Weight loss - has it changed you?

Kim, Ezpy, and Sharon have blogged about this topic thus far -- and it's actually a series of questions that were posed by Isha F. on OH.com's DS board in recent days.  I answered the questions there, but I'll post my responses here as well because I think my experience is different from those of the other (fabulous) bloggers:

1. Do you feel that you (the person, soul, who you are) has changed since you have lost weight?
Not even one tiny little infinitesimal bit. Same me, for better and worse.

2. Have others said you have?
As far as I know, friends and family think I'm exactly the same -- though it's obvious that my energy has changed, I'm no longer tired all the time, and I give off a healthier "vibe." However, who I am is the same, and I think they'd all agree.

3. How do you feel about that?
Good.  I know who I am, and those I respect and who are close to me know who I am as well.

4.  If you don't feel that the person you are has changed, why do you think others are saying that you have?
As I mentioned, they're not saying I've changed at the core -- but when people do react really strongly to my changed appearance, I suspect it's because our culture has such a bias against obesity that they can't imagine that the same person is capable of inhabiting a fat body and later, a thinner body. Weight is  identity-defining in this culture, as we know to our cost. 

Now, I'm married and in my 40s, and everyone knows that our culture desexualizes women past a certain age.  I suspect I'd be getting more flak and dealing with more head-trips and identity issues if I were a) single, and b) in my 20s or 30s.

But there's something else at play here, too, that I wrote about in my earlier blog in an entry called Tectonic Plates, Paradigm Shifts, and Identity.  For me, the DS journey has not profoundly impacted my self-concept, my marriage, or my identity, and as I wrote earlier, I think that's primarily because I went through similar kinds of radical breaks and crises earlier in my life -- in my mid-20s to mid-30s.  In fact, that's how old a number of my fellow WLS bloggers are, and I think for them WLS is the catalyst that often cracks their world and identity and what forces them to construct it and themselves anew. 

My catalyst was something different. Here's part of what I wrote about my own experience at that age:

I already had that paradigm shift in identity in my 30s -- which is why, I suspect that the DS isn't going to back the same kind of emotional wallop for me that it does for some others. For me, the catalyst was my mother's death when I was 26 which in turn triggered, a year or two later, a radical break with my family, my sense of self, my history, and my view of the world. In the aftermath of my dawning awareness of the extent of the sexual abuse I'd suffered from ages 3-10 at the hands of my father, and the total silence surrounding it and an intergenerational history of sexual abuse in the extended family, I fell apart. Literally splintered into fragments, shards, little pieces of a human being. I spent 8 years gluing myself back together in therapy, choosing who I would and would not become, and then about 5 more years after that learning to live rather than survive. It was only then that the self I am now began to have a life of her own. It was, without a doubt, the most painful experience I've ever endured -- possibly worse than the actual abuse itself -- and most of the time I thought I would not survive. I didn't want to survive.

But now, having survived, I look at my experience with a certain amount of gratitude. For better or worse, I know who I am now, and I feel convinced that without that sense of self, I never would have opted for WLS in the first place or been able to navigate the personal challenges and changes it presents with as little trauma as I've encountered so far (knock wood!).

My therapist at the time told me that it was better I should have to confront such issues earlier in my life rather than later, and only now can I appreciate that.  Also, my childhood history means that most of the time, I feel socially, sexually, and professionally ten years behind everybody else, and I suspect I always will.  My peers found careers, coupled up, had kids long before I ever did -- or considered doing, or remotely knew how to do -- any of those things. One can never recapture lost time.

On the other hand, I went into my marriage, into my career, and into weight-loss surgery knowing myself pretty damn well, which means that I've been able to make very conscious choices in all of those areas, albeit rather later than my peers and than most folks do. I'm not saying the choices have always been the Right Ones or the Best Ones, but I haven't been blindsided yet by unforeseen ramifications of choices I have made.

And that's a benefit I value a great deal.