Coping Issues

My name is Oscar Rios. I’m 38 years old, a Virgo and I had bariatric surgery on August 28th, 2008. I’ve lost around sixty five pounds and hover above my goal weight. In less than a week I’ll be nine months post op. I am having a very hard time coping with things. I am having a difficult time learning to live this new life. Part of me wants to go home, go back to a place where things seemed simpler. But I can’t. I won’t let myself; I’ve come too far, invested too much and am looked up to by too many. If I fail, I fail more than just myself.

Part of my fascination with life after bariatric surgery has always been the mental changes a person experiences. I’ve mapped out the corners of my mind pretty well before surgery; trying to understand why I did the things I did which led me to my obesity. Getting the surgery to me meant nothing if I gained the weight back, if I cheated, if I refused to make fundamental changes in the way I lived my life. Maybe that’s a little hard on me, but if I don’t push myself no one else will. I knew that I ate when I was angry, so I had to learn new ways to control my anger. I had to learn new ways to disperse it once it had built up inside of me. I’ve had successes and failures in both.

Turns out just losing the weight was part of it. Once I got thinner, I wasn’t as ashamed of myself. I slept better. I had more energy. My attitude about life generally improved and people around me reacted better to me. They feed off this positive energy. I realized I was part of my problem. I realized I was polluting my own life.

But life still offers challenges and obstacles. I have a stressful job, a wife and two children, a traffic filled commute, bills, tuition payments, and all the other joys of life like a recession and the H1N1 pandemic. Losing all the weight in the world won’t help there. Stress, anger, disappointment…these things are part of life. What isn’t a part of my life anymore is food, not the way it used to be. Recently life has been very stressful, and I’ve struggled a great deal with coping with it all.

I’ve gotten sick and thrown up more in the past six weeks then I have the first six months after surgery. The things I’ve used to deal with stress are exercise (walking the track at Cunningham Park and doing sit ups at home) and writing. There are problems with both of these things. While exercise is generally positive, after about 100 sit ups I’m spent, it only takes me 15-20 minutes at this point. Walking is better as I can easily walk for around 90 minutes, but if it’s cold, dark or rainy I can’t do it. No, I can’t join a gym at this point; I wish that was an option for me. So, if I have a crappy week, and the weather is bad, I’ve lost one of my two outlets… As for writing, writing is a good one. Unfortunately you can’t write forever without recharging your mental batteries. To keep fresh you need to take breaks. Another problem is that once I’ve reached a certain point in your anger, my mental state is disrupted to the point where I can’t do it.

This week has been exceptionally difficult. Last week the weather was bad, limiting my walking time. I got stuck in traffic and it destroyed my evening as I couldn’t get to the park. I ended up staying up most of the night, playing video games and writing. I finished a project 2 days early because I was trying to cope. I got to the track the next day and totally exhausted myself, feeling relaxed to the point of near catatonia by that night. However the next day started bad and got worse. Ultimately I learned that the plans I had made for Friday Night, plans that had been 3 weeks in the making, were cancelled.

Now let me explain… My writing is for a game. Once I write it, we play it. Once we play it, I fix it and eventually publish it. Playing what I write is a MAJOR way for me to refresh my creative energies. I need to do this periodically so I can keep writing. What we were going to play is a part two, part two of four. I have to write parts three and four, they are going to be a book released late this year but more likely next year. I cannot write part three until part two is played. I finished writing part two on May 2nd, which means I’ve been waiting to run this for nearly 3 weeks. Between then and now I finished another short project, due to be published in October, for an annual compilation I’ve been in the past four years running. I’ve done a lot of writing in the past few months and I really needed to recharge. When my friend cancelled on me, because his girlfriend needed him for something, I completely lost my mind.

Since then I’ve been in a near rage. I can’t shake the anger, no matter what I do. Hot baths, extra sleep, mugs of tea….nothing is helping. I posted an angry status on Facebook, only to take it down when my son replied to it “you’re kinda starting to scare me”. Facebook is how parents and children communicate in 2009. I know it’s just a game. I know it can be rescheduled. I know these things happen, things come up and plans change last minute. I know all these things. That knowledge isn’t helping me calm down. I’m too spent and upset to write. I can’t even move onto my next project until we play this one.

On days like this, like yesterday and today, the answer was simple. Two eggs, bacon and cheese on a buttered roll. A slice and a Sicilian with a 20oz wild cherry pepsi. A lunch special of General Tso’s chicken, with eggroll, egg drop soup and pork fried rice. Those things aren’t options anymore. Dealing with stress in my life in such ways was what led to my obesity in the first place. Those doors were closed to me. There was no going home. Like Cortez burning his ships I was forced to somehow make it in this strange new world.

What do you do when the new things you tried to replace the old unhealthy habits aren’t working? What can you do when your new life isn’t fitting well, isn’t working for you? How do you come up with new strategies that will work when you’ve tried everything you can think of and it hasn’t? Hell, I’m too angry to even eat my 4oz meal, I’m afraid I’ll throw up.

I’ve lost the weight; I sort of can say that now. I’m fine with the weight I’m at, my wife is fine with it, if I don’t lose another pound under my last low point I’ll be okay with that. This isn’t about losing weight anymore; this is about trying to live. I don’t know how to live my life like this. It’s frustrating. These are issues I never imagined. Giving up beer and soda, okay… Fried foods, rice, white bread, okay… Living a day to day life where all the coping mechanisms you’ve used up until now are banned from you and the new once you’ve chosen are sketchy at best? Come on now? How the hell am I supposed to figure this out?
A friend told me yesterday I made this look easy; I made it look like I had everything under control. The truth is there are days I’m a total mess. There are days I am completely lost, and miserable, and so angry I could kill someone. There are days I can’t sleep, can’t eat and can barely get through the day because I am so angry. I know who I am now, there is no old me new me conflict. It’s just me now. I just can’t seem to get being me right! If I can’t figure out how to live like this, how to function being me…then what the hell does that mean?

My name is Oscar Rios. I’m a semi-professional published author of role playing materials for the Call of Cthulhu game line. I work for a crematory, doing office work, dealing with Funeral Directors and families. I’ve fought my way to a new life, a healthier one, and one I’m having some measure of difficulty learning to live it.