Dances with DS

Thinking bout reconstruction yet *again* and have been staring mouth open at the ones on the telly. OMG - it is not clever to watch such things - it looks soooo sore. Last night I had several thoughts on it…I thought about how when I first was thinking on my DS I had this holy grail ideal of being normal. What on earth normal ACTUALLY is is a whole different story but I was convinced the surgery would give me this. I think it is a relative term really & I never got to that ideal of normal that I had concocted for myself. I can only say I was dreaming the impossible dream. It took some adjusting in the first 2 years. I accept now that what I did get was a brilliant wonderful DS that does it’s job for me. I hardly remember how my guts was 3 years ago which is really terrific in many ways. I think my ideals shifted along the way & at this stage I am not disappointed but I am also not physically ‘normal’ how could I possibly be with my guts as rerouted as it is?!

I have seen the reconstructions - I have heard the telly producers tout the dream of ‘at last a perfect body’. When the body is revealed it is very far from perfect. It is scarred, pulled, sometimes it looks worse though often it does look better…mostly it just looks …reconstructed … but perfect? Nope. I think ‘normal’ & ‘perfect’ are the devils twins in WLS vocabulary and it is so easy to fall into them. Loaded words designed to disappoint along with other little words used so cheerily and emptily. *Sigh*.

Still - don’t get me wrong - it’s not that I don’t think massive and far reaching improvement cannot be achieved both through WLS & reconstruction - it definately can else I’d not even entertain the thought myself. Just look at the lives of the obese who have had surgery it is clear - normal or not… it has a profound effect often for the better. I just wish we could be more realistic and sanguine in our choice of words. It would help align expectations better.

Today a Dser wrote on WLSinfo that she is beginning to see that it’s about shape & motility much more than weight - that is a huge leap in one’s head! One pukka insight.

I still have insecurities at times about the bagginess & the skin although I am blessed it has not been too bad. Nevertheless I do kind of have a body that appears draped on bones lol! I worry no one could find me attractive and if something happened to my hubby I would never meet anyone who could look past this. Silly stuff really. I mean - would I reject anyone on the basis of their body I would never so maybe others are also like this. Anyway please let nothing ever happen to my hubby - the pact is I go out first godswilling…but just not now! I am enjoying life way too much to depart just yet.

I finally asked my husband candidly if he felt it was off putting in anyway - I said I would understand. The truth is I thought I might cry, I must have pmt. He said very sincerely that it was not a problem at all. He reassured me. Bless him, I know he means it. God, I must be soooo exhausting to live with sometimes! I go through these frank questions times each time my insecurities log on!

The problem is initially one is so flipping dead chuffed the prison has melted away - the body is, compared to that, just great - but slowly I have gotten used to it. I sag into for grantedness. I see a flap or fold and I groan. I forget about from where I came originally. I look at old photo’s then to remind me and it puts perspective back for me.

I have had a good day on the food front. Fresh chicken livers in sweet port sauce with onions, thyme and red peppers - delish. Had it for brekkie then for lunch too in a budgens bread sarmie. 2 jam doughnuts - an exception mind you but so yummy. Dinner I must go and cook - thinking of meatballs, gravy and for some bizzare reason I am desperate for sweet potato.

In the garden I have planted three rose bushes of the full blown fragrant sort and am trying to decide what else should go into the flower bed. I think lavander en masse on one side of the bed and I love the blue haze of campulina (bellflowers) which I think would look stunning beneath the roses. I had a happy day just pottering about BEING really.

I think I am on the up & this thing whatever it is is not going to plunge me into deep surgery etc. I feel relieved - that’s an understatement really. I’m crawling out of the pain into another day! It’s such a relief.

It made me think so much of people who experience complications with this surgery. I know we just cannot imagine the impact of it…
Who helps them address the psychological issues I wonder?
The answer is sadly no one. Sometimes when I think of these people I wonder if it can truly be justified this surgery. I justify logically - intellectually but emotionally I remain uncertain of so much. I just feel the fear, the aloneness of those patients.
I don’t like the feel I get for the overall complication rate either. It looks grim. It might just be me going into denial of the brevity of things, also I am a perfectionist and bariatrics is an imperfect world no less than any other walk of life really. It is probably still well within ‘acceptable ‘ levels whatever that might mean. I’m worried about the undefined nature of so much in the field though. Patients need strong crisp definition. Perhaps this is impossible and it’s just human nature to live in a blur and to have to live the haphazard result of that. I don’t like it - it’s the kind of thing I get mad about I want things to be certain - I want at the very least my surgery to be as certain as is possibly human. I want it to have permanent effect and if I am told it has - it bloody better well stand the test of time!

Today things at the old house are taking shape. I decided that I would like to plant up my pots and so I have - they look ravishing! I put in a wonderful array of colours - purples, pansies that are sky blue, pink upright lobelia, a cerise petunia, an acid green heather tinged with pink. I love that word ‘petunia’ it has a silky feel of vibrancy, even a slight vulgarity about it! My pot’s overfloweth and my heart does too. I so enjoy my garden.

The Japanese maple collection that I have slowly amassed looks fab. They are such delicate characterful little trees. There was a time I did a fair amount of bonsai and tampered with mother natures flow. I think that might be what mother nature would say - however me - I was harnessing the forces of nature, tapping into the elemental growth force. My little trees thrived on my brutal wiring, chopping and twisting. Sometimes a tree would look like it was on deaths row when suddenly the tight green knot’s of new leaf would show. It is quite an art. I don’t do it anymore - I have been my own bonsai for the past few years!

Still I retain a fetish for chopping and shaping and even full grown trees in my garden do not escape the rub of the shear. I read once that if you cut a tree then all the others around it faint so I just pray my trees are not all positively unconscious. I talk to them because I am strange.
Okay and I am also melodramatic.

It’s been a year for the blossom. Even now the cherries are still full of pink froth and the ancient biennial apple has exploded forth into the promise of a good crop this year. Every second year my neighbour collect the huge green tart cooking apples & I cook up vast pot’s of applesauce. The house smells of clove and cinnamon. Good for making apple crumble for cold winter nights. We eat it generously sometimes with clotted cream, sometimes homemade custard. Also absolutely delicious with pork crackling.

