Snapshots

I've just come back from a much needed break away with my parents and my niece, Gabby.  My folks thought I could do with the break, so they booked us to go to Amsterdam (comments about weed and sex workers are not welcome).

I felt guilty going away, I mean I'm still off sick from work with mental health issues (and issues surrounding food). I felt worried for what people would think when they saw my Facebook updates and photos.  There are a few snapshots where I look happy and you wouldn't guess that I'm battling with low self esteem, self hatred and depression.  Speaking to a friend, I confided my worries but I also said that snapshots are just that, a snap, a moment in time and I'm great
at faking a smile.

Faking it?

I take and post a lot of selfies, my reason for this is that I can control how I look, if my smile looks okay, my usually tend to be close mouthed because when I smile with my teeth, my top lip disappears and I look even more ridiculous.  And I tend to just post my face because, even though I am losing weight (too slowly for my liking, and I'm still convinced I'm not losing enough despite having been told that my weight loss is fine and in fact ahead of where I should be) I don't want people seeing the mess that I am.

The holiday was wonderful, and a lot of those smiles in my photographs are genuine, but they're just a snapshot where it looks like I haven't a care in the world, where I'm not concerned with what I can and can't eat (what's SAFE in my mind for me to eat and not eat), where I don't feel like an enormous whale, an embarrassment for my family and friends to be seen with...

Yes, I am scared of bread.

I'm still awaiting a psychology appointment through the bariatric service (thanks Tory bastards).  I still need help, discussing with my GP my food phobia, when I said something about not technically
being an eating disorder, she said that there's a spectrum of eating disorders and I'm on there... Great.  Imagine you went from not caring what you put in your mouth to having to check everything, to look at the protein content of everything, so I eat virtually the same things (nuts, hummus, cracker breads, king prawns, eggs, mash)  - these are my 'Safe Foods'.

I'm hanging in there, still not sleeping brilliantly, lying in bed because there's no reason to get up, same with showering...I know that's disgusting but I'm still pretty much 'Meh, what's the point'. Thanks depression, you wanker.

I know my friends and family are all supportive and love me, and I know that when I write blog posts like this, I upset them.  I'm sorry for that, I have to write down my thoughts and feelings, it helps me and God knows I need all the help I can get.

Today's Forecast Calls for Blue Skies

Hi, me again. It's been almost two months since my weight loss surgery, so I thought I'd
update you all on how I've been getting on.

It hasn't been all plain sailing as I alluded to in my previous post.  Physically it's been tough with delightful things such as constipation and crippling pain from that, but mentally...it's been, and is continuing to be, absolute hell.

I mentioned in my last blog that I didn't think I was losing as much weight as I should be; that has continued along with some new issues.  I've developed a food phobia (which is as lovely as you'd expect) coupled with a newly found fear of vomiting (if you eat too quickly or don't chew the food enough, this makes you sick.) 

So I'm scared to eat 'new' things (things I was eating before the surgery).  I have established things that I eat but I'm literally just sticking to Weetabix, beans, cheese, tuna and potatoes.  And not a great deal of any of those things.  I'm scared I'm not eating enough, but then I know if I eat too much, I'll get a pain in my chest or stretch my sleeve, which I really don't want to happen).

I'd been passing the surgery off as no biggie, because it wasn't open surgery, it was being done via a laparoscopy.  I genuinely, somewhat naïvely, didn't think it was going to be as big a deal as it was.  I mean, I was only having 75% of my stomach removed... how hard could it be?? What an idiot I am.  I'm sort of coming to terms with the fact it WAS actually major surgery. 

I've been dealing with feeling like I've made a massive mistake, due to the pain my body and brain have been and are still going through.  Can't go back though, they can't rebuild me...maybe they could shove a load of sausage casings back in and see how that goes...

So I'm trying to cope with that, on top of feelings of utter misery and inflicting misery on David and my family and friends.  I'm no fun to be around, I'm generally usually down, crying at the drop of a hat, and my old arch nemesis of Low Self Esteem is popping her head in, telling me that I'm failing at weight loss, how I'm pretty much a failure in life anyway because I can't have children and that how that even if I get to the desired weight for IVF, it won't work because I don't deserve it.  I don't deserve to be happy, I don't deserve to have a child.  She tells me that David will probably leave me when the IVF fails because I can't do anything right in life.  Happy cheery stuff like that.

