The confetti has stopped falling.
The crowds have cleared out of the stands.
The pep band is packing away their instruments.
There will be major headlines in tomorrow's papers!
Yet I stand here, at center court, sensing that the pinnacle of all the excitement has just been reached. I have just defeated an historic rival, and this is MY moment.
After this, there will only be an occasional line or two written in the newspaper about the day of the "big game."
Someone may stop me in the street every now and then to give me a big high five and a fond elbow chuck to the ribs.
And rarely, conversations might come up where someone remembers this day and asks me to recount how it came about.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’m not sure what exactly it was supposed to be like, but this isn’t it. How could it be that a person can do what seems to be a monumental task, only to find themselves standing at center court in silence? The cheers, the pats on the back, the gasps of delight and the public congratulations were so prolific and so intoxicating while I was losing weight. Everyone seemed to have a kind or encouraging word to say, regardless of the situation. But as the newness of my achievement has worn off, those things have all but trickled to a stop. People have become accustomed to me as “normal” sized. They see me walk down a street or into a room and I’m “just Julie.” I get a normal greeting with none of the additional delight that has been my experience for the past two years.
How can that be? I mean, I’ve just won the big game for the home town team. I’ve just beaten an age old rival. This is what they all wanted for me. I was obese for nearly forty years. I’ve been “normal” for less than one. I’m not used to normal. How in the world can they be used to it?
The truth is that the task of being normal isn’t even over for me. I have to play in that same championship game every single day of my life in order to maintain my weight loss. To all concerned, I have reached maintenance weight. However, my disease of chronic morbid obesity is not cured. The disease is merely in remission. It doesn’t go away just because my weight “looks” normal. The weight loss surgery helps with the battle tremendously and even makes it winnable. But, it will never cure the obesity. I guess maintenance is not the sexy battle. A daily struggle to maintain a weight is not worthy of cheers or atta-boys. It doesn’t make headlines, and unless I mention it, it doesn’t even pop up on other people’s radar screen. Come to think of it, it is an unseen battle much like the battles that are fought by many individuals who are faced with a variety chronic diseases.
My surprise at the silence associated with becoming a normal sized person has a history. There’s a huge build up to weight loss surgery; the research, the evaluation by the bariatric team, the medical tests, the decision to go ahead with the surgery, the pre-op weight loss, attending support group, hearing the stories, asking questions, breaking the news to friends and relatives, clearing the house of contraband, dealing with the pre-op bowel prep, and waking up before dawn on the day of surgery. While at the hospital, the patient is the center of attention. It is all new, it is all exciting. A new era has begun. There is hope that a solution to the chronic morbid obesity with all of its baggage has finally been found. There is also a companion tension which niggles, “what if this doesn’t work for ME?”
The first several months I think I was simply in amazement. I could not believe that it was even possible for weight to come off that fast. I was going through clothing sizes like nobody’s business. I was trying not to shop too much, but it was WAY too much fun. I would tell myself that I was buying things that would fit for several months. HA! I just wanted to look better and better as the weight came off. Each time I saw a friend or a co-worker, especially if there had been an extended period of time between contacts, there were squeals of delight, looks of amazement, and requests for me to share my “secret.” I also found that I was like a born again WLS-er. I wanted to save every obese person in the world.
I became the center of attention on a regular basis; and all I had to do was walk in a room. I was melting into a rather attractive 40-something woman who already had a lot going for her before the weight loss ever happened. I loved turning heads. In the past, the only heads I turned were the ones that either turned away in disgust of my largess or turned to look with a scowl at the enormity of my size. I felt like I was walking on air to get positive attention in relation to my physical appearance. It was a brand new experience for me.
