Weighty Matters

Before I launch into the post, I wanted to say that I’ve tried to reply to the comments Skye and Anonymous left on the last post Terminology.  WordPress has not cooperated.   So, Anonymous, thank you for the different perspective on use of the word “thick” and that it might not be meant in a derogatory fashion.  Skye, it’s good for us all to remember that thin people can be picked on or insulted too with different terminology.  Thank you!

So, this could be a TMI type of post.  My skin sag is really noticeable in some parts of my body — upper arms and my thighs to be exact.  Sure, I see it in my stomach region, but most of the time I can cover up that area.   I’m sure my butt cheeks are probably sagging, too, but that problem is behind me.  😉  Out of sight, out of mind, you know?

Living here in the land of warmth, 10 1/2 months of the year I wear shorts and capri length pants.  I purposely stay away from short shorts so, thankfully, I’m probably the person most aware of the epidermal bagginess.  My arms are more difficult to conceal, particularly in Ladies tops.  I’m okay in a unisex T-shirt but I’ve discovered that the sleeves of Ladies garments are definitely shorter.  I’ve started to look for things with 3/4 length sleeves to cover the problem.

I don’t even know if other people truly notice.  It’s enough that I now do.  Without stressing myself out too much, I am always aware of the areas and want to camouflage them.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not complaining, or at least not much.  All in all, saggy skin because of tremendous weight loss is a great problem to endure.

I know eventually I will have reconstructive surgery.  This always brings up sort of a macabre thought of the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs who wants to harvest skin from size 14 young women so he can make himself a skin suit.   Anybody who wants my excess can have it — providing, of course, that they don’t try to slice it off of me themselves but leave it up to a skilled surgeon in a sterile operating room while I’m under anesthesia.

Sooner or later I’m going to research the actual procedure or procedures.   Think anybody’s put one up on YouTube yet?  Come to think of it, I only want to know the results and not the cut by stitch, cut by stitch  process to tighten and remove the sagging bags.  I’ve heard that I can donate the skin to help burn victims.  Need to check out whether that’s true.  I’d do it in a heartbeat.  After all, i don’t need it anymore, so if it can aid someone else, so much the better.

What I really want to know is how soon I can undergo the operation(s).   I’ve heard that I need to wait for a full year after I reach goal weight.  (Okay, at this point I honestly do need to indulge in a slight whine.  A whole year?)  I read somewhere else that a surgeon won’t do it until I’ve been at goal weight at least three months.  That’s a little less whine-inducing timeline.)

I get why I’ll have to wait for at least some number of months.  I’m sure that medical staff will want me to demonstrate that I can keep off the weight that I’ve lost or at least give me some time to stabilize in maintenance.  I suppose the best thing for me to do is not obsess over it at this point but accept that I won’t hit goal weight one day and be able to schedule surgery for the next.

Unfortunately, I also don’t think that all of the problems will be address in a single procedure.  That sort of stinks.  Despite the possible elevated pain, I’d rather do as much as possible under one anesthesia experience.

Okay, I am beginning to obsess.  This isn’t good.  Instead, I’m going to do some constructive thinking and planning.  I’ll seek out reliable information.  I have a follow up with my surgeon in a couple of weeks, I’ll just ask.  If it truly is a year’s wait, then I’ll rely on the Serenity Prayer to accept what I can’t change.  That’s much more sensible than creating upset and drama, right?

I’m a little fixated on terminology.  A few posts ago, I got hung up on the word “normal”.  A couple of days ago, I read an article where someone, I can’t remember who at the moment, referred to a woman who isn’t pencil-thin as “thick”.

Soooo, is that some new, 2013 term for women?  If so, oh hell, even if it isn’t and it was a one-time thing, it sucks.  Thick?  Really?

For the record, it is only ever acceptable to use thick to describe one part of me — my hair.  Not my thighs.  Not my waist.  Not either cheek of my ass.

It used to be if you referred to someone as “thick”, you meant “thick-headed” as in stupid and stubborn.  If I say I’m being thick today, it means that my brain is not firing all synapses and I feel mentally cloudy — like a thick fog has seeped into my mind.

My reaction with the word thick in relation to body shape or weight tells me there’s more going on here.  Maybe it comes from a childhood of being called unflattering and downright cruel things because I was overweight.   Tubbo, lard, Crisco, fatso.  None of them bring about the warm fuzzies.  I think I mentioned before that a classmate in high school used to yell out, “Thar she blows” whenever he saw me on campus, even if I was yards away.  I think he might have particularly enjoyed it when I was yards away, probably because he got to yell it louder to call more peoples’ attention to his oh-so-witty name-calling.

I won’t get into why some people think it’s okay to insult people because of their body size.  Maybe those people don’t spend much time pondering whether anything they do is okay.  Perhaps they just don’t care.

Right now, I’m trying to think of complimentary words to describe women who might not wear a single digit dress size.

No, I don’t have anything against women who wear sizes 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8, although I reserve the right to wonder how there can be a size 0.  Doesn’t the zero sort of negate the reality of there being a size?  But I digress.

Back to the terminology?  No matter what I eventually weigh, I’m always going to be curvy.  Curvy doesn’t offend me.  Neither does voluptuous.  My mother introduced me to the word zaftig, which can be defined as full-bodied, well-proportioned, shapely, alluring plump/curvaceous/buxom.  I like zaftig.  It’s sort of exotic.

It’s also so much better than thick.

Do you have any words that buzz you — either positively or negatively?  How would you like to be described?  How would you describe yourself?

As I was mindlessly playing Bejeweled Blitz a few minutes ago, I realized that I was procrastinating on writing this post.  I’ve had something bugging around in my brain and I wasn’t sure what to think about it or how to put it into words.  I was going to log offline, shut down the computer and go to bed, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the thoughts would follow me and make it more difficult for me to sleep.  I decided to come here and just write, trusting that the words and ideas would come if I opened up the door.

In OA. in group we used to regularly talk about use of the word normal, how because of our size we frequently felt abnormal.  Let’s face it.  To many others in the world, we who are overweight aren’t normal — not in their eyes.  Much of society has images in their minds and we don’t fit that image.  To temper the negativity associated with the term, some of us often used the phrase that, “Normal is just a setting on the washing machine” to kind of temper the negativity.

It’s hard not to feel like a freak when you’re more than 200 pounds overweight.  I imagine it’s difficult to not feel somewhat freakish no matter who much overweight you might be, so trust me I’m not discounting someone else’s experience.  Right now I can only relate from my own reality.   It really sucked, to be honest.  That constant feeling of being and looking so different; of standing out in a crowd for a wrong reason.   Knowing or anticipating how others viewed us made issues of self-acceptance that much more challenging.  I yearned to be considered “normal”.

I don’t know what it means to have a “normal” body.  God knows there are conflicting ideas of that in our world.  You can’t trust magazines where images of beautiful, already slender models and other celebrities are airbrushed away from reality.

I avoid using the word normal whenever possible.  I speak of my goal in that term.  I don’t want to be a “normal” weight.  Honestly, I have no idea what that means.  I want to be a healthy weight.  That I understand and it’s all I really care about.

Although I am still overweight, I’m not super obese.  I’m closer to what many people would describe as “normal” body size.  Here’s where my own insights need to be strong because, bottom lining it, I don’t need to focus on the perceptions of others.   It only matters how I feel about myself, my body, my appearance.

I feel so much better about myself at this weight.  Even though I still have a good chunk to lose, I don’t feel like a freak any more.  Physically and emotionally, I’m all around healthier.   That matters more to me than fitting some preconceived notion – either my own or that of others – about being “normal”.