Muchness and Light

Baby, you cry too much. I'm tired of the sound. You're such a baby.

After a couple of days—weeks, months, I don’t know—of intense “discussion” (as my grandparents would say), Rango has finally said what so many before him have: I’m too much.

I suppose I should clarify that. Initially, it was that it’s not me, per se, who is too much, just my emotions. My overt expression of exactly what I’m feeling at any given time, especially when it’s not in line with how he would feel or express something, or how he thinks best suits me to feel or express it.

And when my expression manifests in ways he doesn’t like or understand, it makes him uncomfortable.

There is absolutely no expectation on his part that I behave in a set, specific way. He just doesn’t understand why I am often so stressed, why I hang on to issues and analyze them into unrecognizable minutiae, and why I am so prone to outbursts of tears when I’m overwhelmed by emotion.

For more than two years, I have done my best to find some full-time/part-time balance of student and employee, plus being a full-time mom. In all but one of the two-dozen classes I’ve taken in that time, I’ve worked for and gotten an A. (Algebra is still the bane of my existence.) My first real job in 15 years is for a prestigious state agency, and it challenges me and engages me constantly. My ex-husband has been out of state for most of that two years, barely in contact with our children and leaving me to care for them while cleaning up his emotional mess—all while berating me bitterly and randomly, usually about money.

I try to explain that I am still trying to learn to stand on my own two feet, and Rango counters that I don’t have to do it all on my own, that I have him.

Without question, he has been a huge support since we started dating. He has been the constant male figure in the boys’ lives, and he has been incredibly supportive of my schooling and work and time with GOAL. He understands fully when I need to take a little time to myself or with the Castration Committee, like I did last weekend.

He doesn’t understand why I berate myself about having gained some of this weight back, about not having time to work out even if I were cleared for weights after a lingering wrist injury from October. Another apparent blown disc is reminding me every day of how far down that slope I have slipped. Seeing pictures from four and five years ago compared to pictures from now is devastating to my ego. My head knows I was living in misery when the skinny girl pictures were taken, and that’s utterly dichotomous to the pictures of me with the Governor or addressing the Georgia Senate.

I should be easy on myself for holding all of this together as well as I have, and I should be nothing but proud of the accomplishments I’ve made. But somewhere in my fucked up head, I am often embarrassed to be me, to see how far I fell down a hole I never wanted to think of again, and to feel the snap! of one tenuous thread and to know how that can bring the whole damn thing crashing down around me.

Even now, while I’m writing, I’m crying. There is just so much that needs to come out.

I’m writing while he and the boys are asleep. I’ll wake them soon to go about our busy day of haircuts and errands and homework and cleaning and cooking and hopefully going out tonight to see a friend’s husband’s band because I was too damn drained last night to do it. I also know I am choosing this time to write because I don’t want him to see me cry. I don’t want him to tell me again that it’s too much.

I also know I choose this forum, because he doesn’t read what I write. Like so many before, he’s not a reader. If I send him something specific, he will read it, but he doesn’t seek out that side of me. Truthfully, that’s part of the reason I haven’t written much in the last year or more. If I couldn’t get the approval of the only person whose approval mattered to me, then why devote the energy there? There was already enough to deflect my attention away; it wasn’t efficient or productive to waste the time and effort.

Except it never was a waste, was it? DH hated that I wrote, and that I wrote away from and about him. Like Absolem and Bounder after, he would tell me I was a good writer, that I should do it, but that I shouldn’t write about things and in ways that made him uncomfortable. I should steer clear of truths that made him feel bad.

It was too much.

Fuck. That.

I feel what I feel. I pull it out and examine it and play with it. I may spin it all around like a Rubik’s cube and put it back in, or I may hang it on a shingle for the world to examine for itself.

But it is mine, and I have my reasons, and absolutely no one ever gets to tell me otherwise. Not if they want to stay.

I struggle, and maybe I’m struggling more and differently than when Rango and I met, over drinks on a holiday weekend when my kids were having rare visitation with their father. But there is a lot more at stake now—logistically and legally and emotionally—and I will never again be content to let anyone else be my sole support. It’s not that I’m unwilling to let anyone else be supportive; I simply will not put myself in any precarious position where I am unable to support myself.

I appreciate that he sees me as beautiful no matter what, that the size of my ass doesn’t tip the scales out of my favor. But if it is the weight of my tears that are too much, I can’t help that. All I can hope is that, in the end, both weigh less than Osiris’ feather.

 

 

 

Maybe I think too much but something's wrong.

Hi.

It's been a while.

