It was bound to happen. I knew I couldn’t have stayed so happy for so long, nobody can, I think 😊.
Mother
Too many unresolved issues apparently. Things l forgot, other things I didn’t think about for decades, everything, and I mean *everything*, is coming back with a vengeance. A tsunami of flashbacks, immediate and sudden, relentless and violently vivid, hit me last Tuesday night. It left me gasping for breath.
Where did it all come from?
The catalytic moment arrived from a question a friend asked: “why?”: I was choosing a new profile picture to use at work, and since l wear alternatively two pairs of glasses l sent out a poll to friends and family asking which pair was more becoming. So a friend, a life/business coach, answered with that question, typical of a coach l imagine. For some reason I answered that l wanted to appear beautiful (this is not me). Obviously l was met with another “why”? That night the tsunami swept me away.
Stress and Sabotage
I’ve been posting for ages about my lack of sleep, 2-3 hours per night, when l was lucky I would sleep 4 hours, with a two hours break during which I’d be going to the kitchen to smoke my brains out. I put it down to the surgery. No tablet would help. After 3 months I also knew l was in the clear for alcohol, so Cosmopolitans here I come. Too many. So many empty calories. The lot is so unhealthy.
Now I can sleep
The day after, the night after, I should say, I reached out to a dear friend. He has this amazing quality of being able to just sit there and listen. 2 hours of facetime, bless him. And the tsunami surfaced: I shared the details, the real bad, shitty ones, one after another after another. The avalanche. He couldn’t believe it, he was in shock. He said that today she would have been put in jail. Nobody ever said that to me before. Ok, I never shared so much before either, as I had forgotten most of it, repressed I think.
That night I slept 8 hours like a baby. The question of lack of sleep was answered, obviously.
Support
I’m spending the evenings now, way more than before, speaking with my closest friends and family. I mention the tsunami, I don’t share the details anymore though, that is so private, so intimate, and so painful. Talking with them is such a comfort. And I can sleep, 6-7 hours! However, this is the time to address it with a professional, without question. Therefore I’m meeting Finian this week. Terrified of reliving those times, but aware that is the only way there is to start processing that shit. I’ll meet him weekly for a while I think. This has to be faced head on.
Dysphagia
For a month now l simply could not eat more than two, three bites of food. Then a knot in my throat, my stomach would close. I could not swallow. Boy l was so worried, as it is a symptom of bad complications due to this surgery. Eventually I reached out to my bariatric team, who asked me to send them a complete (incl. fluids) food diary spanning 4 days. In the meantime, the above was happening. I started to be able to swallow. Not much, mind you, but more than before. Thanks to the diary and therefore the fact I am weighing what’s left on the plate, I know that now lunch is 28gr of toasted bagel and 27gr of houmous. Much better. I’m meeting the team on Wednesday and I’m looking forward to hearing their opinion and advice.
Walking!
In the middle of all of this I am walking like crazy 🎉. I walk over 4km on the weekends, some 2km during the week. Not every day, mind you, or every second day, but I am over the moon. It’s so liberating. My legs have no idea of what hit them: they are being used! 😂😂😂
And… I bought a rain jacket in a normal shop! A UK size 20, down from a size 32 in August last year. In EU sizes that’s a size 58+ down to a 48! Granted, if l zip it up I look like a sausage, but I know that if I give it 5kg it will look alright. At the moment I am wearing it open, of course, who wants to look like a sausage? 😜
All I need now is some waterproof runners and I’m set to exercise even in this “wonderful” June Irish weather. How cool is that?
That’s it for now. It took lumps out of me to write today’s post, but this blog is indeed radically transparent, for better or for worse.
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