Muchness and Light

And if love is real, maybe I'm just too bad to remember how good it feels. My heart is still.

One of the things I like about the Internal Family Systems model is that it doesn’t pathologize any of the subpersonalities. Even when their behaviors are seemingly destructive, their dysfunction serves a greater purpose, at least in their minds. Their actions and reactions serve to protect the Exiles, to prevent further harm from coming to the already damaged parts of the psyche.

When I am hurt or sad, and usually in response to infliction of hurt by someone else (and usually a romantic partner), one of my subpersonalities will fling terrible thoughts and words at me.

You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re gross. You’re stupid. You are unlovable, and no one loves you. You aren’t worthy of love and don’t deserve good things. You are a waste.

Now, logically, I understand those things may not be true. But why the hell would part of me continually tell other parts of me that I’m a waste of human flesh?

For a while, I wasn’t even sure who she was. I thought it might be Stephie, but she’s more likely to inflict her anger on others, not on me. And this one’s voice is no one else’s. It’s not my mother’s or my father’s. It doesn’t belong to any number of exes. It is a strangely-pitched, younger, strange version of my own voice. She knows how to inflect dripping sarcasm, spitting hatefully at me when I’m in the worst of the throes of pain. And just when I can’t take more, she hits with a final sucker punch, spinning me deep into tears and frustration.

She’s Harley.

Yes, it’s an easy moniker. And if she does her job well, she can get Quinn to act out, to seek out comfort in dark places.

And all of this to protect some Exile.

But what’s her purpose? I’m already hurting like hell; what good does it to do to inflict more, albeit different, pain?

Well, my first reaction to hurt and sadness is to close it down, to wall it off where it can’t reach me. Rango complained more than once that I would turn icy when hurt and angry. I can become very mechanical and refuse to feel emotion, let alone express it.

And that’s what she does: Harley forces me to feel something, anything that keeps me from returning to a dissociative state of numbness.

I spent the first ten years of my sons’ lives in that space. Struggling to find value both within myself and reflected from my husband, I shut down. My anxiety after giving birth to Max was so great that I started a low-dose SSR. It stopped the anxiety and kept me in the center, so I stayed on it until I couldn’t bear not feeling anymore. While the wild swings from joy to sorrow were abated, I generally felt nothing. When I got nothing in return, I became frustrated, and Quinn stepped in to give me some semblance of meaning again.

But because I am drawn to emotionally-unavailable men, Harley does what she can to keep me from becoming an avoidant myself. Given the last few years and recent relationship troubles, I get the appeal of shutting everyone and everything out. I get how it can seem beneficial to artificially limit what you’re willing to feel for another person, who well might break your heart. There is safety in walling yourself off from the Great Outdoors.

But I’m also a firm believer that love matters. It matters when we feel deep, caring emotion for another person, no matter the context. I don’t mean infatuation or attraction or simple affection. I mean the kind of love in which we are willing to sacrifice to help them reach their next goal. The kind of love that is so simple and pure that it expects to be cared for in return, simply because that is its nature.

It is unimaginable to me to walk away from that. It makes no sense to me that the people who’ve said they loved me could then walk away, could turn their backs on the thing they need most, which I just happen to be willing to give in droves. It’s nonsensical to have what you want most, what is good and healthy and true, right in front of you and to drop it carelessly on the ground on your way out the door.

So, the hurt for me comes from both the act of abandonment, whether physical or emotional, and the injustice of the leaving. And emotional abandonment is a very large part of the hurt for me. Hiding deep inside is a little girl who felt abandoned. Every time she felt it was safe to come out, trust someone enough to hold their outstretched hand and hope for love, she was let down again, over and over. She continually learned that she wasn’t worth loving, because people who love you stay and support you and care for you. They sacrifice for you, and no one sacrificed for her. She was, at times, a sacrificial lamb of sorts.

So, when the same wounds are reopened, Harley steps in to keep me from shutting down entirely. She steels me for an onslaught of disappointment and confusion. If I can already feel badly about myself, the abandonment makes sense. If they leave, it is because I am unlovable, so it shouldn’t be so hurtful or saddening. Even if what I feel is disgustful pain, that’s still better than feeling nothing at all.

While I know the things she says to me aren’t always true, there is, of course a nugget of truth to everything she says. I regained weight. I became complacent about my health. I can see myself aging both in photographs and in the mirror. I am emotionally difficult, hence my return to therapy. And even when those faults seem natural and overblown in my mind, there are long stretches of time in which I’m unable to find more good than bad, unable to value myself as more than my faults.

Pandy and I had a wonderful Saturday recently. I took her to see my beloved Afghan Whigs for the first time. Even though I’d just seen them in Atlanta a few weeks before, I traveled to Birmingham for what turned out to be the best Whigs show I’ve ever seen.

 

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A few days later, she messaged me and asked me to look at the photographs she had taken of me that night. She asked me to see what she sees, what she was trying to capture, “joy, or strength, or tenacity reflected in you.”

You are exquisitely beautiful. I know you seldom feel the woman I see, but that doesn’t mean you are any less the one I see. Sometimes friends see us more clearly than we see ourselves. Those are the times we need to redirect our focus, and look with kinder eyes; look at yourself for a moment as I do. See yourself in my photographs of you, and imagine what I was trying to capture. I see beauty. I see sass. I see strength. I see might. In short I see a very real version of Wonder Woman. She is a woman I love, admire, and appreciate. She is you.

