Resolutions

Tis the season of new beginnings. There is an aura of hope in the air. Expectation for something new, shiny and exciting. This is the time when we shake off all the dust and grime from the year before and anxiously step into a new year with hopes of it being the best year yet. This is the time for resolutions, promises and goals. Lose weight, stop smoking, do more for yourself, spend more time with your family … you know the drill. January 1st comes around, and we lay down the cookies, or the cigarettes or whatever the vice is. We may even take the clothes hanging on the treadmill and throw them aside and give that bad boy a whirl. January 6th comes – we hit up McDonalds – maybe buy that pack of Marlboro’s – stating stress, this or that as the reason. By February, January’s hopes are nothing but distant memories.

I can’t help but think how this year will be different for me. Stop smoking? Already did. Lose weight? I’d say 94lbs in 13 weeks is pretty damn good. Check. All of the generic cookie cutter resolutions don’t seem to fit into my plans this year. This year is unlike any other.

I think to my past eating habits, try to remember what it was like to be trapped inside a 409lb cocoon. I remember things like eating in secret. I’d go to Taco Bell and order $15 worth of taco-y goodness – but only through the drive through. Then I’d pull over and eat a little, chuck the wrappers in the trash – then bring the then half empty bag into wherever I was going, so it seemed as if I only ordered 2 or 3 items – instead of the 5 or 6 I actually did. I remember going to restaurants and feeling like all eyes were on the fat guy. I couldn’t help but feel like there was some policy to notify the kitchen when I’d arrive, “All hands on deck! Fatty McFattigan is in the building!!!” I remember what it was to be shamed. To feel unworthy as those who were fit and skinny. I know what it is to feel like I don’t belong somewhere because I was morbidly obese.

I watch now, from the other side, the people like me. The secret eaters, the shameful scarfers, the ones trapped behind layers of tissue – just SCREAMING to get out, but they can’t find their way.

My very existence post op – my fitness – my weight, is for them to see. Look at what I was. Look at what I am. Look at what I will become. YOU TOO can do this. I’m half tempted to glue a sign to my ass ‘Ask me how I lost a whole person off my midsection!!’

What is my New Years Resolution? To love myself. To learn to love this thinning, sagging, HEALTHY heap that I have become. Learn to love every piece of skin – no matter the level of sag. My resolution is to love myself in such a way that has people noticing – and coming to ask ‘How’d you do it?’ My resolution is to save even one life this year by professing the wonders of this tool. My resolution is to be a living and breathing example of what a second chance at life is all about.

Stop smoking? Lose weight? Surface resolutions. We’re changing lives over here.