The Most Sensitive Subject.

I'll be dealing with the touchiest subject I've got with this post... I'll be revealing everything about it... to hopefully shed some light on things... and to vent some anxieties and stress.

So I just got off the phone with Mama. I'll be going to a pre-op seminar on November 20. The three days of November 18 - 20 will be brutal... on the 18th, I'll get to visit my surgical OB-GYN to get cut (a tiny cut, but cut nonetheless)... on the 20th, I may get a needle in the arm. Dani will be a very stressed, unhappy person during those days. T.T

If I decide to go through with this procedure, we hope to have it done on December 19. Then I'll be in the hospital for two days, and then physically weak for probably two weeks. But after that, everything is supposed to go uphill very quickly.

I've been struggling with this, the most sensitive subject I have, since I was 12: My weight and my body. I've been overweight for most of my life, and it's caused some ugly things. My self-esteem has plunged in the toilet and has yet to come back; I look in the mirror and get depressed; my lungs are forced to work harder than they need to, which causes me to stop breathing sometimes. Whenever anybody brings up the subject of my body, I get defensive and depressed. Most of the times I cry over it once I'm alone.

I've tried all sorts of things to help myself, but to no avail. Both of my parents are heavy, and both are sitting on large body frames. But my frame is small, and I'm carrying too much. My knees give me a lot of pain, as does my back. I'm 20 years old... I shouldn't be in pain like this. If it progresses at the rate it's going, I'll be forced to undergo surgeries for my back and I'll lose my quality of life on a plethora of medicines that will gradully deteriorate my body and mind.

How do I know this? I've watched Mama go down this road. Over the summer, I watched the days where she was medicated and would sit in her chair, babbling to nobody in her medicine-induced hallucinations. It was nothing she could help. I watched her sleep for days on end, in so much pain that she couldn't even get out of bed. I've seen her medications make her sick to her stomach... I've seen her mind deteriorate because of them. Things she used to know are gone from memory. Things she used to remember, she can't.

Her medications caused her to walk around in hazes, then fall down and hurt herself. I returned from a job interview to find her laying on the floor, semi-conscious, babbling. The sight of it was sickening and heartbreaking, and it took everything I had not to cry as I helped her to her chair. She wound up breaking her foot as a result of that fall, and to this day I hold myself accountable. I told myself I needed to wake Shelby up so that somebody was watching Mama, but I didn't bother. They took her to the hospital to get her foot checked out, and I remember sitting back in her chair and just crying. Crying until I "disconnected," to which I stared at the door for an hour.

(If I reach an extreme level of a given emotion -- depression, anger, pain, guilt -- my body goes into a defense mechanism where it, somehow, turns off my feelings. I get very distant, empty, cryptic, and blank, and it can last for days. Normally me speaking in short, cryptic bursts warns somebody that I may be getting to that point. But I'm derailing.)

I don't want to end up that way. I want to chase tornadoes; I want to explore cemeteries and abandoned buildings; I want to travel. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. None of it is about vanity. It's not about looking pretty... it's about regaining the life and self-respect I lost somewhere in my teenaged years. It's about living as long as possible... Mama's side of the family has a "curse" in which all the women have died at the age of 59. I don't want to fall victim to it.

I've been holding all of this in for several weeks, having been spurred to think about it when my sister came out with her announcement about the procedure. I don't like burdening others with my stresses and my life's issues, but at the same time, I know better than to bottle things up. That's what spiraled me into the depression that nearly cost me my life, and I'm not doing it again.

...And there we have it... the touchiest, most sensitive subject about me. The only place on my proverbial body the proverbial shield does not protect.

I'm going to find something to hopefully distract myself from it.