This has happened before, where I've been quiet for a while—for far longer than I'd like or intended. This time, though, I haven't been quiet so much as I've just been biting my tongue.

It's been almost six months since I sat down to write for me. Oh, I've been writing, just not for myself. I've written for school—I'm now a senior pursuing a B.A. in Liberal Studies with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. I've written for work—I'm now a full-fledged, employed paralegal for a prestigious state agency. I've written various speeches for speaking engagements around the state—I have three more months to go as GOAL winner.

All of those have kept me very, very busy and feeling very rewarded. I work myself into a tizzy sometimes from the stress. I am striving to be the best possible student and employee and ambassador and mother and partner. It's naturally a lot of pressure, and absolutely no one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I tend to work at a frenetic pace that is exhausting. I am exacting and demanding of myself, sometimes pushing myself to a breaking point. One tiny slip-up, one slight mistake, and it feels like everything comes crashing down around me. For the last few months, Rango has found me more than once in a sobbing, fetal pile in the middle of the bed.

I've often thought out loud that I needed to take the time to come and write. Almost every day, I draft some blog post in my head but never quite get around to getting it onto the screen. There's always something to get in the way—school, work, errands, chores, kids, life.

In reality, it is me that has been getting in my own way.

With so much happening, with so very many demands on my time and energy, I've let some things slide. I finally had to recognize that the house won't be as clean as I would like. Sometimes popcorn and apples make a perfectly acceptable dinner.

There has also been less time to work out. There's been less energy to devote to working out. In taking care of the boys and the house and our world, there's been less effort to take care of me.

With that has come weight.

By no means have I regained all of the lost weight, but it has been slowly creeping up. Queen Frostine has told me for months that I needed to cut myself some slack.

"Look at everything you have going on," she admonished. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

"You're beautiful," Rango tells me every day. "You're not fat."

Before the divorce, before I went back to college and work, I had time to devote to it. I could walk for an hour or two every day before I hit the gym. I could carefully plan and prep meals for a week at a time. And I knew damn well that the weight wouldn't stay gone just because I wished it; I knew I would have to work at it for the rest of my life.

But I didn't, did I?

Tonight, I was trying on ill-fitting clothes, lamenting my spreading thighs. Rango found me crying in the bedroom, again. He told me, again, that I'm beautiful and not fat. He reminded me that I am so much more than my physicality.

In my head, I know he's right. In my head, I know that my worth—whether to other people or to myself—should not come from the size of my ass. But it is hard to make my heart believe that when I'm struggling with clothes that are ill-fitting because I haven't been doing what I should.

And there is shame. There is self-loathing and self-recrimination. Not so much because I'm not a size 8 but because I let this happen, again. Because I built so much of my story and my identity around the self-transformation that came about because of and during the weight loss, and now it feels hypocritical to let that have ever been a part of my story.

Looking for hangers in the closet, I saw a dress hanging and thought, "That's from when I was pretty."

And it doesn't seem fair that I have to choose between being pretty and being smart. It doesn't seem right that anyone, including myself, would put such pressure on me to be a great student and be a great paralegal and be a great ambassador and be a great mom and be a (sometimes) great partner and be as physically perfect as I can muster, given my inherent limitations.

I get it. No one but me is putting that pressure on me.

But that is how I validate my own existence. I strive to exceed expectations, even when it means exceeding every possible and anticipated expectation before I have any clue what they are. Because if I am not perfect, then I am a failure.

Yes, of course, I know how utterly ridiculous this self-imposed craziness is. In so many ways, I am my own albatross.

And so, I have avoided writing for months, sidestepping my fears and evading myself.

But there is catharsis in writing for me. This is the space in which I am most likely to be truly, sometimes brutally, honest with myself. This is how I have worked my head out when my life has felt like it was unraveling. This is where I have found the stones to lay my own path.

So I'm writing again. I'm crying again. But I'm writing.

This is not a passive-aggressive request for encouragement. This is not my wanting someone else to tell me how special I am.

This is Stephanie edging her way back to where she needs to be. This is me finding my voice again, because it is mine and it is valuable.

So I will try to do better, to be more consistent and to be more open, to make the time to take care of myself in the ways that are healthiest and most vital for me.

I've never been fearless. I've been headstrong and dogged but absolutely never fearless in my determination. But they are my fears, and I am determined to face them again.

It's time to reclaim my muchness.

 

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Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

I felt like there was something missing in my day-to-day life.

I bought a new pair of shoes last week.

That, in and of itself, is not newsworthy.  I've tried really hard not to turn Muchness and Light into a journal of my daily activities, though I certainly have revealed more in this forum about my daily life than the average bear might share.  (My blog is my woods sometimes, isn't it?)

