my body is not my own

first, a disclaimer: this is not in anyway at all aimed at anyone person, should not be taken personally by anyone, & is not intended to alter anyone's actions or interactions with me. rather, this is simply an observation that is the sum of my experiences post surgery.

my title is very apt because i'm feeling that my body really is not my own lately. i feel that everyone i come across owns a little piece of me except for me. & every morning i wake up & my body is a little different than it was when i went to bed the night before. sometimes it's my weight fluctuating by two or more pounds, sometimes it's that i can't stand cheese when the day before it was all i could eat, sometimes it's that i gag on just plain water, sometimes it's that i feel a new curve or bony bit that wasn't there previously.

of course going into all of this i knew that my body would change rapidly. & at times, like those days where the scale doesn't budge or moves by just one tenth of a pound, i want to stamp my feet & throw a first class temper tantrum because i feel that only eating a total of a cup & a half of food a day i should see some more movement on the scale, damn it. but mostly i just kind of stare at the scale as it ventures downward into numbers i've never seen before & try to feel & see the differences that everyone else says are so blatantly evident.

i'll admit, sometimes when i can't sleep at night, which happens often lately when the rest of the world is deeply sleeping, i'll wonder why i can't see what everyone else can. how can i have lost SO much weight & not feel it somehow? it was suggested to me yesterday that maybe i'm still psychologically fighting the surgery. that even though i had the surgery done that there is something in the dark recesses of my psyche that is making me miserable, making my recovery more difficult, making there be that disconnect between what i see & what the world sees. i would hate for that to be true, but as i've admitted, i really am my own worst enemy. & it probably doesn't help that my mom keeps asking me if i regret it & saying she wishes i had never had surgery at all. that has to fuck a person up, i'm guessing.

but back to feeling that my body is not my own. everyone has those sacred things in their life & the most sacred is your body. it's one of the few things that each person really & truly owns, has domain over, & is completely responsible for. & along with all of that comes the control to hide away & camouflage those flaws that you'd prefer no one else saw, or the things that you want to covet & hold for your own because you want to keep them sacred, or just the things you don't want to share with the world for whatever reason. & in my life lately any, all, & more than that have been fair game it seems.

now i don't blame anyone for being curious. this was a huge thing that i did with my life. it was a huge change physically (first the surgical change of the way my body functions & subsequently the actual change of losing so much weight so rapidly). but at times, it can get a bit much. i'm asked so often how much weight i've lost that the mystery of how much i weigh/weighed is no longer a mystery. i've been asked if i've had sex since the surgery. have i been more gassy since surgery? has my hair started falling out? did i have a catheter during the surgery? have i been constipated? & no, these are not questions asked by doctors but by just random people i know. some people i don't even know well enough to give my blog address to! basically the only things i haven't been asked is what size jeans i'm wearing & how big are my tits.

yeah, it gets to be a bit much. i don't mind answering questions about the surgical procedure, my eating habits, or even how much weight i've lost. but sometimes i really want to wrap myself up in a blanket & curl up & keep somethings safe for my own.