A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #132 “This isn’t going to work.”
It’s going to work. Just wait and see.
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice of life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Dear Internet,
This week’s missive, which was not supposed to happen but I got bored pretty quickly with the whole healing thing and doing nothing thing, has taken a few twists and turns. I kept picking at it on some days, adding paragraphs here, erasing paragraphs there. I’ll stumble a bit this week, so I hope you forgive me.
The surgery has happened, and, in a week, I’ve lost 10 pounds.
The ride is fucking wild, as Best Kate would say. I’ve gotten in the habit of weighing myself every other day (must stop before it becomes an obsession) and seeing the number go down is crazy. I just cannot process it right now. I haven’t weighed what the scale said this morning since 2012!
2012!
My last therapy session was on the day of surgery and my therapist, bless them, had agreed that it might be a good idea for me to go weekly for a while to process this thing that I’ve done. It’s a major life change, hell, I’ve had my innards rearranged and parts of an organ removed, but the weight loss this quick is what is fucking wild.
Every body, as learn as we grow up, is different so expectations on loss and feelings vary. I get that. I sincerely believed for the first few days they didn’t do the surgery because I had no abdominal pain except for the incision on the far right which I later found out is where they pulled the stomach through. That bit is painful.
I’d text Best Kate, “This isn’t going to work; this isn’t going to work!” and she would calmly, I surmised, text back it would work. Just wait and see.
I stare at the scale in shock and attempt, now, to not freak out that I have not done this sooner! I could have lived a better life since I started thinking about this surgery in my early 40s. But honestly, that is wasteful thinking. I wasn’t ready then. It took me two years to get ready now.
The night before my surgery, when I was tired and yet couldn’t sleep, sucking on some ice chips, I watched My 600lb Life. If you’re not familiar with this TLC bonanza of a show, it follows a person who weighs 600lbs and is getting fat girl surgery. Their highs and lows. How they function, their changes in attitude, and their eating. The first person was a two-parter and she was able to succeed (and I fell down the IG hole and see she’s still kept it off even after three kids nearly 15 years later). I have people I know who’ve done the surgery and succeeded.
But, yet. And yet. Of course, yet.
Fucking wild, I tell you.
I find myself like a pill bug, instantly rolling up into myself afraid to face the reality of what I’ve done. This is surely not a bad thing? It’s not like they can give me my stomach back. I straighten myself, square my shoulders when I get up and face the day like a champ. I have done this now I can do this, there is no turning back.
100% worth it.
J is 100% supportive of this whole ordeal even if he didn’t agree with it in the beginning. We talked about what he could and could not eat in front of me and honestly, I’m non-plussed about food right now so he’s eaten his normal diet and I haven’t felt a bit of jealously. Plus, what I crave is odd right now. Cashews for the salt. A bite of pizza for the savory. But I just want a few cashews and a bite or two of pizza. I don’t want a serving. My stomach can hold 4 – 6 ozs which isn’t a whole lot. Right now, it takes me about three hours to drink a protein drink because I’m sipping on it. I cannot imagine eating pizza, or cashews, or whatever else I used to eat.
We talk about his future of eating and changing his life. We enable each other, we do, when it comes to food so taking me out of the equation forces him to figure out for himself on how he wants to proceed. He says he’s ready to reign it all in.
Good.
We talked about what my diet will look like in the future. Right now, I’m on liquids (or as my surgeon said, if I can get it through a straw, I can have it). Next week will be pureed foods which I’m fucking PUMPED about because then J can make his soups and it’ll take me a week to eat a pot. Then it’s soft foods. Then it’s on to introducing foods back into my diet.
When I can get to soft foods, we’re heading to Los Aztecas so I can have their refried beans with soft tortillas. Excited doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Will I know how to chew?
I was on a bunch of fat girl surgery subreddits and I decided they have provided all their usefulness and left. It was becoming a growing concern the competition of who lost how much weight when that was happening with the posts, the begging for opinions, and medical advice. On one hand, I get it, you need a safe space to go and talk to others like you but on the other…
It’s complicated and can be confusing. It seems more harm than it’s worth.
I’m also a fat girl surgery Discord that is helpful and you have the regulars who are great supporters and the newbies who want fast answers and fast results. One woman is claiming she’s lost 22 lbs since her surgery date and we share the same surgery date. I guess this is possible? One of the people from My 600 lb Life lost 20 while still in the hospital but that seems more realistic to me?
Have I become a weight loss son of a bitch?
I hope not.
Things I Recently Wrote
If you read #97.5, you’ll recall I’ve ditched the We’ll Read Anything Once (Twice If We Like it) book review blog for a newsletter of the same name.
What I’m Reading
FINISH A FUCKING BOOK LISA BEFORE STARTING A NEW ONE.
Glenarvon Byron’s ex-lover was so distraught about their breakup; she wrote a roman à clef about their relationship
Pride and Prejudice Read this a zillion times but doing a read-a-long for Austen Mondays
Amor Actually Anthology of interconnected romance stories from top Latinx authors
The Christmas Cupid Can Zoey match six couples before Christmas Eve?
Hogfather (Discworld #20 / Death #4) A festive feast of darkness and DEATH
If Walls Could Talk Lucy Worsley walks you through the history of the home
A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove #1) Susanna and Victor are set for an epic battle
The Comedians Three men meet on a ship to Haiti during one its most volatile times
Cold Hearted Rake (The Ravenels #1) A clash of wills between Devon and Kathleen
The Five The lives of the five women who were murdered by Jack the Ripper
Remainders of the Day Shaun Bythell is back with more stories from The Bookshop, Wigtown, Scotland
The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie (Mackenzies and McBrides #1) Is Ian really mad or just madly misunderstood?
Check out my list for 2022 of media I’ve consumed.
Wonderful Thing
Indie bookstores:
This is probably one I should have done before the holiday season, but I want to celebrate indie bookstores.
Now, I worked a corporate bookstore for many years and didn’t give indies much of a thought unless I was somewhere and needed a book fast. The reason I was not an indie shopper is the discount at corporate bookstore: employees got 30% off on top of existing sales. Since we also sold used books, buying cheap books was incredibly attractive when you’re making $9 an hour. (Not sure why I wasn’t utilizing the library during this period but I liked the idea of having the physical copy in my hand for my leisure rather than being beholden to an end date.)
But that has all changed.
Now, I pillage the eBook collection at my local libraries (I have three cards to various library systems) and shop almost extensively via indies. I only get to Amazon if the book is hard to find or out of print. (Amazon has zillions of books that are out of copyright and free on Kindle. This is helpful when I’m reading a story and the author mentions a 100 year-old book that is available on Kindle for free.)
There are a couple of indie bookstores I’d like to highlight:
Brilliant Books: Your long-distance local bookstore (based in Traverse City, MI)
Carmichael’s Bookstore (based in Louisville, KY)
Bettie’s Pages (based in Lowell, MI)
lisa x
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
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