I looked at her photographs. I can see what it is that she sees, why those moments capture those qualities of the woman in the photographs. What I don’t see, is myself. I don’t connect to those women in those pictures. I don’t feel attached to or protective of them. I don’t feel that their beauty and strength and sass is my own. Because if I feel those things about myself, it will open the door to hurt. It will allow for the possibility of disappointment.

But no matter what I do, no matter how far I get from my own center, Pandy is there. She is with me through thick and thin, through skinny and fat, through aging and heartache and wonder. I love her, and she loves me. I know this. I feel it every day, even if I don’t talk to her. Even when I’ve been at my worst, she stayed and supported me and loved me anyway, even if it meant telling me truths I didn’t want to hear.

Sometimes Harley argues with Pandy. Sometimes she rolls her eyes and just lets her talk. But every so often, she stays still and lets me feel the love that comes from this woman who has no desire to ever abandon me.

Somehow, that is progress.

 

 

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.

Last week, I had this awkward moment of running into an ex (read: very brief fling) in an unexpected public place. We didn’t speak—just eye contact and awkward silence. The next morning, Facebook Memories reminded me that it was three years ago that day that the fling had happened. The next day (and for the next two) Facebook reminded me that it was a major milestone anniversary with a different ex, tossing pictures of Vodka-soaked memories at me like Molotov cocktails. Somewhere in the midst of that, yet another ex made his presence known.

The Parade of Ghosts has begun.

This time of year marks the beginning of a couple of months of incredibly difficult anniversaries, from multiple relationships. Some days are reminders of more than one relationship—sometimes more than two—and the memories are not always kind. Yes, it is reminders of the hurt from other people, but it is also riddled with reminders of the choices I made and their lasting impact.

But I’m also riddled with reminders of who I was, of the transformation that occurred over the course of two years. I am plagued by pictures of myself from those times, and then I see myself now.

And I weep.

I know. In the last three years, I finalized my divorced, worked three part-time jobs (and then no part-time job) while going to school full time, while finishing one degree and continuing to finish another, while now working full-time and schooling part-time, while winning a huge award, while establishing a new relationship, and while raising two sons with very little help from their absentee father.

And it turned out my body was revolting but I didn’t know it, hence the extreme fatigue and hormonal issues and weight gain. Followed by an injury that has kept me out of the gym since October and that culminated in surgery last week.

Reasons not excuses.

In my heart, I feel like a fucking fraud.

None of the other stuff matters, because I got fat again. Because I regained part of the weight I spent three hours a day, for fifteen months, fighting off. When I was a stay-at-home mom who had to rely on a distant and emotionally-inconsistent husband for everything.

So right now, I’m fighting not just the ghosts of my exes and my former life, I’m battling the ghosts of myself, and they are bitches.

They are snarky and blond, with thinner thighs and less sag and a tighter ass. They are unapologetic for their choices, even now when it’s me who has to face their implications. They remind me that they warned me, that I wrote openly about how I couldn’t relinquish control of my food and weight for the rest of my life, how exactly this would happen. (I told you so!)

How maybe if I hadn’t made some of those choices along the way, I wouldn’t be in this emotional predicament.

So for all of my talk then—hell, even this talk now!—who the hell am I to tell myself or anyone else anything??

In so many ways, it feels like I’m back in the summer of 2010, in chronic pain and uncomfortable in my own skin, struggling to keep the house and the kids together and still give Stephanie time to breathe and enjoy the things that make her soul feel not dead. Not even alive. Just not dead.

I have come to accept that things are often outside my control. Really, I’m good with that. This doesn’t even feel unmanageable, just unmanaged.

So I take a deep breath—I don’t have the luxury to get real high—and try to make the mental list of what needs to be done. I tally projects and plans and intentions and expectations in an ongoing psychic To Do list, and then I am overwhelmed by it all and I just want to crawl in my bed and go to sleep.

But I can’t. There’s too damn much to do.

And even if I could sleep, my goddamn ghosts are there, just waiting.

It’s like my own production of No Exit starring Stephanie as Garcin, Inez, and Estelle simultaneously.

Existential crisis, indeed.

Today, I have no swarthy internet wisdom. I have no words of encouragement or really anything else. I can’t find the out, not yet. I know I will eventually scratch my way through the dark, along the dank wall, and claw my way out if that’s what it takes. But there’s no door opening today.

Those most I’m getting today is dirty fingernails.

 

Maybe I think too much but something's wrong.

Hi.

It's been a while.

This has happened before, where I've been quiet for a while—for far longer than I'd like or intended. This time, though, I haven't been quiet so much as I've just been biting my tongue.

It's been almost six months since I sat down to write for me. Oh, I've been writing, just not for myself. I've written for school—I'm now a senior pursuing a B.A. in Liberal Studies with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. I've written for work—I'm now a full-fledged, employed paralegal for a prestigious state agency. I've written various speeches for speaking engagements around the state—I have three more months to go as GOAL winner.

All of those have kept me very, very busy and feeling very rewarded. I work myself into a tizzy sometimes from the stress. I am striving to be the best possible student and employee and ambassador and mother and partner. It's naturally a lot of pressure, and absolutely no one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I tend to work at a frenetic pace that is exhausting. I am exacting and demanding of myself, sometimes pushing myself to a breaking point. One tiny slip-up, one slight mistake, and it feels like everything comes crashing down around me. For the last few months, Rango has found me more than once in a sobbing, fetal pile in the middle of the bed.

