Why I'm not showing you photos on my 2 Year Surgiversary!

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who grew up in both the city and in the country. She came from a broken home and moved between both worlds, but she was skinny and pretty and full of innocent joy and life. She loved her siblings and her mom and her grandma and Sunday School summer camp.

But there were a few monsters in her life that repeatedly abused her;  Conditioned her over many years to believe she was a play thing; Encouraged her to be proud of her body and show it off.

The little girl became obsessed with physical looks. She worked hard to be fit and to fit in. She knew that her worth was tied to her physical appearance and sexuality.

But there was a hidden spark inside her. A tiny inside voice that spoke to the little girl telling her that this was all a lie. She began to believe that there was more to life than just the physical. She realized her monsters were wrong. After many attempts at getting the monsters to stop, she realized the futility. So she ran away.

The young teen girl grew up very fast. She was poor and needed money. She got Welfare. She got pregnant. She got depressed. She got used. The little spark of that inside voice disappeared.

And then she got drunk.

For a few years, that little girl fell into an abyss of sweat and beer and shots and sin.  Of dirty ashtrays and hand washing clothes in the sink. Of begging churches for help and finding solace in a bottle. Of men...countless faces in a sea of dizziness, fake laughter and puke. Of balancing dozens of drinks on a barmaid's tray.

One day the men in the bar talked a very drunk woman into giving them a table dance. The young girl begged the woman to go home. She offered her the keys to her upstairs room to hide in and be safe. The woman laughed in her face and refused. She was too drunk and didn't know what she was doing. She even got mad at the young girl for trying to save her.  The young girl fled the scene to avoid watching the rape that would ultimately  happen. A rape that she herself experienced more than once.

The next morning, with only pocket change for coffee, the young girl sat at a booth in the corner street Diner and heard a man mention that a factory on the edge of town was hiring. Suddenly, that little spark of a voice reared up inside and compelled her to walk 5 km to apply. Her beer stained mini skirt and flat dress shoes be damned. Her braless tank top hugging every perky curve, she pushed her shoulders back and decided to be brave, because she had no choice.

The wrinkled little old lady who interviewed her seemed unimpressed. A cigarette hanging from her cracked lipstick coated mouth...she eyed the young girl who had just walked into the personnel office with hard measure. The young girl squirmed uneasily in her wooden chair realizing her physical appearance wasn't going to help her. She felt sudden shame that her hair was a mess and she had no money for deodorant.

The old lady dryly asked her, "Why do you want this job?"

The young girl struggled to find the words...and that little spark of a voice came to her again with a loud insistence. Knowing she had nothing to lose, she blurted out, "Because I need the job and I'm worth it".

The old woman smiled.

For a few years, the young girl grew into a strong, confident woman. Steel toed boots and tight jeans replaced the mini skirt and dress shoes.  Although she despised men, she became a union speaker...a voice, afraid of the male powers that be but determined to conquer them.  She took women empowerment courses and became a fast and powerful worker. She argued and debated with male managers and she started to win. She found her purpose.

Then the young girl fell in love with a co-worker who wasn't like all the rest. Her drinking slowed down. The chip on her shoulder grew smaller.  The defense wall she had built around herself slowly fell down.

The weight of the world on the young girl's shoulders became lighter as the physical weight on her body began to grow. Her professionalism and confidence also grew. She no longer feared men. She no longer felt the need to conquer them.  She felt free  from the physical expectation of looking trim and sexy .

And so the young woman began to enjoy life and eat.

When the factory closed 9 years later, the devastated middle aged woman went back to college as a slightly overweight adult student. She sat in engineering classrooms for a year and got a job as a Quality Assurance lead in a technical support call centre. The strong female client she worked for, eventually promoted her to full Quality Manager of the contract. She had an uncanny ability of knowing what customers wanted and how people should interact with them.

And she continued to eat. Social events became the focus of the young woman's life. She enjoyed finding opportunities to coach and help people (especially young girls) realize their potential.

When the call centre contract ended 9 years later, the upper- middle aged woman was morbidly obese at 361 lbs. Her physical health was wracked with Type 2 Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Joint Pain and Angina. 

Even though the obese woman no longer focused on the physical, and she knew that her worth was found within herself...that little spark of a voice suddenly reared up inside her.

She realized she needed physical help and that she was WORTH IT.

Armed with a lifetime of fear and regrets and worries and uncertainty about losing the weight and going back to the physical trappings of a smaller body, the middle aged woman investigated and learned as much as she could about weight loss. She tried multiple weight loss programs and spent thousands of dollars. Her brief successes were always short lived. Her hair started falling out; her thyroid had quit working; her testosterone and insulin hormones were all out of whack. All her doctor would say is that she had to lose weight.

Then one day, her brother told her about YouTube. She discovered hundreds of people talking about Metabolic Syndrome and Weight Loss Surgery. She spent weeks and months pouring over countless Vlogs and videos showing extreme life-altering weight loss.

That inner voice once again, came through loud and clear.

One year later, on June 16, 2014 the mid-40 year old morbidly obese woman took the plunge and had RNY Gastric Bypass surgery.

Over the first year, she lost 120 lbs.  Over the second year, she lost another 15 lbs for a total of 135 lbs.

Now, at 228 pounds, this 49 year old woman has transformed her physical body back to the degree that it can be - with some expected skin damage and sagging of course. Her health is back on track. She can physically move again. 

Of COURSE I would do this surgery all over again if given the choice!

BUT...

It's difficult to deal with the emotions of it all. I don't like focusing on the physical and I honestly don't always focus on the past.  As most of you from Facebook and YouTube know, I am good at posing, and strutting and putting my shoulders back to find that best possible angle. Many of us have that desire to revel in the glory of our new found healthier bodies. I have no fear or shyness that prevents me from being brazenly bold and confident to a camera. It was bred into me from a very young age.  

And that's exactly WHY I have decided to forgo the visual spectacle that is so common on Surgiversaries.

Instead, what I want to get across more than anything else - on this 2 year anniversary of my weight loss surgery - is that It doesn't matter if you are skinny, fat, sexy, nerdy, slutty, disabled, young, old or otherwise labelled as broken.  Surgery won't fix what's INSIDE you.

I hope that if you take anything at all away from what I have just shared with you today, it's the realization that I have conquered my body but not my demons. Demons don't care what size you are. They aren't men...or gods. Demons are bad memories (conscious AND subconscious) and the real work comes not from conquering them but from making peace with them for the rest of your life.

I will always advocate that this surgery is the best possible tool to reverse obesity. I am not saying you shouldn't want to improve your body. But do it with the realization that reversing  your physical obesity alone will not be enough to keep it reversed.

It's easy to fall into the trap of believing "if only I could have such-and-such, THEN things will be better".  I am here to tell you that's a lie. You can always change your appearance, your clothes, your job, your marital status, your address... in the hopes of bringing about a better life and a happier you. But no matter what outwardly change you make, the real change must come from within.

No matter what physical body you are fighting your demons from, please know that you always have an inner voice that comes to you with advice at pivotal parts of your life. Many people doubt it or ignore it. You can call that voice God, or your conscience or just plain intuition, but whatever that voice is, it isn't physical and it knows what your happiness needs.

It doesn't always suggest the easy way. It sometimes pisses you off and makes you want to drink, or gamble or eat. But if you really want to make peace with your demons, all you have to do is see past those outside physical distractions and listen. 

Cathy Dadson

aka SisterscalebackRNY