But I bought new sneakers.  They're black with teal laces and trim, plus a splash of hot pink—totally unlike the pink and purple that tend to attract me. 

The last time I bought sneakers was almost four years ago.  I'd started walking to feel better, taking the first steps toward what would be a 115 pound weight loss.  Those metallic magenta Nikes have carried me over at least 3,000 miles.  They adorned the major milestones of my last four years, and they were the strange, symbolic foundation for the deep transformations that took place within me.

Three Christmases ago—the last Christmas DH and I were together—I asked for new sneakers.  DH bought me a pair of pink and purple Nike Dual Fusion 2s that I picked out.  They were exactly what I wanted.  Exactly what I told him I wanted. 

Those shoes never fit right.

They were too high at the opening, rubbing uncomfortably against my ankles.  The toe box was cut strangely, and sometimes my pinky toes would go to sleep. 

I never wore them more than a dozen times, always going back to my well-worn metallic magentas. 

Those shoes became strangely symbolic of my marriage.  The ones I bought for myself, that I wore to protect me as I moved again through my life, were comfortable and supportive.  I've never met anyone else who had those same shoes.

The second pair were a gift I picked out—as I always did for gifts for myself.  They were something I asked for that DH gave me when he had a reason, but they were never right.  And I saw them everywhere on other people's feet.

I have been terrible about self-care during the last year-and-a-half.  My 115 pound weight loss is now a net of about 100 pounds.  I haven't been walking, let alone working out, with any kind of regularity.  My life is the boys and the house and work and school.  When I get free time, I am often too exhausted by everything else to even think about going for a lengthy walk. 

I'm not eating well or sleeping well.  I forget to take my medicine—the mandatory thyroid replacement hormone that will keep me functional and alive.  I'm cranky and bitchy from all of the stress that I know is taking a toll on my body, not to mention my mind. 

I am busting my ass right now to get through school and still try to work when I can, plus clean the house and do the laundry and sometimes cut the grass.  Max and Tricky need attention and time and care, and they deserve to have more than what's just leftover at the end of the day. 

So it's me who gets the leftovers.  It's Stephanie who fights with herself to get a little care and attention.  It's Stephanie who gets lost in her own shuffle and then feels like shit because she barely has the time and energy to touch base with the parts of her who fought so damn hard to unearth themselves from the minutiae that was killing her soul.

But if I don't take the time to care for me, I will have nothing left to give, especially to the boys.  I have to constantly remind myself that I am worth my own effort, even if it means I have to put down a textbook or tell a friend no or refuse to answer the phone.  Even if it means I have to drag my exhausted, flabby ass from the couch and put on my shoes and walk.

I put on my new shoes over the weekend and took the boys (also in their new shoes) to the local greenway.  I did three miles, and it felt good.  It felt right.  And my shoes didn't hurt my feet. 

One foot in front of the other.  That's the only way I'm making it out of this.  One step at a time. 

 

I know they're watching, they're watching.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I'm often ignored by men when I go out, perhaps because I'm a bit intimidating.  It was hard for me to understand, even fully aware of my Amazonian brashness. 

The last couple of weeks, I've had some really profound experiences, where I fell back on my grown-ass-womanness and went out, either by myself or with the girls.  It turned out that not all men (or women) were so quick to ignore me. 

It started with a weekend of intense (if private) exploration of the kind I love the most, where I'm able to really delve into whatever has attracted me and seek that deep understanding I so love.  I went out by myself and found that not only was I capable of doing it, I was readily able to find enjoyment in that selfness.  I was utterly in control of my head, my heart, my body, and my choices—and I was quite content in that. 

The Girls

The girls—Hot Pocket, Growler, and Boogie Shoes—came into town this past weekend for what we cheekily named Stripper Weekend. 

Originally, we'd planned to strip wallpaper at my house—with steamers, scrapers, scorers, and the like—though Hot Pocket jokingly suggested we hire some hot, male strippers (or Cupid37) to do it while we watched.  We also talked of going to the Clermont Lounge for disco funk dancing on Saturday night. 

In the end, we saw no actual strippers, though we did get to see a shirtless guy while another guy took his shoe off just for us.  (That was Yahtzee, who was very sweet and brave to play along with the crazy of the inner circle.)  We also laughed and squealed and danced our damn asses off all weekend.   We never stripped a piece of wallpaper, nor did we get to the Clermont.  We did, however, hit Metalsome Live Metal Karaoke, The Basement Theatre, and Johnny's Hideaway. 

