Mini-Post: Transition Fluid

 So I found out recently I gotta have a total knee replacement (!).  This'll be my second surgery on the same knee and hopefully the last.  I say hopefully because I'm technically too young to have knee replacement surgery and a knee implant only lasts like 15 years so if God forbid I live past 70, I may have to have another one.  Or maybe even sooner since implants are likely to fail sooner if you're fat.  And I am, Blanche, I am.  Anyway, I don't expect to live a long life since I've been ingesting large quantities of toxic meds since I was 40, but still, it could happen.  That's happening June 4 which is really soon.  I'll be off from work for 2 weeks and ease back in part time, from home, as I get off the high test drugs. 😳

Meanwhile, I find myself wanting to stop doing stuff I've been doing for years because I'm realizing it's no longer doing anything for me.  Not swimming, thank God.  It's bad enough I have to not swim for a month because I won't be able to drive.  But I'm a member, say, of this book group.  We've been meeting once a month for years and I've gotten pretty fed up with it.  We picked a science fiction book where slavery was still legal and I wasn't gonna read that one.  I don't read stuff about slavery unless it's historical and there are reasons for that.  I like to be informed but I don't like to have my psyche traumatized.  So no, I've never seen Twelve Years a Slave or Roots.  (I didn't watch Game of Thrones, either, and I quit watching The Handmaid's Tale, compelling as it is, by Season Two Episode One.  Halfway thru, in fact.) So I skipped that meeting.

Then when I do go to meetings there's this one woman who Just. Won't. Shut. Up. And what she generally talks about is herself and how smart she is.  It rarely has any relation to the book.  I mean look, we're all smart.  It's Mensa.  And the moderator isn't inclined to moderate.  And  I wanna read what I wanna read, and my reading time is somewhat limited.  So I'm probably done with the book group.  I may not just leave quietly, tho, because that's not my style.  I may have to tell her, as I'm leaving, that nobody cares how smart she is and that I, for one, am sick of hearing about it.  I mean, they're gonna talk about me regardless.  So I may as well say something I'm proud of. 

The second thing: I've been going to Overeaters Anonymous meetings for a long time, probably 15 years or more. And--I think I've kind of run out of patience with it.  Part of the issue is that I don't believe in God, and though these A groups will tell you it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not, the program is totally and transparently Christian.  Fine, if you've got the patience for that, but I'm increasingly finding that I don't.  Also, I was at a workshop thingy and this lady was announcing that she had "eaten her way up to ___ number of pounds and she was just suicidal" and I thought, "Huh.  That's 30 pounds less than I weigh now.  I guess I should have thrown myself under a passing bus years ago."

Definitely no more workshops.  I may or may not keep going to meetings.  Everyone I've met there is very nice and we have kind of a mutual support society when each other need favors.  I'm fine with all that.  But the dogma and such and this "you must lose weight or die" thing is something I'm just not going along with anymore. I think people are the sizes they are because of the way their lives unfolded, and some of us are big and some are small, and that's the way it is.  We're evolutionarily designed to gain weight, not lose it.  I go into why in this blog post and this one, and yes, the Aunt Friedas among us can lose lots of weight and never gain it back, but Aunt Friedas are 5-15% of the population.  The rest of us are biologically screwed, though some more than others. 

(And please don't come on here telling me, "If I can do it, anybody can."  No, if you can do it, you're probably in that 5 to 15 percent.  Don't assume your experience is universal to the other 85 to 95 percent of us.  I used to do that, and then one day I found out that being the eldest child of Lutheran parents in Salt Lake City in the 1970s is actually a pretty uncommon experience and that most people have no clue what I'm talking about when I say a stranger tried to pick me up in her car and drive me to Primary because they have no idea what Primary even is or why I did not find that experience alarming because it happened so frequently.) 

So what I'm saying is, it's not really helpful to be around people who are so obsessed with food, not eating food, having a food plan and trusting God.  I don't think about food that much, unless I happen to be hungry.  I eat my regular meals at my regular times and I'm good.  And no, I don't get any smaller, but I don't get any bigger, either.  I have reached that rare thing, equilibrium.  I don't think about God much either, unless somebody crashes into my Threads feed demanding to know why I don't follow Jesus. (Generally because someone quote-posted him there, which is why I block people who quote-post people.  Your phone screenshots just fine, you know, and then we can all mock them together.)  So you can see how I'm maybe not a great fit for this organization, though I do like everybody.  

I dunno. It seems like a lot of us spend a lot of time doing stuff we think we're supposed to enjoy.  For me that included driving a motorboat, skiing and gardening, among other things.  Driving a motorboat always seemed like a much scarier version of driving a car, with fewer rules, more idiots and more alcohol.  Luckily, I can't afford a motorboat so I got out of that job fairly early in life.  Skiing is great, but once every three or four years for a week is plenty.  (I won't be able to ski after my surgery.  Which is fine, I really couldn't ski before my surgery either.)  And gardening? Tried it for a year.  Grew some excellent onions, which escaped and now grow wild throughout my lawn. Which is kind of cool.  But otherwise?  Hated it.  Glad it's over.  I don't even mow my own lawn anymore.  I cheerfully pay someone else to do that for me.

But, like, we're all adults now, right?  We don't have to keep doing stuff we don't enjoy.  We can stop, and do other things.  Maybe you like going out with friends, drinking too much and singing songs all the way home.  Or maybe you just do that because it's expected behavior and you'd rather be at home binge-watching Gray's Anatomy.  This is me giving you permission to stay home and binge-watch Gray's Anatomy.  You don't have to take your kids to youth soccer games, either, if you don't like it and they don't like it and you're only doing it because you think it's good for them.  Maybe they'd rather play baseball or hockey.  Or chess.  Or even nothing.  (I always felt bad for my parents having to go to swim meets.  You're sitting on hard benches, you're there for three hours, your kid's in the water for 30 seconds and if your kid is me, they always place dead last.)  If you're a square peg, you don't have to keep ramming yourself into a round hole just because everyone else does.  It's a big world.  There's room for everybody.

And if you find that you don't have time to do the things you enjoy, regardless of what they are, that whole work/life balance thing really needs adjusting.  Life's short.  I had a good friend die of a brain aneurysm at the age of 26.  I hope I'll make it to 70, but there are no guarantees.  We're all here to learn stuff, but also to have a good time and experience the joys of walking around in a human body.  So go experience some of those joys, you guys.  Tell them Jen sent you.