I am kind of freaking out right now.  At the age 5, I was enrolled in 1st grade, at which time I was swiftly and truly schooled by my classmates.  I was not normal.  Period.  I wasn't allowed to dance to music like I'd always done before, without getting called names and being laughed at.  My teacher gave me a time out for not being able to recite the Lord's Prayer, and when we were supposed to play games that called for teams, there was team A and team "Shit, she's the only one left."  It was apparent, in no uncertan terms, that nothing about me was normal.  And since my family moved around a lot, I wasn't normal at any school, so it had to be me, not them.  I was given the advice to ignore it and they'd eventually go away, but they didn't. This ended, for the most part, while I was working at BMG, when I finally lost it on some asshole at J Records I was forced to work with.  I had one more incident of bullying behaviour just yesterday, and I reacted viciously. To be honest, I can't remember everything that happened there, but I think I just on that thin line that separates verbal confrontation from physical altercation.  Thirty-two (non-consecutive) years of bullying boiled up in my body, and I just fucking exploded.  But I'm not here to talk about bullying.  It seems I've done a lot of that since I've been on the Internet, and finding others like myself.  The Island of Misfit Toys is a real place on Teh Intarwebz, located a little further north-west of Dr. Moreau's Island, and separated from Fantasy Island by the Sea of Dreams (yes, we can see y'all from from our winders).  Enough of that, though.  Let's get down to bidness.

I'm here to talk about feeling paranormally different since waking up on the 14th.  The doctor said he removed 17 pounds of excess skin, fat, and other crap that wouldn't have ever otherwise gone away.  I'm talking about hearing the nurse softly say in my ear, "breathe deeply", and then I woke up with parts of my body that have always been part of me since I began to gain more weight than other kids my age, at four years.  The midsection of my stomach is mostly flat, but the lower part, the part that hangs down to your thighs when you stand, and makes you think that you have no lap whatsoever when you sit down - - well, it is gone.  Totally fucking gone.  Working on my computer has even changed, because my stomach was my prop, so I could work on my writing, promotions, and blogging while Smidgen curled up on my chest or upper abdomen.  Now, I'm having dificulty trying to find a decent computer spot, so I can write this.  I feel as though, if I were back east with the friends I have, I would hear them whisper about me not being me, reinacting one of the earlier scenes of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

On 14 September whilst waiting to be rolled back to the operating room, I was lying on my back with my elbow and hands touching the mattress, or I had my fingers interlocked on my midsection, and my elbows just dangled at each side.  If I wanted to put my arms at my side, then my elbows could touch the mattress, but my fingers wouldn't meet.  I couldn't do both and I never could.  It was just a fact of life for me, even after the gastric bypass surgery in 2004. Now, my elbows can rest on the bed and my fingers can interlock at the same time.  The Mother Unit was amused that my discovery of this amazed me so much.  I know that doesn't sound like much, but when you've never been able to do it before, it's kind of a thing.  The effect on my lower back was nearly instantaneous.  A lot of that pull is gone, which was the main purpose for asking to get the procedures in the first place.  Total success, right there.  Despite currently feeling as though I have been thrown into the Iron Maiden at an Iron Maiden concert, my back already doesn't hurt as much, and I'm hoping the pain will continue to wane as I heal.  I can feel the difference in my knees as well.

Psychologically, the immediate effect has not been as positive as I would have liked, but that's not the doctor's fault. Everything he did was exactly the procedures he signed on to do, and he did them expertise.  The thing for me, though, was that I went to sleep in the body I'd had for around 32 years, and I woke up a stranger to myself.  I'm not doing as well as perhaps I should in respect to mentally catching up to the physical tranformation.  There are differences you would never think of, such as, seeing my own "cho-cha" (thank you, Missy Elliott) for the very first time in my entire life.  Only a few hours after the surgery has over, I learned the women's cho-chas were supposed to look like this.  It is still quite a surprise, because most laypeople or medical personnel would never think that such a change would be shockingly phantasmagoric.  It's as though the doctor pulled everything up.  From now on, whenever I see some crazy person in the park talking down her/his pants, I'm going to wonder if they had a panniculectomy and abdominoplasty.  Such a shock to the visual senses is bizarre and unsettling.  On the other hand, I might be that homeless crazy person taking to her own privates sooner than later.

I was told that the surgery took hours because the doctor wanted to be as thorough as possible while he was working. Based on some of the surgery pictures he'd shown me during our consultation, I have no doubt he was thorough.  In fact, I think he did more than was authorised, probably because he knew I might need it down the road. I was already dead to the world, so why not? After a little bit of online research, what little time I've been online, I'm thinking that that extra something was some liposuction, considering I have two balls that catch the bloody water draining out of me, and bruises that just won't quit on my lower stomach, thighs, and cho-cha. Everything is relatively level now.  I had fatty bits on my back that are gone now, too. After all this heals I will appear to be, more or less, like someone carrying a few extra pounds, but nothing people would gawk or throw vomit fat jokes in her direction.

My entire dieting life, I was told to chant the mantra "there's a thin person inside me that yearns to get out!"  I was conditioned to dislike everything about me that anyone could see, while striving to look like the ones who are always at the front of the line to get their kick in before the day over. I was filled with a hell of a lot of animosity by the time I was approved for gastric bypass surgery, so much so that I had before and after pictures taken in the event someone told me I looked good.  My plan was to whip those pictures out and ask them what they thought now!  Over a time, especially when Aunt Tudi's health started to decline, I just grew weary of my verbal fight with society, and just gave up on avenging the evil so quantumly ingrained in us all by this mockery of our exsistence.