I was by no means the only one, but I got a lot of attention this weekend.  Really, almost more than I could stand.  Men and women looked, smiled, talked, asked me to dance or meet their friend, and asked if they could come home with me.  (Don't stare.  Flash the dimple.  Hi, I'm Stephanie.  Dance again already?  No, thank you, I'm with my girls.  No, you may not.)  I got lots of sweet and not-so-subtle compliments, which also meant I gave out my plastic surgeon's name to about a dozen women. 

I even had the never-before-happened experience of a guy picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder, all caveman style.  He's a 30-year-old personal trainer, who I promptly named Cavey, Jr., after Captain Caveman's son. 

I didn't even let DH carry me across the threshold when we got married, because I was so self-conscious about my body and my weight.  Even now, after the weight loss and the surgeries, I am no small thing.  No man has EVER picked me up.

Sass and Cavey, Jr.

Cavey, Jr. was sweet and adorable and very, very cute.  He stayed with our loud, bawdy group all night, even though he knew I had no intention of taking him home.  He asked me repeatedly how I got to be so adorable.  He sang while he danced with me on the crowded floor, all Johnny and Baby style. 

Between the mirrors in the clubs and the pictures on my friends' phones, I could see what other people see.  I could see how my hair and face and body come together now, reflected back in someone else's eyes.  I could really see how my body moved, with its new, flat stomach and surgically-enhanced breasts and the long, strong legs so often encased in the boots I bought myself when I lost 100 pounds. 

I was told many times that I was pretty or hot or beautiful or sexy.  What I could finally understand from an outside perspective, though, was the strength and the confidence in how and where and when it all moved, even when I klutzily elbowed a guy in the jaw or tripped over my own huge feet.  (I can't even begin to explain how I accidentally kicked a guy in the side of the head.)  It didn't matter that I utterly sucked at karaoke—I totally owned what I was doing. 

 

Maybe that is what's both intriguing and intimidating to others, my ability to be me—fearlessly and unapologetically and openly.  I know where I've been and where I am now, with no real idea of where I'm going.  I know who I was and who I am now, and I know who I will continue to strive to be, understanding that it could shift and change as the circumstances of my life unfold. 

In every single mirror and photograph, what I saw looking back every single time was simply Stephanie.

Now I get it. 

At Johnny's Hideaway

I thought I knew exactly what scared me and I would never have to run again.

I am freaking the fuck out. 

I wrote earlier this week about how I was irritable, tired of sitting around doing nothing and worried about the results of this latest surgery.  Some of that abated when I talked to Tiff and cried for half an hour. 

"What if I hate it?" I wailed.  "I was really lucky with the first two surgeries and got these amazing results.  What if my luck runs out and my thighs just look mostly the same after all of this?"

"What if?" Tiff countered.  "What would you do then?"

"Be unhappy?  End up on an episode of Plastic Surgery Disasters or Dr. Phil."

"Your surgeon won't let that happen, Stephanie.  She wants you to be happy with all of this.  She would never let her own reputation be damaged by a thigh lift, especially not the one she did on her very favoritest patient."

As usual, Tiff was right.  (She's a smart person.  Don't you think she'd know if she were wrong?)  Yes, they're still swollen and puffy, and the skin still has to retract after the lipo—which was a horribly violent procedure in its own right, as Mandypants pointed out that afternoon.  It will take weeks for them to heal fully.

And it's not like my surgeon made some quick incision and then sewed me up, just to make me think she did what I wanted.  She removed roughly forty square inches of skin from my thighs, sucked out a bunch of fat, and stitched me back together. 

She knows intimately all of the work that went into changing my body and my health, that led to my finding her for this series of procedures.  Like most plastic surgeons, she's a perfectionist (tinkering with OCD?).  As my nurse said today, my surgeon would die a thousand deaths before she would let me be unhappy with this or feel like it was botched in some way. 

And I have no reason to think it will be messed up.  It's totally irrational.  But I've been freaking out about this surgery much, much more than I did about the others.  In theory, this is the easiest of the three procedures, by far.  It's the longest incisions, but there's no muscle involvement.  It was four hours—less than originally anticipated, which was already planned to be the shortest anyway. 

Last night, I emailed a picture and a video to Tiff, of my thighs.  I was sitting in the recliner, looking at how the skin and fat and muscle spread across the upholstery.  They do look less dimply and saggy, though they also still look thunderous when I'm sitting. 

"That's just thigh, Stephanie," Tiff said to me this morning.  "They just spread when you sit."

"Really?  Everyone's do that?"

"Yes.  Your thighs are perfectly normal and natural.  Watch The Talented Mr. Ripley.  You'll see Gwyneth Paltrow's cellulite.  You'll see.  It's all of us."