I've often thought out loud that I needed to take the time to come and write. Almost every day, I draft some blog post in my head but never quite get around to getting it onto the screen. There's always something to get in the way—school, work, errands, chores, kids, life.

In reality, it is me that has been getting in my own way.

With so much happening, with so very many demands on my time and energy, I've let some things slide. I finally had to recognize that the house won't be as clean as I would like. Sometimes popcorn and apples make a perfectly acceptable dinner.

There has also been less time to work out. There's been less energy to devote to working out. In taking care of the boys and the house and our world, there's been less effort to take care of me.

With that has come weight.

By no means have I regained all of the lost weight, but it has been slowly creeping up. Queen Frostine has told me for months that I needed to cut myself some slack.

"Look at everything you have going on," she admonished. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

"You're beautiful," Rango tells me every day. "You're not fat."

Before the divorce, before I went back to college and work, I had time to devote to it. I could walk for an hour or two every day before I hit the gym. I could carefully plan and prep meals for a week at a time. And I knew damn well that the weight wouldn't stay gone just because I wished it; I knew I would have to work at it for the rest of my life.

But I didn't, did I?

Tonight, I was trying on ill-fitting clothes, lamenting my spreading thighs. Rango found me crying in the bedroom, again. He told me, again, that I'm beautiful and not fat. He reminded me that I am so much more than my physicality.

In my head, I know he's right. In my head, I know that my worth—whether to other people or to myself—should not come from the size of my ass. But it is hard to make my heart believe that when I'm struggling with clothes that are ill-fitting because I haven't been doing what I should.

And there is shame. There is self-loathing and self-recrimination. Not so much because I'm not a size 8 but because I let this happen, again. Because I built so much of my story and my identity around the self-transformation that came about because of and during the weight loss, and now it feels hypocritical to let that have ever been a part of my story.

Looking for hangers in the closet, I saw a dress hanging and thought, "That's from when I was pretty."

And it doesn't seem fair that I have to choose between being pretty and being smart. It doesn't seem right that anyone, including myself, would put such pressure on me to be a great student and be a great paralegal and be a great ambassador and be a great mom and be a (sometimes) great partner and be as physically perfect as I can muster, given my inherent limitations.

I get it. No one but me is putting that pressure on me.

But that is how I validate my own existence. I strive to exceed expectations, even when it means exceeding every possible and anticipated expectation before I have any clue what they are. Because if I am not perfect, then I am a failure.

Yes, of course, I know how utterly ridiculous this self-imposed craziness is. In so many ways, I am my own albatross.

And so, I have avoided writing for months, sidestepping my fears and evading myself.

But there is catharsis in writing for me. This is the space in which I am most likely to be truly, sometimes brutally, honest with myself. This is how I have worked my head out when my life has felt like it was unraveling. This is where I have found the stones to lay my own path.

So I'm writing again. I'm crying again. But I'm writing.

This is not a passive-aggressive request for encouragement. This is not my wanting someone else to tell me how special I am.

This is Stephanie edging her way back to where she needs to be. This is me finding my voice again, because it is mine and it is valuable.

So I will try to do better, to be more consistent and to be more open, to make the time to take care of myself in the ways that are healthiest and most vital for me.

I've never been fearless. I've been headstrong and dogged but absolutely never fearless in my determination. But they are my fears, and I am determined to face them again.

It's time to reclaim my muchness.

 

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Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

For all of us girls who don't fit in, I say go Amazonian.

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is an intro to Sociology.  In this past week's chapter on social interaction, there was an explanation of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical analysis, in which Goffman equates social interaction to theatrical performance.

From Wikipedia:

In dramaturgical sociology it is argued that the elements of human interactions are dependent upon time, place, and audience.  In other words, to Goffman, the self is a sense of who one is, a dramatic effect emerging from the immediate scene being presented.  Goffman forms a theatrical metaphor in defining the method in which one human being presents itself to another based on cultural values, norms, and expectations.  Performances can have disruptions (actors are aware of such), but most are successful.  The goal of this presentation of self is acceptance from the audience through carefully conducted performance.  If the actor succeeds, the audience will view the actor as he or she wants to be viewed.

The text for this class, Society: The Basics, goes through several pages of explaining the perspective and then addresses the ideology in terms of gender as a "central element in personal performances".

Demeanor

Demeanor... is a clue to social power.  Because women generally occupy positions of less power, demeanor is a gender issue as well.  40 percent of all working women in the United States hold secretarial or service jobs under the direct control of supervisors who are usually men.  Women, then, learn to craft their personal performances more carefully than men and defer to men more often in everyday interaction.

Use of Space

Power plays a key role here; the more power you have, the more space you use.  Men typically command more space than women, whether pacing back and forth before an audience or casually stretching out on a bench.  Our culture has traditionally measured femininity by how little space women occupy—the standard of "daintiness"—and masculinity by how much territory a man controls—the standard of "turf".

Just about everywhere, men (with their greater social power) often intrude into women's personal space.  If a woman moves into a man's personal space, however, he is likely to take it as a sign of sexual interest.

Staring, Smiling, and Touching

In conversations, women hold eye contact more than men.  When men stare at women, they are claiming social dominance and defining women as sexual objects.

