Yesterday was my 5th monthly appointment with the Bariatric office.
Attended Life Skills Class? YES Attended Nutrition Class? YES, passed quiz with a 100% Lost required lbs? YES, have lost 22 to date (needed to lose 17) Crafted practice menus? YES Ate and logged only liquids for 3 days? YES Exercising regularly? YES - I'm proud of my fitness ♥ Next month I will attend my last appointment where everything is tied up in a bow and my case will be sent off for insurance acceptance. This is a metric fuckton of work. No, I'm not being dramatic here. The reason it takes so.damn.long is because it should, much to my dismay at times. I am very tired of waiting. Yet a question floats around in my head. Are you serious? Not in a snarky, bitchy way. Just - are you serious? April, are you ready? Most days my subconscious responds with a determined YES. Other days, when I am struggling (not to diet, just to be one with the fact I'm really going to do this) I fold inward and wish this wasn't something I had to deal with. I mean for Pete's sake, aren't there enough irons in the fire right now? The fact remains I have not, in 25 years managed to lose and MAINTAIN a significant amount of weight so I keep going. Also! Yesterday morning my washing machine took it's last breaths. Um...no. We are a family of 4 and create an obscene amount of dirty laundry. So my husband and I ran out and bought a new machine. We loaded it, unloaded it, hauled out the old machine from the basement and put the new one in place. Laundry had been at a standstill, only being done by my more patient half because every single load had to be hand wrung out. Only the necessities were being washed and I had a mountain of less important items to get clean. So over the course of the day, he washed it all and brought up basket after basket after basket of clothing for me. PS> yes...I function on the back end of the laundry train because I'm just anal enough to reject what my family considers "folded". I was folding and sighing deeply. Each person's pile getting higher and higher. Jeff snuck off with the kid's piles in an attempt to make the job seem less daunting. Suddenly, I experienced this strange wave of certainty about a piece of clothing I moved in my closet. I was never, ever going to put that back on my body. Wearing it, even trying it on and rejecting it in the past made me feel like shit about myself. Yet, here it hung. Clothes have a voice and this was saying...."you're not good enough." Bullshit. I took that piece off it's hangar and started a new pile called .... Donate. Grabbed the next item in the closet and thought long and hard. When had I last touched this? Did it make me feel spectacular to wear? The answers was, a damn long time ago and no. The Donate pile began to grow as I made my way through the closet and sets of drawers. See, I have two dressers and a full (small) closet. I know...that's nuts. I sent my children off for a pile of kitchen trash bags and began filling them. I pulled out some special pieces for a friend I knew might want them, but otherwise - be gone. You do not make me feel pretty, or special and frankly at this point I don't even care how much I spent on you. As I made my way through drawers I found set upon set of sexy lingerie. I felt stupid in every single one of them. They represented a time when I was trying to LOOK sexy instead of BE sexy. So honestly....fuck all of that. Into the trash they went. I AM sexy. The end. SEVEN full to nearly bursting kitchen trash bags of clothing, gowns, handbags, and shoes later and I feel light as a feather. I cannot believe how much my wardrobe was weighing me down. As a fat person I equated tons of choices with normalcy. I hung on to clothing for numerous dysfunctional reasons. "It was expensive", "It might fit again someday", "It looked good in the store"....yet all those things did was distract me. They did not help me feel, look, or be better. Twenty two pounds down and 5 months of very regular exercise have me loving and respecting my body in a way I haven't in a long time. Much of the stuff I purged didn't fit well or at all anymore anyway. What's left you ask? How could there possibly be anything left April? Hahaha....there ARE things in my closet, I won't be naked for the next 6 months. The only things left are the things I wear all the time, that I love and make me feel good to wear. I might be down to the very bare minimum which includes some gorgeous gowns and lots of fitness wear and a few in betweens - but I feel utterly freed by knowing what is there and being able to put my hands on all of it. What's weighing you down?
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July 2018
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