Not just something people say but turns out...

...to be true!!!
What is it? Well people say that you have to love yourself to be able to fully love others.
Well wouldn't you know it, they were right....
I had a good cry yesterday and learned a little about myself at the same time. And yes it was a GOOD cry. It felt cleansing and like a physical release of stuff I didn't even know I had done and was feeling.

As you know, and heck I worked hard for it so I am going to say it again, I have lost 114lbs over the past 14 months. You probably also know that it was an emotional thing to go through for me and not just a physical thing. Well what you may or may not know that is I suffered an unhappy side effect. My upper arms, my inner thighs and my my tummy area have a lot of extra skin that isn't going anywhere. It was not something I knew was going to happen. I thought since I had not had the super fast loss of weight loss surgery that my skin would I don't know, just shrink with the pounds. NOPE. No such luck.

So I have literally worked my T & A off (oh yeah T..I lost almost 2 damn cup sizes and that's the once place I didn't want to lose. I liked the twins) to lose this weight. I am able to fit into cute clothes. I can shop in the stores I used to only walk past and think scornfully I would ever step foot in and who cared anyway right because they were skanky clothes. Hey but I was bitter (bet you couldn't tell :P ). But I can't really wear them because the style this year seems to be sleeveless and short shorts. But my arms have FLIPPIN' wings...seriously dude, if I wave to say hi to someone I am in real danger of flying away.....Heck, I can fit sexy stuff that I would love to wear for my husband, they come in my size but I promise it wont be sexy & I can't do it...

But there was hope for me. I could have surgery to remove the skin. My insurance company said they would pay for it...So I went to a plastic surgeon. It was beyond humiliating...I had to stand there with next to nothing on and he took pictures for the insurance company, to document the problem. This was needed because it was part of the proof they want...Well to cut short, it then sounded like it was not going to happen. The Dr said that the amount of work involved in the stomach work was so much that it wasn't worth his time to do it for the tiny bit the insurance company would pay and I got stuck in the hell that is the health insurance system here in the USA. What I did then, but did not realize until just yesterday, almost 2 months later, is that I gave up the hope I had. Over the days that turned into weeks I so very slowly sunk into a dark place.

I was so very unhappy. And it leaked into everything. It colored how I saw and felt about everything. Then as you probably know other things happened. Us having to kick Ryan out of the house, I got back a bad report on a biopsy of a mole, the crap with my mother, and then my sweet little one being diagnosed with PDD....It was burying me and I could no longer breathe under the weight of it all...

And then my mind started looking for more things to go wrong. Me, who had worked so hard with my husband to work out and fix our marriage after some really bad times almost 5 years ago, started pushing him away and thinking he was going to find someone nicer, prettier, skinnier, healthier and leave me...The problem of course being he had no intention of letting anything like that happen but I was pushing him away and being a nasty bitch. I was going to cause what I feared most to happen, him leaving me and it would be my own doing...

Now of course at this point I still hadn't had the little click in my pea size noggin that made it all clear...

But then I got a call from the surgeon saying they got a letter from the insurance company asking for documentation that the surgery I was requesting was not for cosmetic but for medical reasons. They had one of the 2 proofs, those terrible pictures but I didn't have anyway to get the other part until I remembered I had talked to our family doc about this exact thing. I called the insurance company and explained what I could provide fully expecting them to laugh me off the phone. But they didn't. They said that it would do. Hurdle jumped, hey what's that flutter in my chest? Call doctor explain what I need...She calls back and says not a problem and has already faxed the letter...Hurdle jumped..what's that wetness on my checks? hey am I breathing? wow I wasn't really breathing for so long..and the tears...they are flowing...and as they do it all just clicks loudly in place...

I had lost hope. I had given up and told myself I would never get comfortable in my skin....my heart became cracked and I stopped breathing too deeply...I was curling in on myself and giving away my happiness...But then it came flooding back....and just in time I think because much longer my heart would have rotted....
Not long after I saw this on Daniel's FB status "Hope -- the tiny light in the back of your mind that says everything will be ok when you're surrounded by darkness"
This summed it up so well. 


I was able to share all this with Jay. He was more kind and patient then I could ever express. I was awful to be around...really trust me I was. But he never walked away, he never gave up on me, he never stopped trying...Well he did fight back at times and told me I was a little nuts...but hey that was being kind..I was a first rate certifiable bitch with a capital B...


I kept giving my dear friend Melissa all this great advice and offering her my ear, heart and shoulder but I couldn't get the words out to her or anyone else that I was drowning in this darkness...What I learned from this and hope you take away from this WAY TOO LONG posting is:
~never lose hope
~reach out to your friends, they will love you more for it (if they are real friends). real friends like to be useful and be there for you so they feel better about asking the same of you
~ask for help no matter how hard it is

and that's all for now, I <3 so much all of you!!!