The fragrant lilac is just beginning, I have a purple one and a white one in my garden - I like to pick huge bunches of it and put it in the house to sweeten the air. Since I stopped smoking I have this thing about sweetening the air.

The decking looks tired. I have a vast decking system of oak in my garden that links our office to the house. It has mellowed to silver and it looks soft but it needs preservative this year. I think a crisp black will look good against the green of the bamboo that flanks it.

Today in the post a totally gorgeous belt arrived for me from a friend - me in a BELT! It looks so fab on I nearly wanted to cry! Gosh, I never would have worn a belt when I was a very large lass. It felt so good I did not want to take it off so I stripped off my old house gear and got properly dressed just so I could wear it. Then I went off to buy my food feeling a million dollars.

I thought today how it is that being a happy bunny, suddenly one sees this sadness in the world prevailing so strongly. Suddenly there is so much more hell in this world than heaven. I flashed on Lord Buddha who said ‘All is suffering…’ his very first words spoken after enlightenment. I think I got it, I think I understood.

Then I came home and cooked up a delicious beef & black bean stir fry with big fat white noodles, ginger, shiitake mushrooms. I have a little of the noodles and a lot of the beef & veggies. The boys love it - I cook a mound each time ALWAYS under the delusion there will be leftovers to cram between two slices of budgens bread in the morrow - I look again and not a scrap is left - it’s gone gone gone!

Tonight sitting here I feel peaceful and satiated. What a combo!

Another quiet day - definately calm before the storm! Tomorrow the house works will begin & I imagine I will be running around madly buying bits and bobs to sort the jobs. I don’t know why but usually this is pretty time consuming. I think it is because it seems to involve traipsing around several shops to get the list sorted.

The imagining business is what I like. Imagining what bricks will look best - putting them into the landscape mentally to get the pre-photo mental shoot! I decided to do the driveway a conventional brindle brick lined with black edging. It will suit most peoples tastes and I have to remind myself that much as I fancy a cobble set with bonded gravel it is just not a great idea to get too personal when selling is the objective. I am buying for the mass mind not for me! It’s hard to remember and I eye my wonderfully rich coloured hallway with some sadness knowing that too soon I must plump for magnolia. The whole thing must polish up in a smooth melange of creams and buffs and not scream bohemian artist’s abode -lol! On with the neutrals. *sticking out tongue making heaving noises*

There is anxiety in the Hood - we have in our small village a serial rapist on the loose. I worry for Katey and ask her to call me from work - I’ll watch she gets back safely. Suddenly one starts to think of all the dark spots in the village where a person could carry out his evil business. In South Africa tragically 1 in 3 woman get raped. At least it is less here and at least the police are onto it.

I went to the GP today - I have had quite a lot of pain & last night I sort of sunk into a panic of just not knowing what to do. Nagging pain waves are really the pits. At least a severe pain you know must be seen too fast but this sort of half baked stuff is really annoying. Mind you if it was excrutiating I would not be a happy bunny no doubt!

I am not a natural planner but I thought the GP could guide me to a reasonable decision. Much prodding - (good god it hurt!) later he determines if I have a hernia he is not feeling it. Phew. I do feel relieved. He thinks it’s borderline, not good, could swing and get better or worse. He suspects an inflammation caused by a virus but does not entirely discount a hernia. We decide to sit it out and not alert the Prof just yet. So far so good. Thank heavens for paracetamol it definately takes the edge off things. I have also a plan of action should the whole thing go pear shaped suddenly…so it was worth going. Sometimes a good clear head is much better than a fuzzy old anxious one.

I surprise myself by functioning pretty well despite feeling like shit for so many days. I think I am just silly sometimes - I will care for others even while my own guts burns and turns! Perhaps being a mum has made me resiliant in this way. I’m off to do some washing and to see what paints I have lurking that could be put to use. Then an early night I need some rest!

A quiet day. At least the fruits of endless calling for quotes is paying off. It’s a huge task organising home improvements and I need to get things sorted on the homefront as much as I sort the headfront stuff too! I think the urgency is inspired by suddenly realising my lovely brood are grown up - this house we must accept is no longer in the future plans & must be sold possibly early next year. The years of kids, pets and me being disabled from obesity, have left it somewhat worn and it needs TLC fast.

Things are coming together. I have found people to tackle the brick paving in my front area, a lovely chap who is eager to help me in my garden (that’s a nice job & I look forward to planting the flower bed once more), and the manky old garage door is to be replaced with a sleek steel number. Very swanky.

My parents in law will be coming in among all of this too - we have booked a getaway in Kent near the beach. It’s always a bit of a hassle as it is very important is that I have a seperate loo I do not wish to gas anyone inadvertently -lol!
Cottage here!
The fresh air and countryside will do us well. Zazen knows he will be having a holiday which is doggy heaven though we have been warned the people who are letting the cottage to us are ruled by two large cats. Zenni will no doubt be properly put in his place. It’ll only be a few days unfortunately I would have liked longer. I think we shall just chill out, I fancy long beach walks and hot fish & chips. I like the idea of sociable evenings playing scrabble, cards or watching telly. Pete’s mum is suffering Alzheimer’s and we love her so much it is so hard to see her decline. I am hoping we can all just approach it by living the day HERE NOW as fully as we can. For her there may not be memories eventually but I know how being loved that goes with one - that’s the important top stuff, we plan that she knows this love is hers before they go back to South Africa. We come back home for a few days and then off to Turkey. I look forward to that. I long for the markets and the sunshine and the friendly people.

On the stomach front - something is wrong. I have quite severe pain after eating but it settles down - it may be a virus, but I have a hunch that it could be a hernia. I had two repaired during my DS surgery and it just feels to me as if the umbilical one is back. I am avoiding facing the ramifications of this which I might live to regret. I’m very good at ignoring stuff & doing the denial thing. I thought the other day if one of the DSers on WLSinfo complained of my symptoms I would strongly advise they get it seen too! A case of do as I say not as I do if ever there was. My plan is to use painkillers until after the Turkish Journey and then if the thing has not resolved I shall fly to The Prof for appropriate scans and to get down to the bottom of things properly. So let’s just hope it behaves whatever it is! I do feel like I am chancing fate somewhat but what the hell fate is there to be chanced!