Here's the thing: I don't know what normal looks like.  It's not like I was a normal girl who got fat and then normal again.  I've never been skinny.  I have absolutely no frame of reference for what's normal.

I've spent a lot of time looking at other women's bodies, over the last year.  It's not a matter of seeing how I want to look, or what I think I should look like.  It's been about seeing how the human female form is put together.  How does the hip meet the thigh?  How do hip bones look on not-fat women?  How much tummy bulge is average?

So now I'm trying to figure out my own body in that same regard.  Do my hips curve at the "right" place?  Do my breasts hug my ribcage like a regular woman?  Are my hip bones too pokey?

I honestly have no idea.  I can barely compare this body to my last, let alone to another woman's.  I know I'm about a size 8-10 now, but it's almost impossible for me to hold up a piece of clothing and judge if it's an appropriate size, simply by its cut and shape.  Almost invariably, I still pick the too-big one, thinking it's the one that will fit. 

I'm trying to stay calm.  This is the last one, right?  But for some reason, I have been on edge about it for two weeks.  My surgeon and I discussed it while she Sharpied me before going into the OR. 

• Maybe it's because I know it's almost done. 
• Maybe it's because I'm afraid I don't deserve this. 
• Maybe it's because I'm afraid it won't matter, that I'll still never really get it, in my head, that I'm not that same girl anymore. 
• And if I don't have the thighs to hide behind, what is there to keep people and their emotions and their sometimes hurt at bay?    

I hid behind the fat and the food and the sadness of it all for years, to keep people from hurting me again and more.  In the end, I was hurting myself more than almost anyone else ever could.  But if I finally let down that guard, if I'm finally able to just be normal, what then?  Will I get hurt again?  Will something horrible happen that undoes all of the good? 

I don't know, but it's completely possible.  It's as likely as not that some external force inflicts damage on me again, when I least expect it.  Maybe with laws of averages, I've already had my share, but I'm hardly an average girl—it's more than plausible that it could happen. 

And it's not like me to worry about such things.  That's just life, I know, and I usually try not to overact, or to react at all until necessary.  I've done so much work in the last two years, inside and out, that I know I have the tools to handle whatever comes up.  But it's really easy to slip back into the fat girl mindset, and I'm afraid of that.  I'm afraid of being that fat girl again. 

So I'm sitting here now, crying my eyes out, surprised that all of this even came to the surface.  I wasn't sure where I was going when I started writing tonight, but here we are.  Thanks for bearing with me and letting me talk it out.  Thanks for being beside me on this journey.  Maybe next time, I'll let you pick the music. 

 

Having faith is the hardest thing to do.

So it turns out I'm a terrible patient. 

Less than a week after surgery, I'm bored out of my ever-loving mind.  I've spent days cooped up in the recliner, impossibly happy when I was able to move to the bed for a while.  I went for my first post-op visit this morning.  Bandage free, though still covered in surgical tape, I was able to get my first shower in days. 

Really, I shouldn't be so delighted by Dial soap. 

I'm being good—doing everything my surgeon and my nurses said to do and not to do.  I'm also eating anything that comes within five feet of my gullet.  Stress and boredom are the worst possible triggers for a compulsive eater. 

The first few hours in the Perocet coma were kind of enjoyable.  There was a reason to rest and let my mind wander.  But eventually I started to sleep in thirty second spurts, interrupted by two minutes of groggy lucidity that would fall straight away into resumption of the dream I'd just left a few moments before.  For two days, I witnessed both what was going on around me and what was in my head, simultaneously.   All from the padded cell of my recliner. 

I have watched a lot of movies and television.  I couldn't read much, unable to focus on the type and the words.  It feels in part like I've wasted time that could've been used productively on anything else.  But I know my body needed the time to rest and heal from the assault I just paid my surgeon a few thousand dollars to perform. 

I'm still swollen and puffy, and my thighs don't really look any smaller today than they did a week ago.  I know she removed about 600 grams of flesh (just over a pound for the demons, I suppose) in four big patches.  My nurses assure me it will all look different very soon.  But all of those nagging worries and insecurities started to creep in again, around the haze of anesthesia, to taunt me with their whispers of "mistake" and "useless" and "what the hell did you do?"

It's made me gripey and agitated and irritable, to say the least.  Add the boredom and frustration of being still, and I'm a bit of a bear right now.  Special thanks goes to DH and the boys for being so sweet and caring through all of this.  I have wanted for nothing, except maybe a cookie for the fat girl.

