Before / After

I have a little secret brewing that’s been coming together for a few weeks now. While I want to tell anyone that will lend me an ear I can’t quite bring myself to say anything (just yet). I don’t want my bubble to burst and truth be told it feels really big and I’m afraid if I say anything it will deflate my anticipation…

However here’s a little hint: It involved me having to send in a few before / after pictures.

It meant having to dig through some old pictures to send. Some *gulp* full body shots. Now anyone that’s lost a tremendous amount of weight will tell you that those pictures come few and far in between but they do exist. We don’t like to talk about them and we’re certainly not about to pull them out over dinner. Funny thing is that you’d think I’d be all over that shit when people ask what I used to look like before the weight loss. I’ll show someone a head shot with just a littlest bit of twinge but I have a hard time looking at full body pictures. I don’t recognize myself and yet I fully recognize myself. I sort of shake my head and wonder “why couldn’t I get it together back then”. I think about all the potential to make life changes wasted and all the time lost. I get scared that even looking at the pictures will bring the weight back and as absurd as that sounds I know it happens to many of us that go from living in a morbidly obese body to living in a healthier and leaner body.

This is me.

I don’t remember when exactly this picture was taken but since I’m on a beach I’m going to assume it was taken in Florida and not yet at my heaviest.  The only reason I can attest that this is me is a) the tattoos and b) the dimples. Everything about who I am in this picture just doesn’t seem right and it’s hard to wrap my head around that this used to be me. I’m not talking just about the weight either. I look like a girl in this picture and when you’re on a path of discovering gender variance it’s easy to feel even more removed from who you were.

I kind of feel like I’m looking at an old picture of a roommate.

I know that’s me but I don’t feel connected to that person at all. It’s like a form of amnesia. I look at old pictures and think “that person is so much bigger than me” or “that person’s hair is so girly”. How can that possibly be me and yet it was me for much longer than the me I am right now.

When I decided to lose the weight and subsequently realized that I needed to explore my own gender variance is when I began to finally feel connected to the physical body that is me. Pulling out these pictures makes me realize how far I’ve come not only in changing the congruency of my physical self on the outside but also the congruency of my emotional self on the inside. I don’t expect a lot of people to understand the idea of not quite being one gender or the other. Most people don’t have a problem with marking F or M on a form when asked but I do. Even if it’s just a split second of hesitation as I resolve myself to checking female so I don’t have to explain in detail how I don’t identify with one gender or the other, that hesitation is pretty significant.

Sometimes I wish my life changing journey was just about losing weight. Lose a few pounds and move on with life. Buy some clothes from a department store that I couldn’t shop at before and tell my story to a few people willing to listen. It’s much more complex than that. Now that my body is leaner and more athletic I can’t deny that the small percentage of “girl” still exists. Even though 99% of my clothes are purchased in the men’s department I still have a few items that I love to wear that were found in the women’s department. I put on one of my favorite fall sweaters and immediately ask “is this too girly for me?” or take the plunge of running outside in just a sports bra and all I can think of is “everyone knows I’m a biological girl”.

I’m grateful to my old self for holding my new self deep inside where I was safe to wait. While I don’t feel connected to the self of old I feel a deep love that I just can’t quite put into the proper words. It’s like I was a protective shell waiting until the right moment for me to slowly but meticulously begin to crack. My timing may not have been perfect and through this cracking of the person I was, to begin the journey to become the person I am meant to be I had to make some choices that left people feeling lost and abandoned. It was heart breaking to decide my being lost was no longer an option and in order to find myself it meant letting go. It meant letting go not only of relationships with others but also with the unhealthy and unloving relationship with myself.

Not everyone’s weight loss journey is going to come with the complexities that have come with mine. Don’t, however, just assume that weight loss is just about weight. It’s about losing and finding. About letting go and loving. It’s about cracking shells and allowing what should have always been to finally be. It’s about looking back and focusing forward. It’s about having regrets and still going after what you deserve…

It’s about your before.

It’s about your after.