*One monk said to the other, ‘The fish has flopped out*
*of the net! How will it live?’ The other said, ‘When you have*
*gotten out of the net, I’ll tell you.’*

Thoughts for the day.
Getting out of the net is quite something! I can’t see anyway out of it, other than to expose it little by little by watching ones thoughts (and I mean just watching in a non judgemental way and not going into the ‘wrongs and rights of things’), by unhooking & dissolving the past where these thoughts may culminate, by unravelling the feelings that thoughts give rise too. By going very deep into the hurt, the pain, the stewing muck so deep that perhaps words no longer exist. Perhaps then one can come to the net and begin the process of extricating oneself from that too.

The past can’t be helped. Going back to it only serves to bring pain from bad experiences into now. What can one do about it? Going there only seems to make it worse. One has to consider if it could be transformed or dissolved in some way. If one has the capacity to enter into one’s pain field, this can be the greatest release imaginable. If not…it happened… it was shite move on. That sounds harsh but what’s harsher? Trailing around the past pain with one?

Or what’s the payoff? I always ask myself what gratification I get for staying fixed in my pain. It sounds awful, so often I have thought that I would do anything to escape my pain, depression, anxiety , my list goes on. Only to scrape a bit deeper and expose things I loathed seeing. Such as I needed pity or I was avoiding being truthful or I was manipulating others even people I love so very dearly.
Sometimes I have found deep guilt too. Guilt is spectacular in how it can mask itself in pain…almost as if there was enough pain somehow it would be the punishment for the guilt.
It never works that way in reality. The way to move out of guilt is through self forgiveness and the ability to learn from the lesson and not repeat - to become conscious enough through the guilt that the mistake or pattern is not repeated. We are human beings we do wrong and we make countless mistakes. The way to release is not through punishment.

If I had to revisit my abuse consistently (as mainstream therapy does) I think I might have gone bonkers. I nearly did - it was not a cathartic experience for me. I needed to move away from it not have it around me in my energy blocking me from flowing. I eventually could experience release by going very very deeply into that time in my life. In some ways I feel my depressions had been trying to get me in there - to go in deep, but depression is such a fear in itself it is hard to allow oneself to really let go in a depression. Depression crappy as it is is still being in control - there is great fear in letting go completely. Eventually I got the message & I did a meditation where I fully entered my pain and I had the profound experience of being delivered from it.

I have to say in a way my entire salvation lay in that traumatic abuse. Not that I could see it at all at the time or for many years afterwards. I definitely had hardly any childhood - it was stolen from me first by being born into an unhappy environment, then by the abuse. Once some of my friends joked about their first sexual encounter and I thought it was all so sweet and sometimes really funny - but I also knew I could not ever say I had a first encounter by choice. I was so traumatised by my first encounter I actually cannot recall it. But through this I have learned about the difference in being a victim versus being a survivor.
I have learned about how we all can chose to be either.

I have learned about how the *commitment* to be happy, has helped me to pursue a depth and a world I never would have realised existed…very much more than staying in my blanket of suffering could have. I am not exceptional in any way.

It’s not just for me. We all have original face. We all have this opportunity. It does not depend on anything at all (except perhaps a deep let go) & that is the sheer beauty of it.

On more surfacelike levels, pain certainly became a four letter word for me last night in the physical sense. I had been battling severe stomach -lower abdomen aching all afternoon and evening. At first I thought this was wind related, sometimes it can be excruciating. It moved between a 4 - 8 on the pain scale up and down. I had a bath and warned my family that if the wind was released it might cause a bath tsunami! But - strangely no wind. In the night I woke up perspiring and moaning (okay cursing) in pain thinking I would need a hospital visit. I got up and walked around the house. It seemed a little better. I was very afraid thinking this could be a bowel obstruction. It always takes me by surprise how excruciatingly terrifying these times are for one. I can’t explain except to say it completely renders one immensely vulnerable and the feeling of frailty is awful. I always think how I want to live long enough to keep on enjoying the ride. At times like these death does come to one’s mind(or perhaps I am melodramatic -lol!) The pain went down so I took 2 painkillers & several simethicone and went to bed. Mercifully I awoke. And mercifully I awoke pain free.

However since then I find on eating or drinking anything I am re- experiencing pain. I think my tum could be inflamed or something as this is not typical of wind. It’s really achy. For the rest of the day I will stay on soups and protein drinks. I am not feeling myself at all and I don’t like it. Hopefully it will pass. If not better by tomorrow I will connect with my surgeon.

So there we go - it shows that even as I approach my third DS anniversary…this surgery is indeed a lifelong adjustment and there are times when one is horribly jolted and reminded that it can still throw a surprise ones way and one cannot always be prepared.

*COMPASSION*
(I sometimes pull picture cards from a deck and have some fun interpreting the piccie.)
This card speaks of Jesus entering the temple of Jerusalem with a whip in his hand. It does make me laugh this story of Jesus full of fire, whip raised to the cieling chasing out the money changers & priests. I can see the mayhem of everyone rushing outside and saying the man has gone quite mad -lol!
I have had the great fortune of being in Jerusalem and being near the temples there - and so it really comes to life for me. What a shock these people must have had! I can see them rushing into the narrow shadowed streets trying to escape that cracking whip.

I wonder if in a Christian context this is not a hard one to understand - in all my childhood in church I never heard the minister speak of it! It seems the forgotton, unmentioned parable. Yet it is a tremendously powerful tale well on par with anyone of the parables. I wonder if it makes people nervous this vision of their peaceful Jesus going ballistic with weapon of destruction in his hand. Could be a bit disconcerting when the dove of love and peace turns into the rampant eagle.

