More than this………

“I could feel at the time/there was no way of knowing….” /Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry “More Than This” /No copyright infringement intended..

I’m apparently starting 2015, a lot like I did with 2014. Caught between where I was 5 years ago and where I was 10 years ago.

Especially in the case of this particular weekend, where I’ve a pretty good memory (which is nothing less than shocking, to me, and those who know me well) where I was both exactly 5 years ago and 10 years ago.

Martin Luther King weekend of 2005, I was with my children, who were 12 1/2 (Zach) and 22 1/2 months old (Zoe Arielle) respectively, on vacation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. While I was no longer working, I was in school to be a Certified Personal Trainer and in the process of launching a small business.

I remember that trip, quite well. It was Zoe’s first (and only) time on a plane. We had unfortunately booked our trip through a company that rhymes with “hot liar”, and while we got to Minneapolis/St Paul airport at 6:30am (took a cab from our apartment in Plymouth to the airport). Didn’t get to Fort Lauderdale until 12:30 am, the following day, as we had a layover in Philadelphia. It was quite frigid in both Minneapolis and Philadelphia and while it was warmer in Fort Lauderdale, it was unseasonably cool, even there, (late 40 degree temps at night, mid 60’s most of the trip, except the last 2 days where it got above 75).

While my parents lived close by to me (actually, everyone in my immediate family lives somewhat close by, save my oldest nephew who’s now in college) they had a second home for quite a while in the Fort Lauderdale suburbs. So while Zach and I had been to Florida quite a few times to visit them when they “wintered” there, between my pregnancy and maternity leave while I still worked until 2004, couldn’t afford to go to Florida. And after our  January 2005 trip, I was too sick to be able to travel, so it ended also being the last time, my children and I would be on a plane or out of the state of Minnesota.

My son ended up staying with my parents during that trip except the last night, I had already reserved a Marriott Town Suite in Fort Lauderdale, where Zoe and I stayed. I had many fond memories of that trip, whether it was being amused of how much crap that one needs to take on a plane for a toddler, to how much space my little 22 1/2 month old would take up in a king size bed. I had rented a car, too, so that we could go on adventures together, all 3 of us, in addition to spending time and going out with my parents. We drove to Las Olas Boulevard and the shops and restaurants all over, we also drove down to South Beach and saw the hotels and the cruise ships, it was a lot of fun, though.

Never Ever, to think,  at the time, that 3 1/2 years later, I’d be on a psych ward for 35 1/2 days, after years of being sick and getting sicker physically and mentally to disintegrate, after one serious suicide attempt and giving up custody before that, knowing that I was acutely suicidal and too medically and mentally fragile to best raise my kids, any longer.

Martin Luther King weekend of 2010, was spent inpatient at Fairview University Medical Center, one of many inpatient medical admissions I had from 2006 to 2010. What was different about this particular inpatient admission, is that I was begging my surgeon after almost gaining all my weight back, due to the meds I had been put on from nervous breakdown in 2007, increased and added post suicide attempt in 2008, that caused me to be the same size (a 24) that I was at my biggest before my gastric bypass.

What was memorable about that admission was that I didn’t beg my surgeon to reverse my gastric bypass, as I had NO idea that gastric bypasses were EVEN “reversible”, I begged him to REVISE me. Because if I had to be that sick, I didn’t want to be that fat again, if I am to be truthful.

Never Ever, to think,  that 6 months later, my surgeon told me I needed a reversal, if I wanted to live and have any shot of anything resembling a normal life. By then my definition of normal had been so reduced, beyond the scope of anything I could have comprehended, ten years, before.

I’m not trying to trigger my size acceptance and fat acceptance peers when I say that I had asked for revision in January of 2010. And I have more blogs in me of why I do the activism that I do, when it comes to both weight loss surgery and/or SA/FA. And why I’m supportive of BOTH. But this isn’t the blog to discuss that.

This is the blog that explains my constant sense of remorse, that I have a life, that while I know just how lucky that I am be alive, is so far away from the life I dreamed of, ten years ago. It’s why even though 5 years ago that I had just gotten out of the mental health system, after a an almost 17 month stint, that as much as I complain, I don’t take things for granted.

But as I’ve said before, I never took things or people for granted. My freedom, perhaps, but really NOTHING else. There’s really NO learning lesson when in my life, my complex medical, cognitive and mental health issues, robbed me of abilities, that are just not conceivable to most people.

But again, I understand how lucky I am to have kids. I am lucky to have those I love the most, still alive.

Still, I’m always going to struggle with this….

“There was no way of knowing/like a dream in the night/of which way we were going” – Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry “More Than This”……

(Note: Above pic of my kids and I, taken 2005)