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As with many obese people, I've been heavy since I was very young. The earliest pictures I have of myself are from about 2 years old, and I am chubby in all of them. From as far back as my memories go, my weight was a nightmare.
Playing with other kids was torture (I can still hear, "here
comes earthquake Peggy! boom boom boom!"). I was outcast, different,
an object to be picked on. I know that many obese people are able
to fight back with humor or other things, but I could not. |
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I had no sense of self-value and no self-esteem. I learned to walk with my eyes down so as not to make contact with anyone who might take the opportunity to humiliate me because of my weight. One school memory is particularly painful: when the beautiful girl in the group of popular kids that were laughing at me left to come over and put her arms around me and say what they were doing was mean, I believed her compassion. As she gently stroked my hair and told me not to listen to them, she was placing chewed gum all through it so that later that day I would be forced to cut a large portion of it off while the popular kids snickered in seats behind me. All because my body was larger in size than theirs. As the years went by, there were times where I could starve myself into weighing less. Up, down, up, down, went the cycle. But the weight would always come back. Through my 20s and 30s I entered into relationships where I was either used or abused. I never knew anything else but that because I believed that I just wasn't as good as normal-sized people and never would be... I am now 38 and reached the end of my hope – the hope that one day I would be "normal-sized," be appreciated for who I am and all that I have inside to give, be found as a human being with worth and dignity despite my body size, and not have to worry about if I can fit in that plane seat or if I will be able to walk past that group of teenagers in the mall without hearing catcalls after me. But when there is an end to something – even hope – there is often a greater beginning. I stumbled across a website about gastric bypass surgery and singer Carnie Wilson's story at spotlighthealth.com. I had heard something a while ago about her having surgery for obesity but dismissed it as just another celebrity doing something nutty. I was wrong. After viewing the website in great detail, a glimmer of hope has returned. Perhaps weight loss surgery (WLS) can offer me a new start. I have decided to write down this upcoming journey from this start to wherever it takes me. Below is a synopsis of my obesity history, and my Journal tracks month-by-month what I have learned and what decisions I have made about weight loss surgery.
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