In Zen - a stick (same as a whip really!)is not uncommon. You speak shit you get it on the ear. *CRACK!*
It’s not seen as violent - it is seen as delivered in full consciousness at exactly the right moment to deliver you to original face. In this it is seen as an act of tremendous love and compassion. Many a zen monk has reached enlightenment after a neat crisp twack of the stick.
A man like Jesus can wield the whip and in his hands it is not a torturous weapon of destruction. It is a moment of highly precise aware action. It’s a mercy whip. I wonder how many of those money changers sat down after the event and realised things they may not have considered before. I wonder if some did not feel directly transported into LIFE after that.

In a way it reminds me of Gurdieff. I can’t help chuckling when I think about old master Gurdieff. He would devise all sorts of awesome moments for his followers in a bid to so shock the ninny out of them that they would experience an entirely different worldview after the event. Many of his followers could not take his ‘cruelty’ and they left. No doubt he knew they would too. Some that stayed were changed forever.

I directly experienced a compassionate blow like this myself once apon a time at the hands of a great shaman. I was delivered a metaphysical blow to my great big ego that transported me in ways I would not have thought possible. I too was very angry initially - I thought it immensely out of keeping with my ridiculous preconception that a great master should behave in a certain way. Indignant, shocked and masterfully shattered I hated him for doing that to me. I spent a long time in retreat licking my wounds and ranting - lol. It was only much later on that I began to see the astonishing grace in what had happened to me & I returned to this wise man often in the future much more open, softened and able to comprehend a great deal more about myself and indeed about a man that enormously conscious.

Sometimes when I am really attuned I can see that in my life there were whips that hurt such as my abuse in childhood. (I am not going to justify for an individual other than to acknowledge the illness.) But these whips I was delivered I have transmuted to a higher purpose. This abuse no longer exists except in the past ~ it has been made into something else now in my being. Without it sometimes I do wonder where would I be now?

If there have been whips in one’s life & no master is present - then it is up to oneself to transmute the pain of those knocks into something of profound and astonishing clarity & beauty. Easy? No. Painful? Mostly. Possible? Infinitely.

*Man know thyself for in thyself is to be found all that there is to be known. (Inscription on Ancient Temple)*

*There are many famous koans. In one of them the disciple asks the master: “What is the original face?” And the Master says: “The face that you had before your parents were born.”*

Just as my fat literally melted away - just so my mind as it once was melts away nowadays. It’s an unexpected side effect of losing weight. So many of the troubles, the pain, the crust and clog is melting away & I am reaching into depths yet again. It’s not something I feel inclined to intellectualise - nor can I say it gives me clear cut answers but it does very much keep putting me in touch with a place I only ever occasionally have had the grace to be in. When I have a satori - I am there.

Bear with me as I tell you that from age ten into my fourteenth year I was subjected to sexual & emotional abuse which I could not escape as the man who perpetrated this lived in my house. It was as you can imagine a very stressful time for me and it took me many years to be able to talk about this experience.
I still hesitate as abuse is too often assumed to be the reason for obesity and I fall into the camp that feels that the entire point of it has been missed. I certainly did not gain weight on account of the abuse or ‘to try to make men avoid me.’ What sort of nonsense is that - I am just glad I never believed it else I would never have married my wonderful husband. I feel tired that I have to justify this and insulted that people are so intent of staying with the superficial causes rather than investigating things like the horrid stress that induces disease.
Many voices speak about how stress induces chemical triggers in the body it’s not new theory - I don’t think it takes particular cleverness to push down into this!
In the book ‘The anatomy of illness’ Norman Cousins speaks of how a person caught in an emotional storm begins to manifest increased flow of hydrochloric acid in the tum, upsurge of adrenal activity, production of corticoids, faster heart beat and increase of blood pressure. Perhaps there are other triggers about which we know nothing yet, but I believe if we are to seek the origins of obesity we need to be looking at the effects of prolonged stress on the endocrine system particularly. Alas instead we whittle away precious time on the periphery making up assumptions.

When I finally plucked up the courage to tell my mum what had been happening she did two things - firstly she threw this dreadfully sick man out of our home and secondly she told me in her wisdom that in each person there is a place in each being that is sacred & cannot be reached by others destructive natures. I remember thinking I knew that place already as I often took refuge there quite spontaneously as the abuse happened and I was amazed that my mum could verify this fact for me as until then I had not given it any thought really. Since then I have discovered that this ‘place’ this way of being is not unknown in the world. It has been called many different things from ‘original face’ to ‘healthy function’.
This was an immensely healing thing for me and again and again I have returned to this place in my being to seek respite, healing, solace from the challenges that have been dealt to me. It is here that I am attuned to my higher faculties. It is here that I begin to understand what my core life challenges really are and it’s here that I am given the strength and clarity to deal with things that otherwise might have destroyed me.

One of these things was a very intensive long lasting depression that affected me on and off for many years . Sometimes it would leave me in desperately dark and alone places and utterly lost in my own skin. I’ll never forget the sense of being misplaced. The odd dullness & how life downgraded itself into hazes, fogs, mists & mirages and other obstructions that sat inside a vacumn of hollowness. I felt my brain chemistry had died on me. My body was so lethargic I could sleep for several days semi comatose surfacing only for water and to wee. My muscles felt unbearably weak, my mouth felt like cottonwool had been stuffed into it. I felt paralytic without the alcohol. I thought I might never ever emerge from it and for years I feared it’s return. During these times oddly enough it was as if I could not open the door to my place of strength and I could not understand why not. I felt deserted, utterly destitute in my own being.
Those were trying times - dark dark days and nights where the infamous black dog that resides in the consciousness of all men as depicted in the pictures of Arcane wisdom, would ceaselessly nip at my ankles causing me to blunder about unsurely, my footing and my grip on reality lost.

At times like this without recourse to my higher faculties I went onto medication and lived the strange life of a world that fizzled into optimism and possibility but that had a saccharine quality to it. Bittersweet, sometimes astringent.

And my face was not original. That is what hurt almost more than anything else so much I could barely face it. I knew I was merely constructing over old muck the face of an animated peatbogman.

A lifeless Life was mine.