I've told one of the bariatric nurses my concerns, and she's referred me to psychology...but I don't know when I'll get an appointment (cut backs to mental health services, thanks you Tory cunts).  I know I need help, I've identified my problems, I've told my GP and she was going to try to expedite my psychology appointment.  Speaking to my GP helped a bit, she signed me off for another four weeks, so we'll see how that all goes.  I've had to up my antidepressants again (as a sort of a sticking plaster until my psych appointment).

I'm so lucky to have David and my family and all my friends...and even the cats - Aslan is an excellent nurse (well okay maybe not but he's always good for cuddles).  And writing helps me out a lot.  I know a lot of this might seem extreme but I have to be honest about how I've been feeling since surgery.

I'll get there, I know I will.  I'm loved and adored and well cared for.  And I'll be a mother one day, I know this too.  I just need to see more blue skies than grey.

MY weight loss surgery.

My stomach is not made of felt.
|It is now, though, the size of a banana

So I'm 12 days post surgery and much to my annoyance, I'm not yet a size six... this is, quite frankly, a DISGRACE.

But seriously, I am 12 days post surgery and I'm still trying to get my head around the significant change that I chose to make to my life (with assistance from our ever brilliant NHS). I had a sleeve gastrectomy on 16 July. First time having anaesthetic and surgery, and first prolonged stay in hospital since I had meningitis in 1982. I was pretty freaked out by the whole idea of the hospital stay, probably more than the surgery.

I've touched on having weight loss surgery briefly in my blog before. It's something I really hadn't considered before. With my obesity and fertility issues, I was offered the surgery to help with weight loss and then the possible knock on effect from that would be qualifying for IVF.  So I went with it.

It's not as simple as people seem to think, I had to have psychological input before I was approved for the surgery.  And I have a lot of changes to make to my lifestyle.  So I thought I'd write a blog to try to explain a bit about 'my journey' (trust me, I hate that phrase as much as you do, but it's the best way to define it).

This is MY journey, no-one else's.  So to be quite blunt, my opinions are the only ones that matter so therefore:

1. Please don't ask me if I'm hungry, it doesn't help.  I am not a side show circus freak. FYI: ghrelin (the hunger hormone) is produced in the part of the stomach that was removed.

2. In the same way, please don't ask me what I'm eating or if I'm eating.  Quite frankly, that is only the business of me and my dietitian.

3. Keep your expectations of MY weight loss to yourself. I don't want you to tell me that you thought I'd have lost more weight than I have done.  I already have low self esteem so your comments will more than likely hinder my recovery.  

4. Along with physical recovery, I need time for mental recovery too. I have to relearn how to eat (effectively, I'll be relearning how to eat as my friends' baby is learning how to eat, so we can be chow pals).

5. Encouragement is GOOD. If you can encourage me in any way, that would be delightful. If you don't think you can, that's also cool, but I'd ask that you keep your negative comments to yourself please. This can hinder my recovery. 

6. It really isn't 'the easy way out'. As I say, I didn't ask for the surgery, it was offered to me. And I thought long and hard about whether to have it at all. So if you think it's the easy way out, keep that to yourself. Don't tell me eating less and moving more will help me out, I have two underlying health conditions that affect my weight as well as being on antidepressants. So if that's what you want to add to my 'journey', I'd rather you didn't, thanks. I'm well aware people think it's a cheat (including some consultants).  

I am already worrying myself that I haven't lost enough weight in the 12 days since surgery and have already begun branding myself a failure. This is incredibly unhealthy (I am well aware of this) and this way eating disorders lie.  I shall be letting my dietitian and bariatric nurse know how I'm feeling, and they will get me an appointment with the psychologist.   

I have a great support network around me including David, my family and assorted friends and work colleagues.  

So anyway, this blog might be a bit snarky, a bit unfriendly, but I needed to write this because at the moment, I need to concentrate on me and my recovery. If you feel like you need to ask me any of the above, it's probably not going to help me.

Fluffy and over emotional posts will resume soon. 

Oh! I hugged Mini T!

Hooray for me!  I have been alive for 38 years.  It was my birthday yesterday, I indulged in pork pie and beer (because it was my birthday).  Hooray for me!