But, the other day, I was told it was good to see me, a "much thinner" me.  I didn't say anything then, because I've been feeling like every hell imagined in every dimension that could currently be calculated by any Physics Academic, and to be perfectly frank, I did not want to be in a tiff, or what have you.  Now, I'm a tad concerned that, in my heart, I know I may throat punch anyone who has ever known or seen me prior to the surgeries, but still comes out with that programmed bullshit, especially if they refer to having surgies to assist me lose the weight that was killing me as "taking the easy way out."  I am not above going all Jack Torrance with an ax on any motherfucker who crosses that line, and thanks to those oh so very easy surgeries and recoveries that were alllll done for cosmetic reasons and nothing else, I'm lighter, limberer, and enthusiastically motivated to shut you up by ripping your jaw bone off your stupid brainless head and feeding it to Toby. Strangers who do not know me will get you one free pass but, if a stranger proving how much of a douche nozzle they are by judging another within my earshot may very well end up in an intimate relationship with my shoes and elbows.  I haven't forgotten all the Kung Fu I was taught, and I'll probably be able to do them better now.  You can be my practice.

The flesh a person is in, is not that person, but it can affect them in unimaginable ways.  I feel like a stranger in a strange land now.  I can't quite grasp the extent of my aura.  Toby caught a glimpse of mm the other day, and barked at me as though I were a stranger.  I'm wondering how Smidge will handle seeing her new old bed, unimpressed that it no longer has the cushioning she requires.  I can get around things a bit easier, but still move like I need to squeeze, and that makes me look like I'm up to no good.  I had some of these issues with the first surgery, but the effects came much more slowly, so my adjustments were more easily accepted.  This time, not so much.  Not even after the gastric bypass did I have a figure.  Now that I do, I don't look right.

But just because I'm struggling doesn't mean I've lost one iota of my venom for humanity as a whole.  Once built, or stolen, I can just shoot my lethal laser gun at the global urban centers while wearing some dumbass latex cat suit.

FUCK THE WORLD

Love, Tin

PS: If you find any spelling or grammatical mistakes in this, chalk it up to unbridled anger combined with full body pain. Thank you.

It occurred to me early this morning, watching a part of the movie “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” that the whole deal of my biting my thumb at society for bullying me wasn’t so much a taking back of my power, but a recognition that I lost my power long ago, and felt the path of least resistance was to call myself that name first, or make the joke about my weight first, or be the first one to laugh my arse off, if I happened to fall, or say something awkwardly, or pretty much wake up breathing that day.

The taking of my own Tease Tin Flag coincided with my first nervous breakdown, after realizing that my final foray into the realm of normal, where people enjoy one another’s company, and date, and fall in love, and likeminded people can participate in groups and have the most wonderful things happen, was more than a little disastrous.  I knew in 1998 that I would never fit in anywhere, that I would forever be that outsider who got laughed at because of my separateness.  What happened was, I subconsciously said to the world:  “Fuck it.  I’m a freak.  Let me inform you on how deep the freakiness burrows, before you open your mouth and try to tell me what I already know.”  But another thing happened, too.  All the hate poured upon me by my peers, stopped rolling off my back, as it had always been instructed that it should.  No, I began to absorb that hatred, and I realized I hated the world just as much as it apparently hated me.  A reaction?  Perhaps.  Equal and opposite?  No doubt, for quite some time.

When I began to find a niche on the Internet, I channeled both the resigned outcast and the furious pariah.  They became two sides of the coin I figured must be me.  Now, there’s a part of me that shivers with concern if I ever didn’t take up the “I suck” banner before anyone could open their mouths.  Would my “All Y’All Need To Die, RIGHT NOW” banner also have to remain grounded?  And who am I, if I’m anyone at all, without carrying these flags in my hands?  The coin has two sides, but is there really anything in the middle?

Am I doing myself a disservice if I stop putting myself down, with the expectation that I headed the world off at the pass?  Am I doing people a disservice, thinking that this is exactly what they’re going to do, because it’s what people fucking do? It’s not that I don’t give people the opportunity to prove me wrong, but am I harming them by concluded they're dicks, which places the burden of disproof firmly at their feet?  Ah, but wouldn’t it mean that the people I truly love, also unconditionally love me as well?  Is there not a soul on this planet for whom I’ve made it ridiculously impossible for them to get to know me, or for them to even insinuate themselves just a smidge, in the attempt to do so?

Does any of this really matter?

Yes.  I would say yes.  The “RL” friends who let me drift away from them during the point of my worst life experience...I can’t say they abandoned me, but I freely admit demanding isolation.  But sometimes, the one thing a person rails against, is often the thing that person needs.  When it was happening, and even now to a point, I see that period of history in my life to be one of dropping the friendship ball by the most unexpected persons ever.  Why do I say they dropped the ball, when I was isolating so successfully?  There’s one thing you never do when you have a friend going through a crisis that compels them to withdraw for a while: Give up on her/him. Other things come under that umbrella rule of thumb.  Don’t be your typical passive/aggressive, dysfunctional, Emo self every single time you’re around her.  Listen to what she has to say or, if she doesn’t want to talk, don’t invariably turn the conversation more in your direction.  And, especially if she doesn’t want to talk, remain with her in silence.  Sometimes, the presence of a warm body can speak levels of comfort we’ve yet to realize.

All that aside, I wonder how many people prone to self-deprecation were tormented as kids and simply opted to take the work out of it for the assholes, and just tear themselves down as a way to avoid the humiliation and agony of having it done to them.  Until yesterday, I saw the act as empowering.  Now, I’m just wondering if my self-abuse is making it easy for the very people I want to see inconvenienced in every imaginable way.  By the same token, I wonder how many people who have the habit of self-deprecation were made so miserable when they were kids, they simply know no other world view by which to gauge their lives.