I had therapy but it did not help me. Firstly I had an uncanny sense of where the session would be leading. I could see the game and I was defensive I did not want things cracked open. The truth is I could not have coped with the onslaught. So I played the psychologist and just as she smelt sure breakthrough I would come in from an entirely different angle. It was futile.

Retrospect is always sweet. In retrospect I see how I was so caught up in my world of tightly knitted thoughts that I could not see the wood for the trees - let alone a door into a place in my being where I could rest in the spirit of my original face. Thoughts, particularly the fearful negatively charged ones I was emitting (and still do from time to time) are such weighty things sometimes - they spin an entire momentum in the head blocking out all that is light. They hid my door from me - I could not find this place in myself where I wanted and needed to be. I remind myself now a bit of some of the birds I have reared. Often I take in an orphaned fledgling and I rear these birds. It is a wondrous job one I have done since my youngest childhood. Anyway there comes a fine day that I open the cage door and birdie sits on it’s perch looking quizzically at me. It looks out the door but it is not going to take off into it’s element no ways! Prison is safer. I have to coax & tempt it. Often it takes several days during which birdie is perched outside to strengthen it’s wings and outward bound spirit before my heart leaps to see it reclaim the air & the earth that is it’s true heritage.

There is relief (however short lived) in the cage of diagnosis. The worst thing is not knowing what one has if one is ill . I have often seen people on our website post up in delight that at last they have a diagnoses for an illness & it can be cured! While this is fantastic on a physical level - the lines get blurred on mental levels. sometime diagnosis is barrier, prison, cage much more than it is release, resolve, healing.

I think it is dangerous to believe too fervently in a diagnoses. I was diagnosed as having chronic depression and had I persistently cultivated this thought in myself I am not sure I could have ever moved away from it. I have met many people deeply burdened by diagnoses doled out to them, clinging to it as if it was the last raft to paradise. Years pass - they still cling, anxiety evident.

I feel that thoughts are the foundation of how we perceive our realities and it follows that if we want to change that perception of our reality we will have to investigate thought & the dynamics of thought patterns. To do this it helps if the mind can flow freely without all the expert diagnosis & belief systems that rigidifies things into coping mechanisms. ‘Coping mechanisms’ - oh for god’s sake what awful thing is this to give a person! Almost as dreadful as self -esteem!

This process won’t necessarily make us feel better - in fact it is damn scary. There are many times that I have noted how when I apply my full attention to a thought it has this shocking capacity to grow. I can go from ‘how my obesity is so painful for me, to how my Aunt once mentioned I was a bit overweight, to how the entire world hates me in a few seconds flat. Then I am crying and having a huge pity party too. It reminds me of amoeba’s - how by a bit of attentive cutting action one teeny amoeba can turn into ten teeny amoeba’s can turn ito hundreds. Same business with thoughts… if we nurture our thoughts - they grow. Dwell on them - the molehill soon becomes a veritable mountain.

Depression IS negative thoughts - it’s not possible to heal depression with negative thoughts.

Sometimes I think part of the effectiveness of anti depressant drugs is it is very hard to think on some of them. One thinks only the basics in ones life - and I certainly felt much better when I was on drugs…but I don’t know if it was not just the mechanical slowing down of a thought system that had become hugely overburdening to me?

In any event - do not get me wrong - sometimes this medicated help is the only recourse of action, I am not against it. In my deeper moments I needed juice to help my receptors function better. But there are other ways too - more intensive, perhaps more painful ways but ultimately clearing & fog free. I am free of debilitating depression and have been for over 5 years.

I look back and try to remember what it was that made me stop playing about at the bustop of my Lifes journey. I know without a doubt it was a memory of another way of being - of a safe place within myself that contained all of the qualities I needed. I want to live there permanently - but my inner obstacles to this are many & diverse & under current investigation.

Part of it is fear related because the truth is I hardly am able right now to fit into ‘normal’ social contexts and I hanker for that feeling/idea of just being part of the crowd. I don’t like to stand out - (and if you are obese or have known it you will have resonance and understanding of what I am saying here) although I have accepted now that to a degree my choice of dress does this to me. I have in the past deliberately muted my dress sense to ‘fit in’ and it’s only recently that I am feeling I must 100% go with what makes me happiest & most comfy in my own skin and try to disregard any judgement that comes out of this. I’d like to just not care about something so profoundly fickle as clothes but again as a person that battled obesity one becomes aware of the whole image thing very very acutely.

Apart from the above the person who decides to live a full happy life in the big sense of the word is patently disadvantaged from the very outset. The crowd is not happy. The crowd is not concerned with bliss on earth it is enough just to try to earn a crust. The crowd persecutes people who dare to move beyond the constraints of belief, the constraints of thought, the comfort zone. The crowd only has support structures in place for those suffering. Not for those wishing to move beyond suffering.
If you are here it is an alone place to be. And I don’t buy that it feels fine to be all alone - it is hard. It hurts like hell that very few people love one enough to move past their constraints & the splinter in their eye.

It’s so daunting. So I don’t know if I have the guts and I think I am stalling which makes me laugh at my complete fallibility really.

I have a friend, I think she is just something else how she looks at things with this bright eyed wisdom & frankness. She knows both the battle of living with obesity and the mental ward scenario well & I know she is not ever going back because she has tremendous insight for such a young person. This weekend she said something which did not escape my attention. She said ‘eventually you go into your past and investigate things and you realise there is nothing you can do about it. You have to look at what is going on now and just take it from there. It’s what is now that matters.’

Wise wise words.

Up at the ungodly hour(for me! I am a night owl) of 7am Saturday to spend time with friends in an East Midland hotel. Well worth it though. It’s so good to see them all - each one is incredibly special I think, but then I am probably biased. The thing that struck me most was how different each one is and yet how among all of us there is a tremendous underlying surge of synergy & understanding. It was great - lot’s of good laughter & kinship. Added bonus was meeting M, Fiona & Garak who is a gorgeous dog.

I found myself on the grazing cycle foodwise - I always end up this way in hotels or on the go. This has to do with the fact that most of the protein gets comprised of pack & go type snacks. At home my life is very different - 3 meals, 2 snacks on a good day - that’s it!