Its Mental Health Awareness Week this week, just a week or so after Piss Morgan (I am aware of that typo) complained that too many men are oversharing and should Man Up.  One twitter user replied saying that their brother tried to Man Up, failed and ended up killing himself due to anxiety and depression; he felt he couldn’t talk about it because it’s not manly to share your feelings.  This is the myth that Piss continues to perpetuate, in this day and age where the biggest killer of young men (under the age of 45).  He seems to think it’s not okay to talk about your feelings, because if you do it makes you less of a man.  He then posed the question "Is James Bond not a real man, then?" on Twitter and the internet laughed at him, because that’s all he’s good for.

Regular readers of this blog will have seen my documented struggles with anxiety, depression, incredibly low self-esteem and suicidal ideation.  These aren’t daily feelings (thankfully), and the suicide thing hasn’t reared its head in a long while.  But from time to time, it hits me.  Yesterday whilst out with David for my birthday, he took a photograph of me holding a pint (because it was my birthday).  This might not seem strange, in fact, it’s almost obligatory that he do this on my birthday.  But I hated the photograph.  I look enormous (which I am), like the size of a fully grown manatee.  He posted it to FB because that’s what he does, and soon the compliments flooded in as well as more birthday greetings.  And my dark half came out and she started her up her old game of telling me how shit I look:

‘They don’t really like you’. 

‘They’re just complimenting you because that’s what you do when someone posts a photo of themselves or their significant other on FB’ 

‘They really want to post up the truth, YOUR truth, Tara, and post ‘Sorry Dave, your wife looks like a manatee with a stupid smile where her top lip disappears so it shows all her stupid teeth’.   

Managed to get to the cinema without too much trouble and then finally enclosed my dark half back in her cupboard.  Then, as we left the cinema, (which is situated next to a gym), two blokes came out of the gym, one looked over at me then whispered something to his mate, then they both looked over and openly laughed at me.  And it was definitely not because I’d told them a hilarious joke (You know what I hate about Russian dolls?  They’re so full of themselves ).  So I was made to feel like utter dogshit on my birthday – fair dos, they didn’t know it was my birthday; they didn’t know I have such a low self-opinion but yeah, they made me feel like utter garbage.  David and James, bless them, tried to help by saying ‘forget about them, they’re idiots’ and ‘They don’t matter’ but that’s exactly how anxiety can get you. It’s true, why SHOULD I care that two blokes I don’t even know openly laughed at me?  Because I do.  Because anxiety and my dark half make me.  And I’m finding it difficult to cope at the moment.  Got another birthday night out planned with the gal pals for Saturday.  I hope my dark half fucks off by then.  

If you’re being affected by low mood, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation or any other kind of worrying thoughts or feelings, please do share your thoughts and feelings with others, whether its friends family or MIND or Samaritans, or even contact me through this blog.  Just please don’t suffer alone.   And writing my feelings helps me out so much.  I find it cathartic, which is why there are so many posts on here about mental health.

FUCK Piss Morgan.

Mini T's Mini Meltdown (This is NOT a delicious recipe)

I went to a horror movie convention the other weekend in Birmingham.  It was brilliant, met up with friends and made some new ones, including Michael Myers himself, the actor Tony Moran.  It’s true, we’re FB pals, HE friend requested me. I taught him the word minge.  Fairly proud of that. 

 

Anyway, I got some photos with some Nightmare on Elm Street stars, Rod Lane from NOES 1 (Jsu Garcia) and Roland Kincaid from NOES 3 (Ken Sagoes) (paid for) and some pals took some snaps of us too.  And then I saw the photos, and I could have wept.  I look utterly horrendous in every single one.  I’m the size of a juvenile elephant, my face looks utterly ridiculous, I have about five chins and that weird top lip disappearing smile that always makes my teeth look more prominent than they are.  This is why I haven’t posted any of the pics up.  Even the ones I’ve paid for.  Even the one of me with Jsu Garcia AND Ken Sagoes (a photo op I’ll never get again) because of how I look.

 

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have major hang ups about my appearance, most noticeably my weight and then my actual physical appearance.  I thought I’d come to terms with the fact that I could look pretty at times, and hell, I even wore a bikini and posted it on the internet…I think that was more the prosecco though than me.  These photos from the horror con kicked off something in my brain which, coupled with a few other things, caused me to have a bit of a meltdown over the last weekend.