Although it often shows pleasure, smiling can also be a sign of trying to please someone or of submission.  In a male-dominated world, it is not surprising that women smile more than men.

Touching suggests intimacy and caring.  Apart from close relationships, however, touching is generally something men do to women.  [several examples given]  The intent of the touching may be harmless and may bring little response, but it amounts to a subtle ritual by which men claim dominance over women.

I say all the time that I'm not like other girls.  According to this analysis, I am a man. 

In my glamazonianness, I take up far more space than most women.  Even after the weight loss, I'm still a 5'11, curvy size 10/12.  Hell, I'm larger than a lot of men I know.  Now that I'm considered a "normal" size, I'm still often uncomfortable when I see myself compared to other women, including my female friends whom I tower over and dwarf, physically.

I complain all the time that men seem intimidated by me and that it's a special breed who has the balls to actually approach me and invade my personal space—usually the ones who are letting me know all too blatantly that they want to fuck me. 

I stare at people all the time, though that has a strange connotation.  I'm not staring with the intent to ogle anyone; I am often regarding and watching them to see who and what they are.  People fascinate me—the way they move and act as souls but also the structure of different human bodies.  I tend to compare female form more than male, but I also have this theory about there being a certain number of combinations of physical attributes that work together to make people attractive, kind of like my own, screwy Beauty Ideal. 

I do smile a lot if I'm comfortable—it comes with the raucous laughter.  But in social situations, especially if I'm alone or somewhere unfamiliar, I tend to lock my jaw and look bored as I stare ahead of me.  I don't tend to give other people any noticeable attention until I decide it's time.  (That's not to say I'm not paying attention—never make that assumption.)  And when I do pay attention to people, I am a very touchy girl.  I make a lot of small contacts, in the midst of huge hand gestures, when I'm talking with someone. 

Obviously I don't really think I'm a man in ewe's clothing.  Hot Pocket and I decided ages ago that we were each men in past lives but that I didn't really enjoy it while she probably did.  I am intensely feminine, almost to the point of contradiction at times.

What I am, as I realized finally last summer, is a very alpha female.  It may present in a non-traditional way (off-off-Broadway), but it is part of my role, of the persona I constantly craft and refine as I present it to other people in my day-to-day interactions.  Interestingly, when I find myself faced by a more dominant male, I often slouch and become quieter in some subconscious attempt to take up less of their space in deference.

In some ways, especially by modern America's statistical and cultural standards, I am a perfectly normal woman—41, divorced, mother of two, middle class.  In other ways, I am larger than life, sometimes quite literally.  From my perspective, though, I am perfectly normal, which is good since this is the only way I know how to be.

 

Pretty little girl, let your sweet thing sway.

I woke up a couple of days ago to a deep, painful, burgeoning zit... right above my eyebrows in the middle of my forehead. 

"I think my inner 17-year-old is about to burst through my third-eye chakra," I said to my therapist.

She looked at me pointedly.  "You might be right.  I think there's something there you need to explore."

We delved into my past, again, and talked about what was happening with me at that time, specifically about my sexual abuse, my teen sexuality, and my body image.  We talked for a while about what had been happening in my life the last couple of weeks—update on my divorce, update on Bounder, update on my adventures with the girls. 

"The more you're talking about this, the redder that's getting," she said gently.  "I really think you need to spend some time journaling or blogging about it.  You need to listen to what she has to say."

I've spent some time talking to her, the 17-year-old Stephanie, about what was bothering her then and what's bothering her now.  It doesn't feel like she's in control of my life, and she feels pretty calm and collected when she's looking through my eyes, but there's definitely some advice only she can provide. She knows nothing of having children or taking care of an adult life.  Her insights have to do with boys.  

Dating in my teens was non-traditional, as it was for most of my friends.  Our high school was small, and our circle of friends was sometimes smaller.  When I was interested in someone and they were interested back, it was almost always someone I already knew.  Our circle would shift to include that other person or the changing relationship, and we just hung out.  I never once had the pick-me-up-at-my-house-for-a-date experience with someone I hadn't already slept with. 

In the late 80s, that Stephanie was dealing with a lot of the things I wrote about in Persona Non Grata.  She had been raped at 16, was delving into a physically- and emotionally-abusive relationship with a dipshit, and she was a fat girl.  She never felt worth much, except when she was sexually precocious. 

Flaunting my sexuality in rebellion of my past, I'd found comfort in the back seats of cars and the dark corners of parks—places that didn't require me to be naked.  That didn't mean I wasn't constantly self-conscious about hiding my numerous physical flaws. 

[Tierney to Tessa] "Look, even at my fattest I knew I was a great fuck.  Maybe it was because of that.  I learned early on to work my body and use my sexuality to my advantage before anyone else could use it to theirs."

Maybe more importantly, she never really felt pretty.  She could see the pretty on the surface sometimes, but there was almost nothing there to give that insecure girl any kind of external encouragement or reinforcement that 1) she was indeed pretty, or 2) that it didn't matter because she was inherently worth more than that.

While I can quietly argue with that Stephanie that her beauty never came from how she looked, there is still something in every teenage girl that wants to know that she's physically appealing to other people.  Even on a biological level, physical beauty often plays a role in the attraction of potential sexual partners for procreation.  Feeling attractive to another person—whether physically, emotionally, or intellectually—bolsters your self-confidence, no matter how unvain or centered you are.  For a fat teenage girl who felt emotionally dismissed, abandoned, or even neglected for much of her life, having someone else see her as lovely could make or break her self-image and her self-worth at any given time. 