I finally learned to read the train timetables please do not laugh. I am slightly embarrassed to admit this delay in my development. Stuck at Clapham with no friendly ticket workers advice - with people tearing past me trying to get home and no one looking friendly or approachable I had a panic moment. Then I saw the big timetable. Now ordinarily don’t ask me why but I look at figures and I panic.
Figures are illegible to me I have the equivalent of a figures dyslexia. I cannot make head or tale. Then the faint panic thing sets in and suddenly I’m thinking on my maths school teacher who hit me so hard on my knuckles that once I wet myself in front of the class. The shocked silence & frozen faces in front of me as I stood anxiously at the blackboard - knuckles red and stinging from the ruler. Then faint giggles from the kids that delighted in others misfortunes. The dreadful moment when my bladder swung open out of fear. The gates of hell opening right there & then. How my head went into a numb shock, I am sure to protect me. The slow motion of the wiping up of the pee. And then the awful dampness of my underwear. The shame of it all still crosses into my consciousness 32 years on - what kind of a person was that teacher anyway?
Did she know what I was trying to cope with then? My grandfather had just died and parents were in the throws of a messy divorce. Times were hard. She added to my pain substansially every miserable day.

The flip of the horrendous lesson: always I remember I do not know the full extent of some one else’s life at any given moment. Try not to add to the possible pain that might be silently existing. Stay conscious, out of consciousness kindness can arise.

So all this flashes through my head. Part of the 50 000 thoughts I (and all of us supposedly have everyday). And then suddenly I see the figures - the way it all hangs together and I read: Weybridge. Train leaves at 4.49pm on Platform 11. Suddenly this woman appears next to me - please she says can you help me I need to get to Watford Junction?

I tell her she choose the right day to choose me to help her. We smile at each other briefly. I try out my new skills and talk her through the way it is done. I wonder if she also had a teacher that made her afraid of figures (probably not) but Wooooohooooo!!! it works again I think we should get a badge - people like me who are figure dyslexic. Mine would say : Might be peanuts to you - big progress for me!

I am tired in a happy kind of way. Off to make myself a bowl of food and then to bed early!

After Fatland left me with some lasting impressions - I have been pondering how sad that fun & light heartedness is no longer seen as anything particularly special by the world. How we miss it in our misery - how we puncture it. Perhaps because when we are in a misery people who embody it just seem in one’s face - irritating. Their acceptance might not be our own, their acceptance might still only be peripheral or a cover up for the need to survive but they are moving beyond in many respects. Not suprisingly and perhaps rightly, this world has affinity for the suffering much more than for the joyful. The inherently joyful are a very rare state of affairs.

That’s a sad thing because a true hallmark of a master or of an enlightened person is that they carry inherent joy in their beings. Impossible not to if one is in the greater flow. A quick flick through history can confirm the celebratory nature of such people. Jesus & his wine & feasts. Lord Krishna with his consorts. The laughing Buddha of old China. Lord Buddha whose entire precept was to help humanity understand suffering so they could move past it.

I think on a friend I know - always she could find the fun in something and she had this wonderful magical childlike ability to play & to laugh and to create laughter and a deep spirituality with this… but recent events & draining people have depleted this magic in her and I was sad last time to see her not able to resist common downward pull we all seem to feel in the world rather often. Rather than the upward pull. It’s a work to let one’s spirits soar in this world.

We are the greatest barrier to ourselves. Sometimes I look into people and all I see there is a hard built up gungy crust. And the whole attention is on this. I wonder if it’s impossible to heal a crust of this nature - one has to ditch the whole thing and move on. *It is just as possible to let go as it is to build up the crust* - in fact the crust demands a huge ongoing energy of us.

We could just go into total acceptance, we could go into a true deep joy - it is all possible. Deep acceptance is a phenomena that our bright minds cannot access. It’s a simple word but a massive phenomena of Grace & Mercy.

At the risk of shooting myself in the toe and making a case for ‘the mind completely made my body like it is’ which is BS in my case - my analogy is that of my body. I watched this body releasing it’s fat deposits for months. I can equate this fat with crusts that our minds have in many ways. I had no choice but to be watchful of this process as it happened - that was really all I could do besides sustaining the body with food and vitamins - my body seemed to have a life of it’s own. It dissolved and dissolved and dissolved and then one day there it was - my body still - just in a different yet still recognisable form. It is something I think on, the power of a lesser body. I am wondering if one did likewise with the mind - just gave it basic nourishment and watched it authentically with no belief structures whatsoever to reinforce it ~ what would happen?

Otherwise the crusts persist. The fear is too big. The whole head is a swollen crust so often holding in a sepsis of unimaginable destruction. I understand sometimes it must exist in this world - it’s about survival. Do I know this!… it’s been my own struggle. But now I am seeing in the end the thing we need the most can sometimes become our very worst enemy.

Perhaps nothing creates so much defense mechanism as struggling morbid obesity - because I had to survive a hell on earth and all the judgement of that hell too. It is a huge practise to keep those crusts from growing with each hit one takes in one’s daily life.
I often think my surgery was very painful, but it was VERY much less painful than the crust I was lugging around in an attempt to stop the next cut.

So one must think - what to do if the mind is full of painful crusts? How do we treat a seeping scab on the body? If we pick it only becomes worse…if we cover it that only breeds further disease. This makes me flash on the very basics of breath meditation - the simple act of watching breath go in and out. No judgement - just watching thoughts flow - just passively observing as the thoughts arise. Perhaps this can help someone to begin an entry into the world of the humungous monster mind-scab. Think oxygen

I think most people are not ever contented…there’s always the ‘betterness’ option. There’s always more work to be done - it could be endless if one wanted to go there. Satisfaction is a rare bird and particularly on the body level. I know how I easily lapse into old mind so annoyingly just to pick my crust. And picking at it only serves to build it up. For me the feeling of irritation is my key and I’ll be watching that I consciously move through that feeling in the coming days, releasing it. I don’t know what keys other people have that make them go a picking, but it might be worth pondering.

Just sometimes true self acceptance can exist. But it is rare. Very very rare. It exists in a world beyond the collective mind of human beings…and it is the complete opposite of this ugly thing called self esteem we so bandy about.

