Although my mind just unsurprisingly catapulted me back to the '80s and into a Bartles & Jaymes commercial (remember them?), I do have a serious topic on the docket.
There are big, big changes afoot at Chez T.
Many of you are familiar with my dear one, Supportive Partner Man (wrangler of giant yard sale boxes!). There's a link to his blog off to the left, and, what the heck, I'll just give you one here, too. SPM and I both have, for the length of our adulthoods, struggled mightily with weight, he even moreso than I. Right now, though, he's doing something about it.
I mean, really doing something about it.
Ground down from battling several associated medical conditions, he's bravely taken his first several steps on the road to bariatric surgery. Thus, our topic ... and title ... for the day. Support.
I haven't mentioned anything here until now because, really, this is SPM's tale to tell. But as he has become more and more committed to this course of action, and therefore more and more open about what's happening, I have found myself considering the role I will play.
Certainly, I will be the point person of the family support group. But this will mean big ol' lifestyle changes for me, too, and that's not a bad thing. After all, I'm a card-carrying charter member of the Jolly Fat Chick Club.
I love food. Been self-medicating with it for decades. Other branches on my family tree have had issues with the drugs and the booze, but I dance the fine line of the addiction waltz with butter, sugar and flour. The balm and comfort for my exquisite inner pain comes from anything cake-y. Wave a fresh Wegmans cinnamon friedcake or two in front of my nose and I am your minion.
This sizable character flaw has helped construct an interesting little co-dependency between SPM and me over the years. We've become comfortable in our indulgences, so comfortable that we can quietly injure each other and not even realize we're doing it. But we really have done each other more harm than good. It's past time for it to stop, even if we're struggling with how to go about doing it.
Consider this my public apology to him. He deserves better than that, and better than I've given him thus far.
Now that he's breaking the die, so too must I cease to be a food zombie.
This won't be easy. For either of us. But we're doing each other too great a disservice by keeping things the way they are. We really must learn to support each other on this new-old battlefield, because if we don't, we're doomed before we even begin. SPM has brought so much joy into my life over the last nine years ... could I do anything less than throw my unconditional love and support behind him in this endeavor? I think not.
Thus far, I've been going to many of SPM's appointments and classes with him, and with continue to do so. So far I've learned quite a bit. It's also been sobering to see people who are smaller than me in the actual surgical program. I've resolved that I'll try and match SPM's diet and exercise steps over the next six months of prep time, and hopefully make myself a little healthier in the process.
He's touched on the fact that there are those who give the bariatric surgical procedure a cursory glance and dismiss it as being "the easy way out." Also there are those negative souls who say, "Even if you do have it done, you might not succeed, so why would you even consider trying?"
To quote Big Daddy Pollitt of "Cat on a Hot Tim Roof": Bull.
There's nothing easy about this process. Not a single goddamned thing. SPM has to relearn how to cook, how to eat, how to exercise, how to live. He has to learn how to think differently about himself. He has to learn how to not fall back into the traps of his own negativity and despair ... or get sucked into the traps, however unconsciously laid, of others who can't break out of their own prisons of fear.
Even if that person is me.
Wish us both luck.
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