Juggling Strife

 It has been so long since I have written. I miss the daily notations and thrill that accompanied the keeping of a dairy. I miss hearing my voice. I miss me. This space had been tainted for so long. It took me years to heal from it. Even when I tried to reclaim it I still felt its taint seeping into my bones. I could feel her eyes staring at me through the screen, unwelcome and accosting. It twisted my insides and so I closed myself off, from here, from myself. I traded myself away…

I’m considering bariatric surgery. I have never been so filled with desire for something and while also being gripped by terror. I have wanted for my entire life to be “skinny”. A cliche that haunts and torments. And what scares me is that if I do achieve this “skinny” the skinny that was shoved down my throat and thrust upon me long before the age of eight years old, that if I actually achieve that version of myself that I never really believed in, that I will hate how much I will love it. That instead of feeling whole and achieved I will be left with nothing but the ugly side of myself. The thought that this “fatness” is my armor, that this is my “choice” of protection and it is also a slow hurtful dance of self hatred angers me just as much as revealing in my “skinny-ness”. Part of me doesn’t even believe that the surgery would even change my weight. That is how far off this “skinny” girl is from me. 

All these ugly thoughts fill me, daily, I am plagued by their poison and yet my desire to change has not died. I want to be able to define this next stage in life. I want to say that this is who I am and all of it be my choice not an image thrust upon me. I want to abandon the skinny nena that everyone around me said I should or could be if I just…I want to abandon the idea that being pretty directly means I am bitch. I want to be able to say I am pretty and mean it about myself without feeling shame directly tied to that. I am pretty but…I want to stop receiving backhanded compliments of “you have such a pretty face”as though only that meets the standard and the rest of me falls short. I want to be free of all of it, the fear that this weight cast upon my life. I want to be free and choose me. Coming to terms with the fact that my own self definition includes being skinny even hurts. Part of me wants to reject it all but it would be just as hurtful to say I don’t want to be free of this weight as it would be to say my only worth is found in my thinness. 

It’s wild how mixed up I feel. I feel like I am juggling all my weakness at once. Living in such a safe and happy home brings me to moments of such intense sadness. All of it is the same feeling in different forms. I want be the creator of my own happiness. I want to make this part of my life so damn happy it makes up for all of the darkness that happened up until this point. I am going to die happy. If I only have 30 more years or less, I want to die happy. 

My father is dying. I don’t feel how I thought I would feel. I am sad yes, I don’t want the world to be without him but I am not devastated. I love him so much but I also know he is leading himself to the grave. He has made the choice to not care about his health, to bury his head in the sand. To give into the sadness and frankly that is how he has always lived so why should death be any different? I don’t want him to suffer. And I really hope he doesn’t. I don’t know maybe it’s just not real yet. 

I feel guilty that I am not more sad. I just feel like I don’t have any brain capacity to spend on him dying. He could prolong his life and if he chooses not to that is his choice. I also want to choose how I live my life and that is all that I have the ability to focus on right now. 

They said I could be under his knife in three months time. I could be on the fast track to a different version of myself in 3 months. It feels unreal. I keep fighting the need to say it’s not real, that it’s not for me, that I don’t deserve this, that I don’t want this, that it couldn’t happen to me. I hate that I feel this way. I hate that I have felt this way my whole life. I hate how afraid of this I am.

 I hate how afraid of me I am. 

Nena