That’s the difficulty - how to live without any self esteem? Because self esteem is part of the crustiness. It’s about working out a plan of defence constantly. And we promote it. It’s a cheap substitute for the real mcoy.
But it fits the mindset of our times - this idea of having to bust ones gut ‘to achieve’ ‘to have’ to be ‘a success’. This is my observation. I think it is like a bad perfume. All initial hit on the senses but no lasting resonance, no subtlety.

Like the all the best things it is simple so simple we cannot do it! True acceptance is about letting go - dissolving into Life. It’s about no resistance any more. It is energy no longer spilling outwards. These insights remain with me from the last satori and I am sorry to bring them to these pitiful words. One has to feel the energy of these insights.

I’m quite interested in the dynamics of it. I am concerned for us that travel the journey of the body as we do - all our expectations too often focused on the end happiness factor only to find we are still searching for the holy grail. How easily it seems to escape us.

I think actually it’s not just the problem of a person who has transgressed the obesity factor - it’s humanities problem. This idea that if we become something …a lawyer, a millionaire, thinner, smarter, more sexy - we will be happy. So our happiness is all about ‘becoming’ also about ‘depending’…this is our global mindset.
And nowhere is it more prevalent than in the community of people suffering obesity. I feel this is partly because it’s pretty often just not grasped it’s about escaping a disease and getting back body function & health - much much more than it’s about being size twelve and wearing a bikini and having society nod approval. I say this - I say it knowing that the entire system bucks it - to qualify for reconstructive surgery for example a person must weigh below BMI 30. This is regardless of anything else…it matters not if your starting point was BMI 74.
So that is an indication of the national rot.

This is an exploration beyond all of these things. Because one day we wake up lighter in the body but where do we go from there - so now the body is lighter - so what!? Yes, there is fun to be had adventuring through the thrill of a new hair cut or clothes that fit and it’s all good - I am a yes person and I believe in delight in the surface as well as the depth - it’s all one ocean. But do we dare to ask the deeper questions about our state of being? Do we dare to remove the crusts and how?

Recently I read of a bunch of 12 WLSurgery patients longerterm - 8 years out in that vicinity & something like eight of them are requiring medication for depression. I feel deeply for them, it’s traumatic stuff we go through, but in eight years time I do not want to be there myself. In eight years time I want to be lighter in mind too, lighter in spirit as well as body. So I am keen to yet again undertake a written exploration into metaphor and the true nature of transformation. I am keen one more time to spin the wheel & spin it finally. Maybe if I am brave enough I might drop right through the center of the wheel too. Consciousness bungee jumping!

I am interested in roses that bloom in the snow. I am interested in the resurrection of the human spirit in a world that is unable to accommodate it. God help me - I thought ridding the body of nine stone plus would be enough and now this!

My hubby will rag me endlessly about my pity party - but nope - still not brilliant today - still I am swallowing the many pills and taking flu capsules on top of the already evil amount. Still, sheer vanity but I was not going to miss getting my hair done in Mr Richard Wards Salon today.
Check it out

Pulled on my brown velvet slouchy pants - omg just look at the itsy little waist! Pulled on my fav black tunic & my boots. No time for brekkie - glass of milk must suffice. Caught the train into London at 10.00 walked up Sloane Street at 11.25 on the dot - rather chuffed by my impeccable timing and keen sense of appointment keeping. (Not always a true virtue of mine but I had an extreme fear of looking common as muck if I breezed in there African time.) Mind you I am common as muck but was hoping no one else could tell -lol! I definately still have a residue of the really low self esteem days that rears it’s head before I try anything new, always. I think it will forever be in me but the difference nowadays is I lift my head up and just work to get past it instead of retreating and withdrawing.

I started with a facial - so loverrrly. I was born unto the lap of luxury I lay there cocooned in soft blankets getting my face sorted and my hands manicured - I thought oh hell why was I not born a millionaires daughter! I’d be a regular in there no doubt about it… as I write I feel my hubby blanching pale!
I am a bit ashamed to confess such shallowness but oh! it was sooooooo good.

The hair bit was long and protracted - with much sorting out of a dense colour and the addition of several highlights - when I looked in the mirror several hours later I had a real surge of the old feelgood factor. There I was transformed from frumpy dense duckie into sleek slick beigey wonderment. Why is it a fresh crop of hair well cut can boost one so much. No wonder the Trinny & Suzannah brigade flock to this salon - if they can work a miracle on hair like mine - they ARE good!

At the station I am overcome with hunger what a bad bad day it has been my protein count is seriously foul. I feel the heartbeat of sure hunger in my tum. I have had all of 40 grams all day long thanks to two Weider drinks. I walk from food stall to stall - all carb, breads, ciabattas, stodge. I buy a pie that says egg, bacon, beans and sausage pie out of desperados. Uuuugh - good lawd who eats this stuff! It’s ghastly. A big pasty ball of doughy salty yukki. Spurred on by the promise of egg & bacon I eat it scooping out the filling rather messily with my fingers. Halfway down I stil hope for egg or a wee square of bacon - nothing only sausage & beans. Cheated, I catch the train at Waterloo and came back in the mellow clear light of early evening.

How I love that journey, each time it is different. This time the light fell on trees, it’s all this fresh limey green as the new leaf opens. I watched a squirrel silhoutted as it leapt from slender branch to branch at one of the stops and marvelled in it’s incredible confidence & sure footedness. I thought how wonderful the villages looked in the distance over the green fields and how the rivers like mirrors contained magnificent sky views.
Out in the fields drenched in light were flocks of fat wood pigeon & the odd spring rabbit.

My daughter was delighted by my transformation. It’s really nice to have a girlywhirl in my life. Pete will be back tomorrow and can tell me what he thinks then. I am looking forward to him being back home. Only 4 days without him still I feel slightly lost and waylaid. Pathetic I know! We laugh about it - I can go off for a day sure as Bobs yer uncle he will call me just to ‘check’ on how I am. It’s good to have a soulmate here on Planet earth.

