One of the biggest concerns I had before deciding to have surgery was giving up my drug of choice----food. 

When you think about it, it's not a glamorous drug, you don't see celebrities going into rehab for it...but it's readily available, reasonably cheap, legal, and everyone, and I mean everyone, is a drug pusher. 
Your mom, your grandmother, your aunt.  Your friend who loves to cook.  Don't you like my food?  Have another serving. You can diet tomorrow. Clean your plate, there are children starving in (name the country).

You can get this drug 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Advertisements enticing you are blasted at you in every TV show.  People are shown having fun and being socially accepted around food, or they are sexy eating a messy hamburger.  So you shoot up your drug in plain view, and no one thinks twice about it. 

The problem is, you are killing yourself in plain sight.  Crying out for help and understanding while you snarf food down as quickly as you can.  And no one sees it.  The only thing they see is the weight, and they might think 'if she just had a little more control or discipline'.....what they don't see or hear is the siren call of food, promising numbness, promising fullfillment, promising love. They don't see the underlying pain you are trying to numb.

Food was my lover, and I carried on an illicit but completely visible affair with him for the first 15 years of my marriage.  I brought food to bed, loved him on the sofa while I watched TV with my husband, made sure he came with me in little packets wherever I went.  Snacks were always at my side, little love bites.  Food filled me up and made me feel whole.....at least for a little bit.  Food was more important to me than anything else at times. Food was something, sometimes the only thing, I could control in my life. I would get horribly angry if I coudln't have the food I wanted.....I went into emotional withdrawals, psychological, painful withdrawals.  You didn't want to be around me if I couldn't get to my drug. 

So the thought of walking away, essentially cold turkey from this love affair, quite frankly terrified me.  Who would I turn to in crisis?  How would I numb my emotions?  I mean, it's not like cocaine, or heroin, or alcohol, which you don't need physically to live.  Food has to be consumed every day.  You cannot eliminate it from your life. If I did this surgery, I no longer could eat the vast quantities of food the way I was used to doing. 

One thing I realized was that I couldn't do it on my own.  And that terrified me as well.  Count on other people? Count on God, the universe?  Trust other people?  When you grew up not being able to trust the two people in the entire world (your parents) who were supposed to take care of you and love you and keep you safe, trusting yourself or others is an extremely difficult thing to do.

God has definitely helped me.  Now, this is a non-denominational blog, and I want you to think of God however you see him or her or the universe.  Whatever and however you understand that higher power that only wants the best for you.

So I asked God for a lot of help.  I asked God to provide me with people who would support me, people I could tell the truth to, people who would help me.  And God did provide that.  I have learned to open up and trust both myself more and other people.  Did it happen overnight?  No.  Did it happen in stages, and after people proved themselves trustworthy?  Yes.  Do I feel everyone is trustworthy? No.  Will I give them a chance?  Yes.

By the way, it's God that has pushed me into writing this blog.  To me God is the voice inside of you telling you the right thing to do, telling you what you already know in your heart.  So God has been harrassing me for quite a while....."Romo, get off your butt and write this blog.  I've given you the gift of words....Now write!"  Okay, okay, so I am finally writing.  And just writing this blog and putting it out to the internet itself is a gift of trust.  I don't know who is reading this blog.  I have to trust that the people who need to read it are being led to read it, and it remains undiscovered by those who don't.

So I'm almost a year out from my surgery, and I can say this.  Food still calls to me, but it doesn't control me. I made a decision that if I was going to do something so extreme, so irrevocable to my body, that I was going to behave myself.  The thought of changing my internal plumbing to the point where I no longer absorbed all my nutrients....and then going back to overeating.....was unacceptable.  The fact that I no longer have a stomach, but a pouch, also helps.  There's just only so much that can be eaten at one time.  I have learned to listen to my body....it tells me when to stop, if I will only listen.  And if I don't, there is a serious side effect....either dumping syndrome or throwing up.  Both are extremely effective behavior modification tools.

I will say that the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.  Now when I see food, I think about size 6 pants.  Painting my own toenails.  Walking up several flights of stairs.  Shopping in regular stores.  Fitting inside restaurant booths.  Not dreading airline seats.  Being able to roller skate, jump rope, zip line, tap dance. 

I send these words out hoping to help you find your own journey to healing and wholeness.