Having been through this a couple of times, I know I'll be delighted in a few weeks, completely enthralled by the genius of my plastic surgeon.  Once the swelling subsides and the drain tubes are gone, I'll be ecstatic that I made the choice to do this, again.  But the waiting is killing me. 

I don't wanna have to wear that suit of skin.

I'm a little over a day away from what should be my last plastic surgery procedure, post weight loss.  I'm nervous as hell. 

This part of the journey started a few months ago, when I couldn't stand to look at the loose skin left over from the 115 pound loss.  I chose my surgeon carefully and started the process of what would be three lengthy procedures and recovery.

The first surgery was February 1, 2012.  In about seven hours, my surgeon removed 14+ inches of skin from my belly and hips, tightened up my abs, did some preliminary lipo on my thighs, and liposucked my chin.  The incision runs almost all the way around my body. 

The second surgery was April 25^th.  She removed the bagging skin from under my arms.  The incisions start just above my elbow and run along my inner arms, past my armpits, down just under the edge of my bra.  They're still red and a little raised but are mostly hidden when my arms are down.  She also did a full breast lift and augmentation.  In two years, I went from a 42DD to a 36DDD.  The implants are 90% settled.  Most of those scars have faded already.  And, yes, they look and feel quite natural.  Six hours.

The last procedure will be on August 1^st—six months to the day after the first one.  It's a thigh lift, both inner and outer, with some extra lipo to help sculpt the thighs.  This is expected to last about five hours.  

I'm so damn ready for this. 

It's crazy to see my body now.  When I went for my pre-op appointment last week, I saw the before pictures from my last surgery.  I was shocked.  Seeing the me from just three months before felt like looking at the pastiest National Geographic refugee ever.  It was bizarre to remember how my body felt with the extra baggage.  It already seems like a lifetime ago. 

And the new body isn't perfect.  I didn't expect it to be.  I expected it to be natural and much more representative of how I thought of myself and how I wanted to see myself in the mirror.  There are scars and stretch marks and imperfections, and I'm incredibly pleased with all of it.  I would do it again in a heartbeat—regardless of the pain and the minor complications after. 

What I found through all of this is that I'm strong—much, much stronger than I ever realized or gave myself credit for being.  I knew I could do a lot.  I'm a force of nature, after all.  I've been through a lot of crap in my life, but this has been like none of that.  This was totally voluntary and totally necessary for me.  It has been a blessing of challenges and tests to see what I could do and how I would handle it. 

I don't know what's coming next.  I'm a month away from turning 40, and I intend to enjoy every second of it.  I will go into that next stage of my life with a whole new perception of myself, both inside and out. 

So cross your fingers that all goes well.  I'm back in the hands of my incomparable surgeon and her incredible staff.  And I have a fresh pedicure for the event.

I drop to my knees for a pair of DDs.

At this time a week from now, I'll be coming out of recovery from my second plastic surgery and moving into my overnight room.  It's been less than three months since I had the body lift and some lipo in prep for my third and final surgery in August.  This time, I'm going in for brachioplasty and mastopexy. 

Basically, I'm getting rid of the bat wings and redoing my boobs. 

My elder son said to me a few months ago, "I hear you're gonna get your bat wings cut off."

"I might," I replied.  "That's what I'm planning."

"But how will you fly me to school?" he asked sardonically.

"Don't worry.  I'll still have my broomstick."

"Yeah, you might wanna get that removed, too."

Had he not been laughing as this unfolded, he would not have seen his eleventh birthday.

Every woman I know complains about her bat wings.  Some women call them angel wings, but I find that to be insipid.  But to have that excess skin removed means a very, very lengthy scar, running along the underside of each arm from just above my elbow to below the armpit.  My surgeon will also do a little lipo on the remaining back bulge and tighten that skin.  It'll be nice to not have to wear a back-smoothing bra. 

But the biggest part of this surgery, for me, is the boob job.  It's a lift and augmentation.  They're bringing them higher and making them bigger.  I opted for silicone gel, rather than saline, which goes under the pectoral muscle.  Based on both what my surgical team has told me and on the feedback from women who've had the same type of work, there's a very strong likelihood that my new breasts will look and feel natural. 

One of my nurses offered that, the way the procedure's done, I could even breastfeed again, if I wanted. 

Going through all of this and having another baby would be like buying a really nice car and driving it straight into a lake. 

In the last eighteen months or so, as I lost the 115 pounds, I went from a 42DD to a 36C/D.  I had also breastfed my children for just over a year each.  I was into a G cup when I was fully engorged. 

Needless to say, there's a lot of loose skin. 

I can A) live with it; B) surgically install coin purses between my breasts and armpits; or C) fill 'er up.