While I don't really remember feeling pretty until the last couple of years, I also don't remember being told I was beautiful until just over a year ago.  If I heard those words from my family or an ex-boyfriend or even my ex-husband before I lost the weight, it's not in my immediate recollection.  In fact, I told Bounder that he was the first non-stranger man to ever say those words to me without prompting or ulterior motive. 

"Well then I consider that to be both privilege and honor," he replied, a little surprised. 

As hard as this is for me to write, I've been able to see myself as pretty for the first time in recent weeks.  There had always been moments (no matter how fleeting or rare) when I would think I looked good or sexy or whatever, but it's when I'm most plainly me—no makeup, hair down, utterly comfortable in myself—that I can see it most clearly.  Seeing my attractiveness for myself, and saying it out loud, feels precariously comfortable.  It seems vain and arrogant to both think it and to say it; to put it in writing in such a public way feels shameful and likely to open me to attack. 

Within that realization, though, is the understanding of how and why my 17-year-old lighted under the attention of men.  With all of my issues of feeling dismissed or ignored, to garner even a little affection from an outsider was astonishing and felt desperately needed.  If it was received, reciprocity seemed mandatory, even if that ultimately led to unhealthy sexual and emotional couplings.  And if the attention was withdrawn, it could feel like the end of the world and that I was ultimately worth nothing. 

Uncharacteristically quietly, she has been reminding me of late that my sexuality is not all of who I am.  Because a man flirts with me or tells me I'm beautiful or hot or whatever, I am not worth more or less; my value as a sexual being is not determined by others.  I have the right and the responsibility to myself to say only thank you and to move on.  I am not required to be actively accepting of attention.  I am allowed to ignore it or decline it, just as I am allowed to encourage it if it's something I want. 

She's reminding me that I am in charge of my body and my heart, to accept the truth of me just the way I expect others to accept it.  She's also reminding me that I can say no and that having sex on my terms, being in charge of when and where and how and with whom, doesn't have to be retaliatory toward the past.  There's no need for my choices to bring me to a place of power; it's about finding healthy balance between attraction and desire and choice, coming to the place of sexual coupling on even terms with my partner and with myself.  With her. 

So now the zit is almost gone.  There's just a red mark that will fade completely in a few days.  (It sits, in fact, just below the forehead wrinkle that came with the weight loss and the stress and 40.)  But even now, no make-up and hair in a clip and in some slouchy clothes, I don't care.  I don't choose to ignore the mar; it just doesn't matter.  It doesn't change my beauty, inside or out. 

More importantly, that Stephanie sees it, too.

I know they're watching, they're watching.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I'm often ignored by men when I go out, perhaps because I'm a bit intimidating.  It was hard for me to understand, even fully aware of my Amazonian brashness. 

The last couple of weeks, I've had some really profound experiences, where I fell back on my grown-ass-womanness and went out, either by myself or with the girls.  It turned out that not all men (or women) were so quick to ignore me. 

It started with a weekend of intense (if private) exploration of the kind I love the most, where I'm able to really delve into whatever has attracted me and seek that deep understanding I so love.  I went out by myself and found that not only was I capable of doing it, I was readily able to find enjoyment in that selfness.  I was utterly in control of my head, my heart, my body, and my choices—and I was quite content in that. 

The Girls

The girls—Hot Pocket, Growler, and Boogie Shoes—came into town this past weekend for what we cheekily named Stripper Weekend. 

Originally, we'd planned to strip wallpaper at my house—with steamers, scrapers, scorers, and the like—though Hot Pocket jokingly suggested we hire some hot, male strippers (or Cupid37) to do it while we watched.  We also talked of going to the Clermont Lounge for disco funk dancing on Saturday night. 

In the end, we saw no actual strippers, though we did get to see a shirtless guy while another guy took his shoe off just for us.  (That was Yahtzee, who was very sweet and brave to play along with the crazy of the inner circle.)  We also laughed and squealed and danced our damn asses off all weekend.   We never stripped a piece of wallpaper, nor did we get to the Clermont.  We did, however, hit Metalsome Live Metal Karaoke, The Basement Theatre, and Johnny's Hideaway. 

I was by no means the only one, but I got a lot of attention this weekend.  Really, almost more than I could stand.  Men and women looked, smiled, talked, asked me to dance or meet their friend, and asked if they could come home with me.  (Don't stare.  Flash the dimple.  Hi, I'm Stephanie.  Dance again already?  No, thank you, I'm with my girls.  No, you may not.)  I got lots of sweet and not-so-subtle compliments, which also meant I gave out my plastic surgeon's name to about a dozen women. 

I even had the never-before-happened experience of a guy picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder, all caveman style.  He's a 30-year-old personal trainer, who I promptly named Cavey, Jr., after Captain Caveman's son. 

I didn't even let DH carry me across the threshold when we got married, because I was so self-conscious about my body and my weight.  Even now, after the weight loss and the surgeries, I am no small thing.  No man has EVER picked me up.

Sass and Cavey, Jr.

Cavey, Jr. was sweet and adorable and very, very cute.  He stayed with our loud, bawdy group all night, even though he knew I had no intention of taking him home.  He asked me repeatedly how I got to be so adorable.  He sang while he danced with me on the crowded floor, all Johnny and Baby style. 