I got home a friend calls - says she’s not sure if I will be interested in the telly program ‘Fatland’ but perhaps I would like to watch it. I feel like an outcast of my own kind. I know she does not mean it nastily but why on earth would I not be interested in my own disease? That’s the hard part people look at me and think because I appear slimmer it is all GONE. I, on the other hand am acutely aware that I only have remission. In me lurk the hellish seeds of Obesity forever. I too would rather like to not think of it like that - to think of this surgery as cure - but I think remission is closer to the truth. My interest in the disease will not ever go away - on the contrary I will always be praying it does not take up residence in any of my family - or any other hapless human being for that matter. I probably will always be seeking the clue to it’s cure unless I have the mercy of amnesia fall upon me regarding it.

It was a sad sad sad program. Very upsetting to watch in many respects and I of course identified with many things - the swimming thing was a huge issue for me too when I was obese. God I remember the fear - the adrenalin the very rare times I dared go to the local pool. Beaches were out - I’d never have swum out in the open public. I was not decieved by the cheery Ms Wann any more than her protege were. That said (despite my feelings that the participants might have been better off recieving surgery information) I’ll give the woman a lone cheer. First off for not commiting hari kiri despite finding herself bang in the vortex of a massive group depression & dour attitude. Crikey anyone would fold given the downward energy of this - did she truly think she could bouy things up by p*****ing in the face of convention! - lol. Bless her pink cotton socks for trying. Secondly, she could be salvation for those who cannot/will not have surgery. Sometimes defense is the only tool one has for the while. Perhaps one subscribes initially until the moment comes that that too must drop- but that’s another tale.

So I think Marilyn Wann might have salvaged many a life & even one is enough. I also empathise with her as this not so great success should be viewed against the bigger picture which is that she has single handedly inspired many good things for people who are suffering obesity - not least the zany (ok way over the top) humour she has. I have read some of her stuff on the net - I confess I find some of it hilarious. Particularly her quiz.
Marilyns Website

In all I am thinking - ok so what was Fatland REALLY about. Was it just our worst fear a sort of ‘here come the freaks ‘ so let’s all ogle show? I think not. I think at least let the word get out about how awful it is to cope day in and day out with the disease - and the participents did this very elegantly and well I thought - so more power to them all.

I’m decidedly not well today - alas. I thought I might shake it off but now my chest is congested & I’m coughing, I have zip appetite even drinking a cup of tea is difficult. I forced a dish of 4 scrambled eggs on myself this morning. I mean FORCED. It took me a good hour to get ice cold eggs into tum. I am having a few pity poor poor me moments too. I will be on protein drinks & milk for the rest of today as I don’t think I can do that forcing thing again. I’m not sure how I will find my strength this week - tomorrow is the big hair day. I was due to go and spend the weekend with friends but I worry if I get any worse if I will be able to do it after all - although I sorely need to see them there’s the worry of infecting the bunch of them.

It’s quite strange - I feel as if this is my bodies way of forcing the rest issue - it’s just too powerful for my mind! I’d love to feel 100% and be up & running but when the body decides that’s it - one had better listen! I refused yesterday today I am paying the price.
This is how my DS has worked too. One learns the sheer power of the body living with a DS…but I am a slow learner. I was reared with the idea that mind comes first so it should be the controller - PAH! LOL.

Perhaps humanity has made this mistake of generally assuming the body to be the weaker cousin in the trilogy of body, mind and spirit. I’m no different - my conditioning along with the rest of the world has been deep.
So the DS has been shocking for me in many respects because I have had to come back and bow to the great forces that are the body…and realise it’s intricacy, it’s frailty and yet it’s awesome energy. I have had to accept it as a blessing - sick or not. Without it where am I? How could I bring love to my children and my family in a more concrete way than through my bodily presence? Like the song I am listening too, where they sing of the ocean of measureless qualities - it really is that, this body & indeed every body.

Thinking such thoughts I’m able to deal with small vanity issues such as the flab & skin losing over nine stone leaves in it’s wake. More often than not I have respect for my body now. It has lead me through a lot. It taught me compassion. It taught me that I know nothing about it’s incredible chemistry - it is a laboratory of it’s own making! Just think - there is a huge humility in that - what little we know. Just look at the mechanisms of fat for example. We only paw at the surface of understanding the incredible organ that fat is…we know so very little. One day we will understand. I really hold out for that day.
Interesting Fat = Organ Stuff

What I find astonishing is how very slowly this insight percolates into the awfully mundane mainstream thinking of Joe Soap the public majority. I can’t help but feel as a collective mind this is info he/she needs to reject - if we believe it where will our last whipping dog go? Into what can we culminate our prejudice & judgement? Oh Lord - who shall we blame, name and shame if not the poor fatlady or fat man on their way to buy the humble daily crust? For centuries through our diet clubs, liposuction, ridicule we have tried to disown this most loathed of all body part.
Sometimes I tell this to people I know hold deep prejudice. It’s so funny - their mouths drop open for a second and then they go into disbelief and from there *bang* straight back into their hypnotised notion of diets and exercise being the key *SIGH*

I like to say - ‘ahhhhhh - so obviously you know more than the worlds foremost endocrinologists and obesity experts? ‘ It’s just bizarre really. If any organ is ill would we not seek to heal it. Weight loss Surgery may not heal the disease of Obesity but it does put it into remission. I flash on the astonishing amount of diets I earnestly tried in a 20 year span - did they work? Not a jot. I for one am saved by this miraculous Weightloss Surgery.

So back to this ~ my body that I have claimed and live comfortably in. (Well not today perhaps but ertainly most days!). My body has wisdom knotted into each scar, each sag & fold, earned out of the cuts and bruises it has had to sustain. I am interested to note that many of my scars have to do with birth & re-birth. So don’t look at them and think they are ‘just scars’ - nope - they are much much more than that!

Nice track playing ‘No Noise’ - ‘Karma Shabda’ - deep sensuous and smokily prayerful stuff. Think I will stay with that today.

Buddha of Compassion
All Buddha’s of Past, Present and Future
Bodhisattva’s
an ocean of measureless qualities….