There are bodies able to transform slowly, almost without being noticed. And then there are more violent metamorphoses, those that tear away certainties and leave you holding a new face in the mirror. I know something about that. I lost 46 pounds. And along with the fat, I seemed to lose a part of me — and perhaps, at certain moments, balance.
That hernia was bothering me far too much, I had gotten to the point where I tolerated that little pain at the end of every meal as if it was an acceptable normality, until that part of my body had started bleeding and had become too big to do nothing about. And then I decided to have surgery to live longer. To breathe better. To stop looking in the mirror and feeling miserable, to be able to buy clothes in the store again.
But no one had explained to me that as the body gets lighter, the mind can get heavier. That the changing physique forces you to meet again, to redefine yourself, to rebuild, to find a new balance.
I found myself fragile, tired, frightened by the paresthesias that surface at night, the dancing blood pressure, the constant sense of being in danger. I felt like a prune, drained. And yet — he is still in here somewhere, that person full of life, that round boy, in heart as well as in physique.
I felt that person when I walked to the lake with friends on the weekend. When I chose to eat slowly. When I told my niece, “Uncle always listens to you,” and when I smiled even though I had to let go of control over everything.
Identity is not a dress sewn on. It is a shelter that you build every day. Even if it’s cold. Even if you don’t know where to start.
So I ask myself: what does it mean to be “myself” in this new body? In this new life that I am still learning to live?
Maybe it means just that: staying true to my kindness, to my ability to see in others – and in me – something good. Even when it is not easy.
I put back on the old pants I no longer remember buying and in my new forms I rediscover a new opportunity to be happy and the conquest of new opportunities and a new way of perceiving everyday life.
The journey has only begun, we need to reshape, re-tune, we need to fix this pressure that does not want to stay put, and slowly we will also get to those longed-for bike rides, tennis the way it used to be played, and why not, maybe those beach volleyball games that have been missed so much.
Perhaps it is as Julia Roberts says in Eat, Pray, Love:
“We all want things to stay the same, we accept living in unhappiness because we are afraid of change, of things falling apart, but I looked at this BODY, the chaos it has endured, the way it has been used, plundered, then returning to being itself, and I felt reassured. Perhaps my life has not been so chaotic, it is the world that is, and the only real trap is to remain attached to everything.”
I wait for time to pass and fix everything, and in the meantime I continue with therapies, light weights, gentle yoga and mindful breathing, and keep myself ready for new adventures that will restore the value I feel I have lost because I in the first place have always been used to not giving myself any. But that is another story to be told in another silence.