Between the mirrors in the clubs and the pictures on my friends' phones, I could see what other people see.  I could see how my hair and face and body come together now, reflected back in someone else's eyes.  I could really see how my body moved, with its new, flat stomach and surgically-enhanced breasts and the long, strong legs so often encased in the boots I bought myself when I lost 100 pounds. 

I was told many times that I was pretty or hot or beautiful or sexy.  What I could finally understand from an outside perspective, though, was the strength and the confidence in how and where and when it all moved, even when I klutzily elbowed a guy in the jaw or tripped over my own huge feet.  (I can't even begin to explain how I accidentally kicked a guy in the side of the head.)  It didn't matter that I utterly sucked at karaoke—I totally owned what I was doing. 

 

Maybe that is what's both intriguing and intimidating to others, my ability to be me—fearlessly and unapologetically and openly.  I know where I've been and where I am now, with no real idea of where I'm going.  I know who I was and who I am now, and I know who I will continue to strive to be, understanding that it could shift and change as the circumstances of my life unfold. 

In every single mirror and photograph, what I saw looking back every single time was simply Stephanie.

Now I get it. 

At Johnny's Hideaway

Shut your dirty, dirty mouth.

Like most people, I've had a lot of teachers in my life.  Two, in particular, really stand out in my mind.

The first one I'll discuss, who actually came second into my educational life, was a philosophy professor at UAH.  Craig Hanks.  On the advice of a friend, I took his Ethics class.  I learned a lot—even though I didn't always do the work.  When it came time to do a presentation on an ethical dilemma, somehow I thought it was a good idea to do a paper on the ethics of S&M lifestyle, given that S&M was (is?) still categorized as a mental illness in the DSM-R.  Ultimately I read the paper to the class... but only because he wouldn't let me present the video montage I felt best illustrated my position.  (Innuendo not intentional, though it makes me laugh.)

Honestly, Craig Hanks was just sexy.  There was no getting around it.  He was only a little older than his students, articulate and gently-spoken even when excited.  And he had these piercing eyes that looked straight into your soul the entire time he spoke with you.  It was unnerving but completely riveting.  More impressive, though, was his hair.  Long, dark curls that were always pulled back into a ponytail, until the last day of class when he would unleash them.  I think he had to know that his students—both male and female, alike—would be distracted by that gorgeous hair.  With those eyes and that hair, he looked like Eddie Vedder and Chris Isaak's love child, in the absolute best way possible. 

Before him, though, there was a teacher in high school, Jean Burnett.  I had Mrs. Burnett for 10^th-grade English Literature, then again the next year for AP Lit.  I also had her for two years for Creative Writing.  I was the assistant editor my junior year, and editor my senior, of the school's literary magazine, Counterpane. 

It was a collection of student-produced poems and short stories and drawings and photographs.  At the time, we all thought it was great.  I can remember being so pleased at how many students we'd gotten to contribute that last year, how I'd actually left the next year's editor with money in the account to start the year.  I had a dozen or so poems as a senior—and not just because I was the editor. 

Now, of course, when I go back and read it, it's mostly bad teen angst and convoluted ramblings.  (I know this surprises you.)  I can remember many mornings in first period with Mrs. Burnett (assuming that I hadn't skipped class), sharing pieces for potential inclusion in that year's edition of Counterpane.  She was always very patient, politely stressing the use of constructive critique.  She was incredibly adept at steering heated discussions about whether or not So-and-so's poem was crap.

Originally I had intended two release two versions of Persona Non Grata simultaneously: one that was sexual but tame, and the other that was fully pornographic. 

"Look," Absolem said to me, "women love sex and women love music.  If you write the book where they get to bang the rock star, you'll sell a million copies."

When it came time to revise again and begin the sexualization of the story, I had to write the porn first, intending to go back and cull the tamer version from the graphic one.  As I sent drafts to the inner circle, even the prudest of my readers said the sex was cogent: 

"All the sex, surprisingly, was good for me!  I feel like that gets across even more clearly the emotional states of the characters, no veil, nothing hidden.  It's just all there, all laid out.  I think you will get your characters' thought process out there better with all the explicit stuff.  Nothing held back.  Yes, the sex was exciting to read, which makes it better for the reader!"

"I blush easily, but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it just the same."

"Hot damn!"

Their feedback was good, but I still questioned whether or not it was too much. 

And then, I heard Jean Burnett's voice in my head, twenty-five years later, asking me whether or not it was gratuitous. 

"Does this make sense for these characters?  Does it fit this story?" I heard her ask patiently. 

Yes, it does.

So the sex is there, but this is not a sex book.  This is not erotica.  (I know.  I've written plenty of that and will likely do it again for another Junkture book.)  But this is a story about a grown woman who is in love with two men, married to one and having a torrid affair with the other.  She is awakening in her life and rediscovering her body.  Sex is integral to her process of transformation. 

I went back to erotic works I loved: Anne Rice's Belinda and Exit to Eden.  Both books are full of beautiful passages and descriptions non-traditional sex, but those acts are part of larger love stories.  That was what I wanted to do. 

I looked at what Anais Nin and Pauline Reage had done, though the English translations could never do their works justice.  I looked at Fifty Shades of Grey and knew Tierney would never use a phrase like "his considerable length".  (And I still argue that Anne Rice's Sleeping beauty trilogy is the seminal work of love in the guise of S&M.  Fuck E. L. James.)

