“Thank you.”
This is something I’m trying to learn how to say more often.
See… here I am, staring down my 1-year surgiversary and doing great… but one of the things that I’m still struggling with is the amount of… attention, amount of compliments I get on my progress, how I look now, etc.
It can be very tough to hear and accept these compliments. I spent so many years as a “fat person” with such a low self-opinion of how I looked, that those few times I would get a compliment that I couldn’t bring myself to really believe them. I mean, c’mon… I felt terrible, felt I looked even worse, how could anyone be giving me an honest compliment? These were friends and family just being nice, right?
That’s a tough mentality to break.
I’m not sure I would say I still see myself as that same “fat dude” I used to be. But that doesn’t mean that the self-image that is in my head just instantly has gone away. It would be nice if the brain switched gears like that just as quickly as I was able to shed the pounds. But no…
The self-image thing is slowly getting better. I continue to put myself out there, in to situations where I never would have put myself before. Speaking before groups of pre-ops at my surgeons office, facilitating a support group, doing videos online and internet radio shows.
But it’s still tough for me to hear someone say something nice about how I look.
Add to that mix that I … it’s not that I … I don’t think I would say I wouldn’t be worthy of the praise on my progress, but a big part of me still does not believe I did anything worthy of the praise, that I didn’t do anything that anybody else couldn’t do. I don’t think I did anything special.
In fact I’m painfully aware of the stuff I screw up on, the snacking, the Easter candy, the peanut butter.
I guess what I’m trying to say is… thank you.
As hard as it is for me to hear it, as hard as it is for me to accept it right now, and as hard as it is sometimes for me to show my gratitude, I do hear the compliments, I do take them to heart, I do value them. And hopefully soon, my brain will catch up with the rest of me so I can also fully appreciate them.