 

Anxiety had kicked me around on Friday and Saturday, culminating in me dropping out of a well overdue night out with my gal pals.  I couldn’t have coped with all the photos, the trying to make myself look presentable enough to be seen out with these women, my best friends, who are all goddesses in their own way.  In my brain, sometimes, I feel I don’t fit in with them.  And it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on.  It’s nothing they’ve ever said or done, it’s purely me and my own stupid brain.  So I ducked out of our night out because I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with me ruining every photograph.  And I stayed in, with the cats for company.  Weirdly, as the time passed, and I knew I didn’t have to go out, my anxiety eased off a little.  Just a little though, it’s still here, kicking the crap out of me.

 

Writing about how I’m feeling is one of my main coping mechanisms.  It’s cathartic.  And I might overshare at times, but I’d rather do that than have all my feelings and emotions bottled up, ready to unexpectedly spill.  Folk call me brave for writing, I’m not.  I’m just sharing experiences I’ve had, that others might have had, so that maybe one other person can read it and know that other people get anxiety and depression. 

 

I’ve always been an advocate for speaking about my mental health; and I will continue to be.  I’m aware that others feel they can’t speak about it which is sad.  This is a conversation that we need to have, we need it to grow above just a hubbub; it needs to be a loud and angry conversation.  Mental health services are getting slashed by the government (and previous governments).  Mental health charities and other charity helplines are getting inundated with referrals, letters, emails, telephone calls from people suffering because there’s no mental health service near them, or that it’s been so slashed to the bone, they can’t get an appointment.

 

It’s not shameful to have a mental health issue.  We need to feel comfortable to speak about it.

 

 

 

Long blog post is long and possibly ultimately pointless

As of late I have not been taking my medication, what with one thing and another – mainly though, I’ve run out and hadn’t been to get any more.  Seems I really do still need it.  I’m lacking in motivation for anything, I’ve become incredibly resentful of everything and everyone, I feel like I’m going to cry at the drop of a hat (although to be honest, that could be more to do with my hormones than anything).

My lack of medication is totally my fault, the only time I can get to the GP to request it is before work and lack of motivation and sheer idleness prevents me from doing so.  I’m usually late for work as it is so taking a few more minutes to go and request my medicine is a BIG DEAL at the moment.  Well it is for me, anyway. 

At some points I feel like I’m living in a bubble and just observing all that goes on around me, including my own life… it’s like I’m watching from outside myself; watching myself weigh in at Slimming World, watching myself out at the pub with friends… I’m going back to feeling like I’m existing and not living and this is not healthy.  But it isn’t happening all the time, just occasionally, and I am aware of it as I know what signs to look for and THANKFULLY, I haven’t been suicidal.

Over the past few months, there have been a few quite significant events that have happened within my family and social life and I’m not coping at all well with them.  I’ve pushed them all to the back of my mind, tried to hide them; but they keep coming back with a hammer blow to the face and a cheerily fiendish ‘HIYA!’  There are some things I tried to confront but found far too difficult; so I’ve withdrawn.  It’s not an ideal thing to do really but I have to do it; I have to put myself first and not be placed into situations where I am going to feel uncomfortable, hurt or upset.  But there again, when I have tried facing up to these things and confronted the issues, I just get shouted down or ignored anyway, so the side of me that accepts I can’t make a difference, that just takes it makes herself known and I just take these things head on.  Why argue back?  It’ll always be a case of who can shout loudest and to be perfectly honest, I’m tired.  I’m too jaded to try and fight for myself, to try to get my point across.  I’m losing my fire and my fight.
 

I’m aware this is a rambling shambolic mess of a blog post, and I’m not quite sure what point I wanted to make.  But does there ever have to be a point of a blog post?  Maybe the point of this post is to say ‘Hi, I’m Tara and I still suffer from depression’; or maybe it’s to say ‘Hi, I’m Tara and I lack the motivation to do anything worthwhile’; it could be ‘Hi, I’m Tara and it’s my fucking own stupid fault that my depression is kicking me around’, but I think it’s more likely ‘Hi, I’m Tara.  I’m still here, my depression has shown itself again and I’m trying to control it, but please remember, I’m still here, I still have feelings; some of your actions and words can be hurtful. Please don’t dismiss me.  I’m still here.’

