Just because you’ve never had a weight problem doesn’t mean you won’t understand my story. Pain is pain. I wore my pain on the outside like a blanket; it was visible for all to see. Some people wear theirs silently as a passenger, unconsciously guiding their decisions. Some people funnel theirs into obsessions of work or religion. I’ve seen and experienced pain masked with addiction and what it does to those around you. This year I’ve seen a lot of depression and worse: lost someone to suicide. Again.

Have you ever been in a huge crowd and still felt alone? Have you felt like you were the only person to not have the answer when everyone else does? Have you ever felt like the elephant in the room? Have you ever looked in the mirror and not recognized the face looking back at you? Have you ever tried to appear like you have everything in control when really you’re a hot mess? This was my everyday. I was trapped in a body, mind, place and life where I didn’t feel like I belonged.

I’ve been a writer my whole life. I submitted a poem to a book when I was in fourth grade. (Mrs. Gernez’s class, where my future husband was also a student, insert ‘awe’ here. Actually, I don’t figure out he’s awesome for a lonnnnng time.) It was accepted in one of those books that has thousands of poems from all ages across the country. It was a poem about fall and leaves and not at all impressive. But that’s when I started writing. I’ve kept journals for most of my life. I don’t always write what’s happened in the day. Sometimes I write letters to people that I’ll never deliver. Sometimes I had entire journals to myself. I went to a really great public high school and got a fantastic writing education. Shout out to Ms. Sue Boldt who prepared us all for real world writing and made it feel accessible for me. Writing is how I process and remember that I’m changing. Sometimes going back and reading them is as hard as writing them was in the first place. Sometimes it’s even harder. Lately, I don’t even know what I’m going to write on here before it comes out.

I’ve been changing rapidly since the surgery. I guess it started a month or two before. Dan says he saw it cascading since last June. Whatever the case, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m accessing emotions I haven’t genuinely felt in a really long time. The surgery didn’t fix me but it’s helping me shed the last of the blanket I’ve been wearing my whole life. The more I become myself, the more I love myself. The more I love myself, the more I recognize myself.

I feel like there was an entire decade of my life, at least, where I didn’t recognize my reflection. Don’t get me wrong; I knew what I physically looked like. But If I had to look myself in the eye for 10 minutes to win $10,000, I don’t know if I could have done it. It wasn’t that I thought I was unattractive or didn’t want to look at myself. I didn’t really recognize who I’d become. I couldn’t have been that honest with myself. Eye contact takes confidence. Now I make eye contact with myself all the time and love what I see. For years I’ve made eye contact with everyone. You can’t teach classes of middle schoolers without making eye contact. But now I make eye contact with strangers. Now I can hold it till there’s that last brief second that they get uncomfortable. You learn so much about a person in that second.

There was a time in my life that I wrote poetry. I’m sure there’s some random ex boyfriend poems still floating around the midwest somewhere. I thought I still wrote them every once in a while. The last one I could find was 8 years old. Most of them were about anger or sadness. I’m not sure when I stopped writing them. I’ve been writing here for a few years now but before that? It feels like there’s this entire portion of my life where it goes dark. I was dark. Nothing blossoms in the dark. When I think back to those times, I don’t know what I would have written about. There was a lot of pain and misunderstanding who I was. I couldn’t speak for my needs when I didn’t know what they were.

Writing is another way I face myself in the mirror. Most times I cry when I write these for you. I try to edit them as little as possible and leave them as the raw stream of the my thoughts that they are. I couldn’t write back then. I couldn’t face what was really happening. I didn’t have the strength to change yet.

Recently I made a list of all the things that I thought I had to be to be loved. It wasn’t very long. If I could be those things, I could control the love in my life. If I could just be those things, maybe I could feel loved. The truth was: I never wanted to be any of those things. They were all things I thought I had to be. Over the years, I’ve slowly let each of them go. These were my barriers; the things that didn’t allow me to love myself. As I shed layers, I feel more like myself. As I chose who and what I want to be, I attract more love into my life. By letting my heart sing, others have heard my song.

Today I was reading a few self love poems and came across this Maya Angelou one I don’t think I’ve ever read. Or maybe I just read it differently now. She was such a beautiful writer. :

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.