Before, when I said the word lift I thought about baking soda in cake or egg whites puffed into meringue. Today I think of plastic surgery, of the Total Body Lift, a cosmetic surgery procedure developed to assist those for whom the success of bariatric surgery was only half the battle. All that floppy skin wasn't exactly the reward they had anticipated.
When my journey began I joked that when I hit my target it was straight to the surgeon. Up would go all those parts that prematurely point south. But now, as that day grows near I find myself considering the prospect more carefully.
When I'm done (still 40+ pounds to go) I will have lost over 130 pounds. And this isn't the first time my skin has accommodated that great a change. Between 1998-2000 I lost 122 pounds. Back then I had very young skin that happily stretched and retracted. Apparently that was my free pass. This time around things are going pretty well in the visible places - I even got a compliment about how nicely my face was maintaining its shape - but in the ones that come out in summertime things aren't as rosy.
So I find myself looking inside. Apart from the cost and missed work time, what might be the emotional consequences of such a dramatic surgery? This morning we paused the television on a woman walking along a beach in a bikini.
"I could look like that," I said.
But do I want to? Would it still be me?
"Will you be different?" asked Jack
"Probably."
How can anyone predict what such a transformation might do? Would my head swell and my shopping habits get out of control? Would I try to cash in on the heady times I missed in my 20s? Or would I become supremely self-conscious and tremble under the brand new threat of stares wherever I go?
In the testimonials everyone mentions how great they feel, but I think I might feel false. I already have a strange feeling meeting people for the first time now, in this fairly reasonable body. Like they can't really know me until they know what I looked like a year or two ago.
I feel like I'm 'passing' somehow. It is no longer obvious to the naked eye that I am not 'normal,' not one of them. This feels so odd I imagine I'd feel like I was actively trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes if I had the surgery.
That's how I feel today, anyway; ask me 40 pounds from now. If I've learned anything it is that my emotional reality is shifting as much as my physical one.
When my journey began I joked that when I hit my target it was straight to the surgeon. Up would go all those parts that prematurely point south. But now, as that day grows near I find myself considering the prospect more carefully.
When I'm done (still 40+ pounds to go) I will have lost over 130 pounds. And this isn't the first time my skin has accommodated that great a change. Between 1998-2000 I lost 122 pounds. Back then I had very young skin that happily stretched and retracted. Apparently that was my free pass. This time around things are going pretty well in the visible places - I even got a compliment about how nicely my face was maintaining its shape - but in the ones that come out in summertime things aren't as rosy.
So I find myself looking inside. Apart from the cost and missed work time, what might be the emotional consequences of such a dramatic surgery? This morning we paused the television on a woman walking along a beach in a bikini.
"I could look like that," I said.
But do I want to? Would it still be me?
"Will you be different?" asked Jack
"Probably."
How can anyone predict what such a transformation might do? Would my head swell and my shopping habits get out of control? Would I try to cash in on the heady times I missed in my 20s? Or would I become supremely self-conscious and tremble under the brand new threat of stares wherever I go?
In the testimonials everyone mentions how great they feel, but I think I might feel false. I already have a strange feeling meeting people for the first time now, in this fairly reasonable body. Like they can't really know me until they know what I looked like a year or two ago.
I feel like I'm 'passing' somehow. It is no longer obvious to the naked eye that I am not 'normal,' not one of them. This feels so odd I imagine I'd feel like I was actively trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes if I had the surgery.
That's how I feel today, anyway; ask me 40 pounds from now. If I've learned anything it is that my emotional reality is shifting as much as my physical one.