New Year - New ME

Well, not quite as we’re almost a third of the way into the year now and there has been no sign of my motivation.  It crept back quite quietly a few weeks back and has been quietly prodding and poking my determination awake.  I am now determined to do something positive about my appearance (long time readers of the blog know I have a lot of hang ups about how I look and in particular my weight).  I’ve always been fat, in my head this started when at about age 5 or 6 at primary school, one girl decided she’d call me fat at lunchtime.  I stopped eating my lunch for a bit and my ma wasn’t too happy with me.  It was not an eating disorder I hasten to add.  It was a response to having been called fat by a peer.  But the damage was done and that word has stayed with me for life.

I was a chubby kid, the kind of kid with ‘puppy fat’ that would go when I got older.  It didn’t.  I grew from a chubby kid to a tubbier teenager: PE was hell and the showers… well forget about it.  I was never really very feminine as a kid, or a teen.  I hated dresses and preferred jeans, cords, check shirts (thanks grunge) and the like.  Shopping was always hell, and I only ever went out of necessity.  I was a tubby girl but still had quite large boobs so still kind of looked in proportion.

Yet since that childhood lunch time, I always identified with being fat because I had to be, right?  My fellow classmate wouldn’t have said that to me unless it was true, right?  She wouldn’t have said it solely to hurt me?  I know full well she will have forgotten that lunchtime in the canteen of Holy Family infant school when she first identified me as fat, but I haven’t.  It was the first time I can remember that fat was used as an insult, and it’s a pretty powerful one too.  And one I still connect with, even when in 2005 I got to a size 12, a relatively ‘normal’ dress size and body shape… not for me it wasn’t.  being shorter of stature, I was still classed as obese – I had a bony arse for Jesus sake, but no… still obese… one person I remember saying to me ‘Yeah that’s great and everything but you could stand to lose a bit more, couldn’t you?’  and the phrase that goes through my head, said by more than one person on occasion ‘You’re too pretty to be that fat’.  To me, that says that says you can either be pretty OR you can be fat… you can’t be both, that’s not how it works.  You see it everywhere today, fat shaming of people, maybe women who have just had a child being hounded by the paparazzi as to why they haven’t got back to their pre baby shape, or a good looking guy relaxing on the beach with maybe a little paunch ‘[Insert Celeb Name Here] looks as though he has enjoyed his holiday a little TOO much’.

And when you try to do something positive and motivating, you can get shouted down about that too.  I started doing the Couch to 5K programme a couple of years ago (it was during that summer of Ireland’s woeful performance at the European championships).  David cajoled me into doing it and I really quite enjoyed it.  We’d run across Hearsall Common for as long as the programme ran for, and I felt wonderful.  I’d never been a runner ever, came last in my first ever school sports day running race, but here I was, being able to build up my running and my stamina and it felt incredible.  I was fearful of others for a while until one night a bloke called out of me ‘Fair play to you love, I should be doing that myself’.  I was on nodding terms with some of the joggers who regularly went for a run on the common.  It was going really well until one day some pricks in a car shouted fat abuse at me.  I tried ignoring it but it was too much to take; I was 6 years old again being called fat for no reason, being abused for no reason whatsoever.  I burst into tears and that ended my few months of Couch to 5K.  I was too scared to go back and do it again.  My wheels fell off my exercising wagon and that was it.

I realise this is just a big old load of rambles, but I’m trying to explain why I am how I am (I’m well aware I don’t actually have to explain myself to anyone).

So, after a trip to the GP this morning, I discovered that the NHS does a referral scheme to Slimming World – I was weighed and promptly referred.  Basically, you get 12 weeks of meetings for free…this is mega because I was actually going to join a slimming class next week when I get paid.  And my mojo is returning to put me through going back to the gym where, around the body beautifuls and the skinny girls on exercise bikes, I can try to fit in, get back on my treadmill and run like fuck…I’m going to try to run away from that memory from when I was 6, away from the car full of wankers shouting names at me but most importantly, I’m going to try to run into a newer, healthier, slimmer me.  I have NOT been pressured to do this, I feel its time to change and I feel healthier in my mind and motivated to do it.

Watch this space.

Darn tootin', pie. We can DO this.

Nb: This will NOT become a diet/exercise blog site.  I promise.