Body Image...

I have long had issues with my body.  While I do not think I have an eating disorder, my eating has definitely been disordered.  And I have struggled with body dysmorphia always.  When I look at myself, I do not see thin, I see myself heavy and flawed.

I have been in therapy for this (and other things) for decades.  And while I think I have developed a more loving feeling about my body, I still see something I do not love reflecting back at me, often.

Like everyone I know, I have a certain area of my body that I focus on.  We all have them.  Places on us that we would rather be different, better, altered.  And I have worked hard as fuck to change this at the gym.  For me, it has always been my stomach.  I have hated it for as long as I can remember.  But if I look at back at photos when I was younger, I do find myself thinking, “it was FINE back then!  What was I so upset about??”  But that feeling and realization only comes with time and aging.  Back then I thought and felt the same way I do now.

I am at a place in my life where I have the power to change it.  I mean I have worked very hard to change what I can on my own.  Several years ago, about 7 years in fact, I went for a consultation for plastic surgery.  I don’t remember what it was going to cost, but it was enough that I was like, “um, I don’t want to spend that on this!”

But I got motivated.  I thought to myself, “ok, you need to do the work first.  If you go to the gym, change your diet and do all the things to improve the look and feel of your body, and you still are not happy, THEN you can have the plastic surgery...but you don’t get to take the short cut.”

Well, fast forward to today.  I have done the work.  I have changed the habits.  I eat clean most of the time, I exercise regularly, I hit the gym five days a week to lift weights.  I have done the work.  I have lost the weight.  I have maintained.  But I am still not happy.  I still hate my stomach.  And now instead of fat, I have skin.  And it makes me unhappy every single day.

So I booked another consult.

And I booked the surgery.

And I am not sure about any of it.  I mean, I felt great about it until my pre-op appointment yesterday.  Then it all became real and I kind of freaked out a bit...

So now I sit in questioning quandary.  What do I want?  What is best for me?  Who am I and will I ever be happy in my own skin?  Does this surgery represent a reclamation and redemption for a long time body war?  Or is this just another form of self abuse?

And, like most things in this life, it is always going to be both and...

Such a personal thing, but also a thing that so many of us suffer with and from.  I know that I will be happier on the other side of the surgery but I also know that I am me and will just find another thing to focus on, another part of me that I am unhappy with...and am I then on the plastic surgery super highway doing my best to thumb my nose at Father Time, that fucking asshole?

I wish I was the person that just loved myself as I am.  And I am the most loving I have ever been to myself so far in my life.  Most days I love me, inside and out.  But then there are those other days where I feel trapped in a body that feels more like a prison than a home.

I have looked at this from every angle and I guess the best I can do is pretty much say what I say about everything in my experience...”this is both a becoming and an unbecoming.  This is healing and this is not healing.”  It is always going to be both/and with me.  I am always going to be growing past my comfort zones and also taking action that is going to deliver me to another place and another me.  Just not always with the results I think I am going to get.

I have done the work in therapy.  I have done the praying and the meditating.  I have done the work to see that the work is always internal.  Nothing I can ever do to my outsides is going to supplant and replace the work I need to do on the inside. Nothing.

Where I land is that I have worked hard for the past seven years to improve my body to the best of my ability and I am never going to get any further without the surgery.  No amount of diet and working out is going to shrink the skin or erase the evidence of aging and child bearing.  I would like to be the woman that can just accept it and move on with her life.  But I’m not.  I am the woman that wants to try to make myself better, so that I can feel just a little more comfortable in my skin.  And that is hard to admit...

So I am sure about the abdominal surgery...I am just not sure about the boobs.  Do I help them out too?  Or do I just do the area that I have always hated and call it good?    Your guess is as good as mine...I am not sure and it is going to have to be a game time decision for me as I process this whole deal.  I have to continue to do the work to get to the bottom of what is driving this and whether this lands more on my becoming or whether it really just qualifies as more self abuse...

The penultimate question Is always: Am I doing this for me? Or am I doing this because of this idea I have about me that isn't tethered to reality? Or is this perhaps the most honest and real I can be at this time? Is this giving up and in or is this growing into a better version of me? I don't know...

Again, still...