I debated just doing the lift, the mastopexy, without the added boobage.  My surgeon reminded me that I'd always been a busty girl—fully into a D cup by the time I was 14—and that just the lift would probably bring me to a B.  Nonononono!  That simply will not do. 

I'm an Amazon, undoubtedly.  I have a very large frame, with big feet and man hands and linebacker shoulders.  And no matter how big I was, I was always the busty blonde.  It's just part of my identity, both as I see myself and as others see me.  I could be loud and bawdy and flirty behind that shield, at once both alluring and obviating.

And breasts are a fascinating thing.  Like all gender-specific organs, they are simultaneously sexual and life-giving.  They are representative of both Madonna and whore, and most women find their confidence somewhere in between.

I decided to maintain that bit of self-assurance and return my breasts to their own happy medium. 

No, I don't know what my new cup size will be.  Implants aren't sized that way.  You have to choose them based on CCs of volume, which is added on to the naturally-occurring structure.  Adding 400 CCs of saline or silicone to an A cup is very different than adding it to a C cup. 

There was a process of literally trying them on, of wearing a stretched-out sports bra and plopping them over my natural breasts.  I've given my surgeon a narrow range of size that's acceptable to me, not too small but not too large.  And I did try on some really big ones, just to see what it would be like.  With the new, smaller waist, I looked like a Barbie doll.  I could tell immediately that clothes wouldn't fit correctly and that they may just be too damn heavy, even with my broad shoulders and strong back.  Worse, they looked and felt cumbersome.  I've already spent years maneuvering around a body that felt too big; I wasn't replacing one annoyance for another. 

So I'll go in next week for another seven hour procedure.  Parts of me will be bigger and parts will be smaller.  It will hurt and require a few weeks of recovery and incision care and scar recovery.  I'm okay with all of that.

A few weeks later, I'll have to go bra shopping.  Again.  But I'll have to remember to carry my purse, 'cause there won't be any extra skin to hold my money. 

 

P.S.

On advice of my OB/GYN, I had a pre-construction mammogram last week.  I'm almost 40, and it was time.  If you or someone you know is due for the test, call now and schedule.  It's really not a big deal, and it just might save your life. 

I feel forever new.

It's been almost three weeks since my surgery—the first of my plastics procedures to remove the excess skin and fat since abandoning the 110 pounds.  The surgery took seven hours, which is the longest I've ever been under anesthesia.  The surgeon performed an extended abdominoplasty, a tummy tuck combined with a bit of a lower body lift.  She also did some lipo on my chin and my thighs, prepping for a medial thigh lift that will come in a few months.  She said there really wasn't much fat to suck out of my thighs, attributing it to all the hard work I'd done over the previous fifteen months.  In total, she took five pounds and fourteen inches of skin, leaving me with an incision that's three inches shy of running completely around my body.

The weirdest part was that I got a new belly button.  It was strange to see it, raw and inflamed, after a week of recovery.  (I was bound in compression garments and bandages, unable to see anything or even shower for the first week afterward.)  It's the same original hole, I guess, with new skin stretched across and through it.  It's a lovely belly button, but it's not mine.

 And I really liked my old one.  It was ridiculously deep—I'd often put a marble in it just for decoration—and quite lovely.  This one will be beautiful once it full heals, but it's strange and foreign to me.  I mean, your belly button is one of the first body parts you make.  Any parent knows it's a big deal when their baby finds their belly button.  It's a sweet, intimate part of a child.  My mom was a little surprised to learn the one she'd given me was gone. 

It's also been strange to be out of the gym for the past three weeks.  I haven't not worked out for so long in months, and I feel the pull to be back.  I'm ready to be moving again.  Hopefully, I'll be released for the treadmill this week, though I know it's another three weeks until I can work with my trainer again.  He expects it to take four-to-six weeks to get back to where I was before the procedure.

There's still a little swelling in my abdomen, and my thighs are still a bit sore from the lipo.  But the swelling gets better every day.  I'll be in these damn compression garments for another three weeks, to help the skin retract and to support the underlying muscles as they heal.  I have a very defined waist now, and my belly is flat.  I don't remember it ever having been so flat in my entire life. 

Yes, the pain during recovery was severe.  I was on heavy narcotics every four hours for days after, and they took their own toll on my system.  Neither of my births was C-sections, so I can't be sure how similar the discomfort was.  I can say that I felt like I'd been in a horrible car wreck, stiff and sore for several days.  Coughing was sheer agony, and I tried to contain it until my pain medication had time to kick in.  I really questioned a couple of days after if I'd done the right thing, if I'd maimed myself horribly.  Two weeks later, seeing the first real results of the surgery, I knew I'd absolutely made the right choice for me. 

