The Fear of Failure

I honestly believe that a bit of fear can be a healthy motivator. But, at what point does that fear become a problem?  At what point does the fear invade all your thoughts, take over your rational thought process, and become the norm? I just might be at, or at least rapidly approaching, that point.

My clean eating lifestyle experiment is going really well. I might be more than a bit obsessive, but I feel great and I've dropped another five pounds. I've hit the gym hard and am lifting the "heavy weights", so I like to tell myself that I'd be down a few more pounds but that I'm building solid muscle. (In case you haven't noticed, I like to "tell myself" things quite a bit. I have this amazing/terrible ability to rationalize just about anything. Ask yourself, "WWVD? What would Vera do?" With my irrational ability to rationalize, you can essentially do whatever you want. It's both a blessing and a curse, but mainly a curse. Oops.)

Even with my new healthy habits becoming a lifestyle rather than a diet, I still let the fear of fat and failure drive me to freak out, follow "my rules" too well, binge, purge, hate myself, and do it all over again. I am terrified not only of being fat again, but also of still being fat. I'm scared that I've gone through all this, worked so hard, and that this is as thin as I'll get. I can't consider myself a true success if I'm still fat after gastric bypass. If I'm still fat, just over 180 pounds, how can I not be a failure? I hear everyone ooh and ahh over my "success", but I'm afraid that it's not permanent, that I'm destined to fail...again.

What...is...wrong...with...me? 

At least I've been honest about it, I guess. That should count for something, right? Baby Daddy knows my MO, but I don't think he really knows what to do with me. And honestly, what COULD he really do? So, I just try to do the best I can and not beat myself up because that never gets me anywhere but right back to the beginning of the cycle. 

What do you fear? Does it drive you in a good direction or toward the dark side? I'd love to hear how you deal with it, especially if you know how to beat it. Drop me a line in the comments or at bypassingbulimia@gmail.com and let me know if you have any secret super powers!

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!

Opening Up

INVITATION If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . . If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, For we have some flax golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in! -Shel Silverstein

Come in, come in!  Welcome to a dark little corner of my life. Ok, so maybe it's a little bigger than just a corner. Not quite as big as a guest room, since no one would ever want to stay in here...on purpose, at least. Maybe a den? Either way, it's (slowly) becoming a smaller and smaller space, occupying less of my mind, my time, and my life. As I open the door to the closet and let (most) of the skeletons pour out, I'll open the shades and let in the light so I can see myself a bit better. You, lucky you...you'll get to come along for the ride.  

This blog will chronicle my lifelong battles with food addiction, binge eating, body image, and bulimia. I had roux en y gastric bypass surgery (RNY) on November 29, 2011, naively expecting it to be the supreme road to happiness and weight control, and have lost over 120 pounds so far this year. However, I realized that the old demons had managed to sneak back into my life, manifesting themselves in more and more covert ways. I entered eating disorder treatment in July 2012 and completed six weeks in August. Am I "cured"? Of course not. Am I in a better place than I was? Absolutely.  

The content will definitely not always be pretty, of that I can assure you. But, I promise that I will always present my stories and my ramblings with absolute honesty. My main goal in opening up and putting it all out here is to be able to help those who are walking the same path, since I know I cannot be the only one dealing with disordered eating after weight loss surgery. My surgeon's office claims that most people turn to alcohol or drug addiction as a substitute for food addiction after surgery, but I know disordered eating after surgery has to be way more prevalent than anyone knows or cares to admit. Honestly, you don't get to over 300 pounds and the point of needing your insides rearranged to manage your weight without some form of disordered eating. If you really think about it, the eating plan and way of life after surgery are all about eating disorder behaviors: constant weighing and measuring, restricting carbs, tiny portions, etc. I just hope that I can maybe convince anyone considering surgery to be extremely honest with themselves about the "why" of their problem with obesity BEFORE surgery.  

Even though I was completely open about my history both with my surgeon and at the pre-surgery psychological evaluation, I don't think anyone could have predicted how I would respond to life after surgery. Body image issues, which everyone has, are amplified to an extreme. Sagging, drooping, extra skin, hair loss. Even though the compliments keep coming, the negative thoughts seemed to outnumber them 10:1. Oh, how I wish someone would have forced me into treatment before surgery, if not 15 or so years ago. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. But, if I can help even one person face the facts and get help, sharing my story will be fulfilling and worthwhile. It's not easy to open up, even anonymously, but I need to do this for myself as much as I hope to be able to help someone else.  

So, follow along for all the "fun". I'll let it all out, work on recovery, and continue working on my weight loss to get to a strong and HEALTHY weight.  I'll laugh, I'll cry, I'll bitch and moan. And, I always promise to take it one day at a time.  

It's all I can do.