone thought I was "OK". My standards were pretty much nonexistent, likely because I thought so little of myself. I shudder to think about my life from 16 to about 22.  

Right before bypass, I had given up. I was morbidly obese and absolutely disgusting. I hated myself, but in a different way than I did when I was younger. I didn't even hate myself that much during and after pregnancy. Now, after bypass, I hate myself in yet another way. It's funny how things change, yet the theme remains exactly the same, huh?  

My boobs have deflated completely and now look like two huge empty, wrinkly scrotums on my chest. I was a J while nursing my daughter and am now down to a DD, if that tells you anything. My nipples point to the floor and there is no evidence of the Cool Girl I once was, at least not there.  

My enormously fat stomach has become a sagging apron/skort of excess skin and fat. It hangs, it flops if I try to move too quickly, and I absolutely detest it. Looking in the mirror is pure torture. I dream of just cutting it off. I could probably wear pants that were four sizes smaller if it would just go away.

That sagging mass of nastiness ends right at the top of my flabby thighs, adding insult to injury.  God only knows what sort of lift can be done to fix that mess.  

My face is so thin now that I could swear my already large nose has grown, even though my rational mind knows that it's probably only because my nose was dwarfed by the size of my bowling ball head. Looking at pictures from a little over a year ago, it looks like my face was going to explode. So, now I'm not only thinking about a breast lift with implants, a tummy tuck and skin removal, and whatever can be done about my thighs, I guess I'll need to add the Ashlee Simpson treatment for my nose.  

Don't get me wrong. I've lost over 120 pounds and I am THRILLED with that success. I love being more mobile, having more energy, and having a little more confidence. I love the compliments. I love seeing the numbers on the scale continue to fall. I love having more than two stores to choose from when shopping for clothes. But, I just can't be happy.  It's not enough for me. I've only swapped one set of body image issues for another. Will I be happy with myself after plastic surgery? I like to think I will be, but I know myself well enough to know that I probably won't ever be happy. Do I even have it in me to be happy?

Issue #5,347 to work on:  Figuring out how to be at least OK-ish with what I have to work with.  

Any thoughts and suggestions on how to deal with this, apart from continuing in therapy, are more than welcomed and will be very much appreciated!