Even with the layers of extra garments, my old jeans are a little big in the butt.  I can't buy new ones until I'm fully healed.  Yesterday, I tried on a little blue dress I hadn't worn in a while.  The last time I wore it, I needed a Spanx to help corral Medusa.  Now, it's a bit baggy where the beast used to be. 

About nine years ago, I found grown-up Wonder Woman underoos: a red, tight t-shirt and blue-starred panties.  They were a juniors XL, and there was no hope in Hell of fitting my ass into them.  I loved them, though, and I held onto them, waiting for the day they would fit like I wanted. 

Last night, I pulled them out of my drawer, just to see.  It was good.  I was joyously dancing in front of the bathroom mirror, admiring the expertise of my amazing plastic surgeon.  She told me in recovery that I'd be thrilled with the results, and she was totally right. 

When I was so sick from the medication, I questioned whether or not I was still willing to go on and have the other work done in a few months.  A week later, the answer is a resounding YES!  It's not a perfect body, by any means, but it's starting to look like I think it should, how I picture it when I think of myself. 

I didn't do this for anyone but me, and I'm glad I did.  DH certainly will benefit in his own way from my new body, and he's especially excited about the Wonder Woman panties.  Mostly he's thrilled to see the beginnings of my new self-confidence.  I'm excited, too, knowing one more piece of my puzzle has dropped into place. 

 

Suddenly I see this is what I wanna be.

Tomorrow's the day I go into surgery to have the first round of excess skin and fat removed.  It's a massive abdominoplasty and body lift, plus lipo on my thighs and chin.  I'm planning to go back in six months for a medial thigh lift and brachioplasty. 

As of today, I've lost 110 pounds.  My original goal was 113, and it's doubtful that I'll make that before tomorrow morning.  I'll hit it after, certainly, and that's okay.  I've dropped more than 18% body fat and am now in the middle of a normal range for my age and gender.  I've lost more than 36 inches in my hips, waist, chest, and boobs.  I was a size 24, and now I'm a size 12. 

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I'm no longer hypertensive.  My type 2 diabetes resolved.  My health is substantially better than it was when I began this journey 15 months ago. 

 

My trainer, Evan, and I waited until today to do my final measurements and pull together the before and after pictures for the Wall of Fame at the gym.  I took the digital files to Walgreen's this morning to have them printed, and the guy working there didn't believe it was me in both photos. 

"I thought that was, like, you and some friend.  That's amazing!"

One of the other trainers at the gym said I should blog about it online and inspire other people.

"She is!" Evan chimed in.  (Though I have no delusions about being inspirational to anyone else.)

I had a really hard time searching for a before picture.  Like so many fat people, I didn't like to have my picture taken.  It was usually me with the camera in hand.  The few pictures of me prior to about 80 pounds ago are horrible, and I won't share them with just anyone. 

I could see myself in that girl, but I had to really look for her around the eyes.  She looked unhappy and uncomfortable in her own skin, and I remember feeling that way for years. 

Now, I'm pretty comfortable at this size.  I'm still working out and careful about what I eat.  I'll have to be vigilant for the rest of my life.  But it's when I see myself naked that I'm most distressed.  The excess skin and lingering fat isn't there when I picture myself.  I don't see the sags and bags when I envision the real Me. 

So I'm starting the process to bring that image out of my mind's eye and into my mirror.  I won't have a swimsuit model body.  I will still have stretch marks and cellulite and imperfections.  I will have huge scars from the incisions.  But the bags are so much baggage, of trauma and heartache and self-loathing, and I'm making an exchange for scars that are permanent signs of healing.  I'm making a choice to be done with that part of my past and myself and to move on.

The surgery is lengthy, and the recovery will be painful and long.  When my pre-op nurse assured me they'll be weighing and measuring everything for my medical record, I joked, "Eighteen inches, four pounds, three ounces!"

In some ways, it is like birthing another baby.  It took time and effort to get her here, and I'm cutting her from (almost literally) my loins.  I may have been a pretty baby and pretty little girl, but she started to grow into something hideous and ugly, born from trauma and miscare.  I've decided to name her Medusa.  And like Perseus, I'm taking my mirrored shield and killing that fucking monster. 

I'll be out of commission for a couple of weeks.  I'll check in when I can, especially on my Facebook page.  Wish me well and say a little prayer—if you're the praying kind.  If you're not, have a drink for me, 'cause it'll be a while. 

When this is all over, I'm getting BIG GIRL new panties—black, with the words scripted in purple rhinestones.  'Cause I totally deserve them.