There was this odd sense of power that came along with becoming attractive by society’s standards. I am a tall woman with exceptionally long legs. So, as I became smaller and began to walk with my head up in a confident stride, heads turned; especially those that were of the male persuasion. I smiled and reveled in the ability to make a teensy bit of wave wherever I went. Of course, being the dramatic performer that I am, I never just eased into a room. I made an entrance. Making the wave, no matter how slight, was intoxicating. Feeling so powerful and accepted for the first time in my life made the daily work of becoming thinner and healthier extremely easy to deal with. There were immediate rewards. There was an instant sense of gratification. If I had a brief moment of fear or disappointment about my progress, all I had to do was to walk out my door and into any place where there were people in my small town. I would bump into someone who hadn’t seen me in a while and get “the squeal.” There. I’ve had my fix for the day.
I was not prepared for what would happen when the stadium lights went dim and the crowds grew silent. Somehow I had unconsciously come to believe that being thinner would always be fun. I had the mistaken idea that thin girls were at the center of attention simply because they were thin. I know that I didn’t believe that being thin would solve all of my life’s problems, but I did have some deep seated, unspoken belief that it would be just shy of fabulous.
It’s not. It’s just normal. Compared to the previous two years of my life, it’s actually down-right boring. The high that I have been living on is gone. The days of getting an instant adrenaline and endorphin fix through “the squeal” are past. I’m sure that the dosage tapered gradually, but my awareness of its absence seems to be as if some one did an intervention and made me go cold turkey.
And I still have a battle to fight. I have to play the big game on a daily basis in order to keep the age old rival of morbid obesity at bay. It’s just that the battle is confounded by the fact that it occurs in an empty stadium. There’s no confetti, no pep band, and no roaring crowds. I can ASK the cheerleaders to be there if I really need them. But, I can’t ask them to follow me around twenty-four seven. I would wear them out. This means that one of the toughest parts of normal is that I have to battle my rival without an artificially elevated level of performance enhancing neurotransmitters.
Somehow the foe has to be held at bay for intrinsic reasons… and the premier reason can’t be fear. Fear is an easy substitute for elevating those performance enhancing lovelies that my brain creates. If I stay in a perpetual state of fear that my weight is going to come back, then fight or flight keeps the ole adrenalin pumping. It’s certainly not as fun as the atta-boys, but it works (at least temporarily). I’m not sure how to make the transition from stadiums full of cheering fans to a still, small voice inside of myself as the motivation to continue my daily, boring, mundane attempt to hold the line against a rival that will push back at the first opportunity.
It is tempting to consider artificial means of feeling the high again: Drugs, alcohol, shopping, gambling, sex, anorexia, etc. There are many, many options available; most of them wildly unhealthy. It would be dishonest of me to write this particular chronicle without admitting that I have considered, even tried, to maintain the intoxication through some of these unhealthy, artificial means. Without the crowds and the cheers, the very same emptiness that, in part, fueled my obesity still exists. The surgery did not take that away.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have too much knowledge to allow myself to get away with unhealthiest of stuff for long periods of time. So I move to the healthy side of creating a high. I have tried adventure, natural high type activities such as whitewater rafting, kayaking, roller coasting, snorkeling, and horseback riding. However, the highs of such adventures are short lived. I don’t have the resources nor the time to become a professional dare devil. That’s what it would take to keep me excited and focused without becoming bored with the every day.
The every day. The crux of it is all is this: I don’t deal with normal very well and become restless very easily. I suit up each day, put on my best game face and go to the stadium. I show up only to find myself playing alone. It’s just me and the rival. My rival, morbid obesity, is always there. Occasionally, a few people play along with me, and every now and then there are two or three spectators in the stands. I find myself wanting to go out and round everyone up again… “HEY, EVERYONE… c’mon…. there’s a big game today. Remember? The BIG game. It’s still on. It happens every day. It will be fun… really…. umm… tickets are free…. hellooooo…. anybody? ” I’m left to figure this out. I have to maintain my weight loss and deal with an emptiness that craves to be filled with either food or excitement. So, I’m clueless as to how to do normal, boring and mundane. It seems completely foreign to me to live the every day with an occasional spark of spectacular, rather than the spectacular with an occasional spark of normal. Is it possible that part of the solution is to begin to live my life outside of the stadium?
What? Leave the stadium? But, I just won the big game. There should be more.