So Tierney and I embraced her bawdy potty mouth and went for it.  As one of the readers said, "Tierney would totally say cock and pussy.  It's just who she is." 

"Does this make sense for these characters?  Does it fit this story?" 

Yes, it does.

Persona Non Grata: A Story of Junkture is graphic.  It is steamy and sometimes raunchy in ways that are exploratory for the adults in this story.  They're wiser and more adventurous than any 20-year-old would be, and they are comfortable in their explorations.  And those are exactly the kind of readers I hope will read this book.

For all of those reasons, Jean Burnett is the dedication for my first novel.  I always said the first one would be for her, and there's no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice.  I had the distinct pleasure a couple of weeks ago of speaking with her by phone and thanking her for her guidance and influence, even all these years later.  I sent her a signed copy of the book, giving her fair warning of the content, and I hope to hear from her soon with her own constructive critique. 

I promise not to drop an f-bomb when I talk to her again, even if it does fit my character. 

And if anyone talks to Craig Hanks, let him know I have a signed copy for him, too.

I thought I knew exactly what scared me and I would never have to run again.

I am freaking the fuck out. 

I wrote earlier this week about how I was irritable, tired of sitting around doing nothing and worried about the results of this latest surgery.  Some of that abated when I talked to Tiff and cried for half an hour. 

"What if I hate it?" I wailed.  "I was really lucky with the first two surgeries and got these amazing results.  What if my luck runs out and my thighs just look mostly the same after all of this?"

"What if?" Tiff countered.  "What would you do then?"

"Be unhappy?  End up on an episode of Plastic Surgery Disasters or Dr. Phil."

"Your surgeon won't let that happen, Stephanie.  She wants you to be happy with all of this.  She would never let her own reputation be damaged by a thigh lift, especially not the one she did on her very favoritest patient."

As usual, Tiff was right.  (She's a smart person.  Don't you think she'd know if she were wrong?)  Yes, they're still swollen and puffy, and the skin still has to retract after the lipo—which was a horribly violent procedure in its own right, as Mandypants pointed out that afternoon.  It will take weeks for them to heal fully.

And it's not like my surgeon made some quick incision and then sewed me up, just to make me think she did what I wanted.  She removed roughly forty square inches of skin from my thighs, sucked out a bunch of fat, and stitched me back together. 

She knows intimately all of the work that went into changing my body and my health, that led to my finding her for this series of procedures.  Like most plastic surgeons, she's a perfectionist (tinkering with OCD?).  As my nurse said today, my surgeon would die a thousand deaths before she would let me be unhappy with this or feel like it was botched in some way. 

And I have no reason to think it will be messed up.  It's totally irrational.  But I've been freaking out about this surgery much, much more than I did about the others.  In theory, this is the easiest of the three procedures, by far.  It's the longest incisions, but there's no muscle involvement.  It was four hours—less than originally anticipated, which was already planned to be the shortest anyway. 

Last night, I emailed a picture and a video to Tiff, of my thighs.  I was sitting in the recliner, looking at how the skin and fat and muscle spread across the upholstery.  They do look less dimply and saggy, though they also still look thunderous when I'm sitting. 

"That's just thigh, Stephanie," Tiff said to me this morning.  "They just spread when you sit."

"Really?  Everyone's do that?"

"Yes.  Your thighs are perfectly normal and natural.  Watch The Talented Mr. Ripley.  You'll see Gwyneth Paltrow's cellulite.  You'll see.  It's all of us."

Here's the thing: I don't know what normal looks like.  It's not like I was a normal girl who got fat and then normal again.  I've never been skinny.  I have absolutely no frame of reference for what's normal.

I've spent a lot of time looking at other women's bodies, over the last year.  It's not a matter of seeing how I want to look, or what I think I should look like.  It's been about seeing how the human female form is put together.  How does the hip meet the thigh?  How do hip bones look on not-fat women?  How much tummy bulge is average?

So now I'm trying to figure out my own body in that same regard.  Do my hips curve at the "right" place?  Do my breasts hug my ribcage like a regular woman?  Are my hip bones too pokey?

I honestly have no idea.  I can barely compare this body to my last, let alone to another woman's.  I know I'm about a size 8-10 now, but it's almost impossible for me to hold up a piece of clothing and judge if it's an appropriate size, simply by its cut and shape.  Almost invariably, I still pick the too-big one, thinking it's the one that will fit. 

I'm trying to stay calm.  This is the last one, right?  But for some reason, I have been on edge about it for two weeks.  My surgeon and I discussed it while she Sharpied me before going into the OR. 

• Maybe it's because I know it's almost done. 
• Maybe it's because I'm afraid I don't deserve this. 
• Maybe it's because I'm afraid it won't matter, that I'll still never really get it, in my head, that I'm not that same girl anymore. 
• And if I don't have the thighs to hide behind, what is there to keep people and their emotions and their sometimes hurt at bay?    

I hid behind the fat and the food and the sadness of it all for years, to keep people from hurting me again and more.  In the end, I was hurting myself more than almost anyone else ever could.  But if I finally let down that guard, if I'm finally able to just be normal, what then?  Will I get hurt again?  Will something horrible happen that undoes all of the good? 

