My name is Jessica Starkey and I am obese. Most of the people that read this blog know this already. I may, at some point in the future, break the woman code and state how heavy I am but I cannot bring myself to do that right now. Just take my word for it. I show the classic signs. I wear baggy clothing, I tie my hair back everyday, I don't wear makeup and I certainly don't wear a bathing suit on the beach. I bring these things up because my family and I have made a decision.
Let's start at the beginning. I was never really big until I went to college where the thought of eating whatever I wanted was...appealing. I gained more than the freshman 15, let's just say that. I got bigger and bigger until I graduated from college and a day later, my boyfriend promptly dumped me (believe me, he did me a huge favor). I went home and while I was sitting in my own misery, my mother convinced me to go to a weight loss center with her. I was so miserable and depressed I needed to do something. The thought of starting my life over with a new body was intoxicating.
I lost over 100 lbs in 6 months. I lost so quickly that I ended up losing half of my hair but it felt good. It felt SO GOOD to be proud of myself. To be happy when I looked in a mirror. For the first time, I felt I looked pretty. I never realized how much I avoided looking into a mirror but after losing the weight, that's all I wanted to do. I loved going to the clothing store and fitting into smaller and smaller clothing sizes. I felt confidant and radiant around people. From this awesome accomplishment, I met my beautiful husband Mark. He, like many others, was attracted to my confidence.
It turns out that I am a happy eater. I eat when I am happy and diet when I am sad. Weird right? So, through the course of my beautiful marriage and giving birth to two children, I have gained ALL of my weight back. Every.single.pound. I have spiraled into a pit of shame and remorse. I hated myself for letting my body go. I hated myself for not being able to handle running a business, handling two children, maintaining a successful marriage, being a good friend, etc etc. The more I failed, the more I hated myself. My confidence came crashing down and it started to impact my marriage.
You see, I have one of those husbands that loves...LOVES curvy women. Women with meat on their bones. Yeah, I have THAT kind of husband. AWESOME right? So why shouldn't I feel good about myself? Well because no matter how much my husband loves the way I look, if I am not happy with myself then I don't have the self confidence to make anyone else happy. He said to me one day, "If you were just happy and comfortable in your own skin, there would be no issue. I would love the way you look as long as you are confident." I am not confident and I am not happy with my body.
I have learned everything there is to know about losing weight. I know what to do...so why don't I just suck it up and DO IT? RIGHT?? It is literally exhausting to constantly question yourself and be unhappy with your body. Exhausting.
So. My husband and I decided, together, to go learn about the options that were out there for people like me. In the end we decided on Lap Band Surgery. As the NP described it, Lap Band isn't never a fix it and forget it solution. It isn't the end all be all of weight loss. I am still in control of what I eat and if I lose weight. It's just another tool in my arsenal to help me with my journey. This makes sense to me because, looking back, every time I have started down a path of healing and weight loss there has always been a bump in the road. Something that throws me off the track. And when you fall off that fucking horse, it's REALLY hard to get back on. Sounds like an excuse right? Well it is, in a way.
One of the prerequisites of the Lap Band surgery is a psychological evaluation. I thought, "ok I can do this, just another step that needs to be taken." I never, ever thought that I would walk out of that room feeling like someone finally understood what I was going through.
The psychologist was a tiny older woman that never had a fat day in her life. On her desk sat a tiny salad and a protein bar and you just know that's all she has ever eaten. She has never had a weight problem. EVER. I was automatically skeptical because if there is one thing overweight woman are, it's being wary of the skinny bitch that's telling you how to eat. Am I right?
So she and I sat down and started to talk. She first asked me if I was prone to depression. I said yes and told her the medication I was taking. Then she asks me for a family history. Something I had never really considered. I consider myself a bright and intelligent person but I never really considered genetics to be a part of my problem because that's what everyone says as an excuse to be fat. Like it's an excuse to not even try to be healthy. I didn't want to be one of those people but when I told her that both sides of my family are overweight, with heart disease and diabetes she looked sad. She literally said to me, "kinda swimming upstream against the DNA river current, aren't you?" She then asked me a very startling question, "how do you feel when you look in the mirror?" I said, "Well honestly, I kind of avoid it but when I do....I kind of hate myself."
She sighs.
"We need to work on that. We need to work on your image. We need to work on the fact that I see a very bright and lovely woman sitting in front of me. You need to love whatever image you see in the mirror, skinny or fat."
I started to cry.
As women, we really run ourselves through the ringer. Nothing is ever good enough. We can never be pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, happy enough. We are our own worst enemies. Where I see a skinny person who has it all, that person may actually be extremely upset with some other aspect in their lives. As a 32 year old women, I had NEVER considered trying to love myself for who I was. NEVER. Sad, right?
"So what do we do?" I said.
"You have to stop feeling like a failure. Do you think the lap band will fix your weight issues? It won't. It will help, certainly, but this is mostly psychological. You don't deserve the hate you are laying on yourself day in and day out. You are never going to solve your weight problem. It will be a fight until the day you die. It doesn't matter what weight you are, it matters that you just keep fighting. That you are in the fight. That's all. There is no success or failure. There is only trying. Every single person who has weight issues, has a set back. EVERY.SINGLE.ONE. You do not deserve to beat yourself up about this. You just need to start fighting again."
I wanted to hug her...but I didn't. Awkwardness averted.
So I walked out of that office with a bunch of future appointments in my phone, feeling like a new person.
So this is what I ask of you, my loving friends. Please, please support me. I am not doing this to make anyone else feel bad about themselves. The few friends I have are because I love them on an intellectual basis and not because of their appearance. I just ask that you support me. In the past, I admit, I have been extremely judgmental of people who have "chickened out" and gotten Bariatric surgery. I thought, "what? do they not have any will power?" That was unfair and I regret it. Each one of us has our own struggles. As women, we have so much on our plates all the effing time we just need to be there for one another.
I have not always been the nice, nonjudgmental person I would want to be. I still struggle with it so some of this might seen hypocritical. All I ask of my friends is to try to see past that and love me for what I want to become.
I struggled for a little bit to decide if I should tell people about my decision but I want to be honest. I want to share my journey and hopefully inspire others to start loving themselves no matter how they look.
Deep down inside, I will always be self conscious. I will always be the fat chick that hides pain with irony and sarcasm. But I am ready. I am ready to get back into the fight.
Ok that's enough touchy feely emotional crap. Watch out bitches, here I come :)