I don't know, but it's completely possible.  It's as likely as not that some external force inflicts damage on me again, when I least expect it.  Maybe with laws of averages, I've already had my share, but I'm hardly an average girl—it's more than plausible that it could happen. 

And it's not like me to worry about such things.  That's just life, I know, and I usually try not to overact, or to react at all until necessary.  I've done so much work in the last two years, inside and out, that I know I have the tools to handle whatever comes up.  But it's really easy to slip back into the fat girl mindset, and I'm afraid of that.  I'm afraid of being that fat girl again. 

So I'm sitting here now, crying my eyes out, surprised that all of this even came to the surface.  I wasn't sure where I was going when I started writing tonight, but here we are.  Thanks for bearing with me and letting me talk it out.  Thanks for being beside me on this journey.  Maybe next time, I'll let you pick the music. 

 

Having faith is the hardest thing to do.

So it turns out I'm a terrible patient. 

Less than a week after surgery, I'm bored out of my ever-loving mind.  I've spent days cooped up in the recliner, impossibly happy when I was able to move to the bed for a while.  I went for my first post-op visit this morning.  Bandage free, though still covered in surgical tape, I was able to get my first shower in days. 

Really, I shouldn't be so delighted by Dial soap. 

I'm being good—doing everything my surgeon and my nurses said to do and not to do.  I'm also eating anything that comes within five feet of my gullet.  Stress and boredom are the worst possible triggers for a compulsive eater. 

The first few hours in the Perocet coma were kind of enjoyable.  There was a reason to rest and let my mind wander.  But eventually I started to sleep in thirty second spurts, interrupted by two minutes of groggy lucidity that would fall straight away into resumption of the dream I'd just left a few moments before.  For two days, I witnessed both what was going on around me and what was in my head, simultaneously.   All from the padded cell of my recliner. 

I have watched a lot of movies and television.  I couldn't read much, unable to focus on the type and the words.  It feels in part like I've wasted time that could've been used productively on anything else.  But I know my body needed the time to rest and heal from the assault I just paid my surgeon a few thousand dollars to perform. 

I'm still swollen and puffy, and my thighs don't really look any smaller today than they did a week ago.  I know she removed about 600 grams of flesh (just over a pound for the demons, I suppose) in four big patches.  My nurses assure me it will all look different very soon.  But all of those nagging worries and insecurities started to creep in again, around the haze of anesthesia, to taunt me with their whispers of "mistake" and "useless" and "what the hell did you do?"

It's made me gripey and agitated and irritable, to say the least.  Add the boredom and frustration of being still, and I'm a bit of a bear right now.  Special thanks goes to DH and the boys for being so sweet and caring through all of this.  I have wanted for nothing, except maybe a cookie for the fat girl.

Having been through this a couple of times, I know I'll be delighted in a few weeks, completely enthralled by the genius of my plastic surgeon.  Once the swelling subsides and the drain tubes are gone, I'll be ecstatic that I made the choice to do this, again.  But the waiting is killing me. 

I don't wanna have to wear that suit of skin.

I'm a little over a day away from what should be my last plastic surgery procedure, post weight loss.  I'm nervous as hell. 

This part of the journey started a few months ago, when I couldn't stand to look at the loose skin left over from the 115 pound loss.  I chose my surgeon carefully and started the process of what would be three lengthy procedures and recovery.

The first surgery was February 1, 2012.  In about seven hours, my surgeon removed 14+ inches of skin from my belly and hips, tightened up my abs, did some preliminary lipo on my thighs, and liposucked my chin.  The incision runs almost all the way around my body. 

The second surgery was April 25^th.  She removed the bagging skin from under my arms.  The incisions start just above my elbow and run along my inner arms, past my armpits, down just under the edge of my bra.  They're still red and a little raised but are mostly hidden when my arms are down.  She also did a full breast lift and augmentation.  In two years, I went from a 42DD to a 36DDD.  The implants are 90% settled.  Most of those scars have faded already.  And, yes, they look and feel quite natural.  Six hours.

The last procedure will be on August 1^st—six months to the day after the first one.  It's a thigh lift, both inner and outer, with some extra lipo to help sculpt the thighs.  This is expected to last about five hours.  

I'm so damn ready for this. 

It's crazy to see my body now.  When I went for my pre-op appointment last week, I saw the before pictures from my last surgery.  I was shocked.  Seeing the me from just three months before felt like looking at the pastiest National Geographic refugee ever.  It was bizarre to remember how my body felt with the extra baggage.  It already seems like a lifetime ago. 

And the new body isn't perfect.  I didn't expect it to be.  I expected it to be natural and much more representative of how I thought of myself and how I wanted to see myself in the mirror.  There are scars and stretch marks and imperfections, and I'm incredibly pleased with all of it.  I would do it again in a heartbeat—regardless of the pain and the minor complications after. 

What I found through all of this is that I'm strong—much, much stronger than I ever realized or gave myself credit for being.  I knew I could do a lot.  I'm a force of nature, after all.  I've been through a lot of crap in my life, but this has been like none of that.  This was totally voluntary and totally necessary for me.  It has been a blessing of challenges and tests to see what I could do and how I would handle it. 

I don't know what's coming next.  I'm a month away from turning 40, and I intend to enjoy every second of it.  I will go into that next stage of my life with a whole new perception of myself, both inside and out. 

So cross your fingers that all goes well.  I'm back in the hands of my incomparable surgeon and her incredible staff.  And I have a fresh pedicure for the event.