The WLS Twilight Zone
The WLS Twilight Zone
I am not what people expect me to be. I have finally accepted that I look quite a bit different than I did before surgery, that some people actually like how I look. I am more physically and emotionally fit than I have been in almost 30 years, but I am still an introvert, more comfortable expressing myself in writing than in person, shy around groups of new people, ever the careful observer of others, someone who feels things deeply, but who offers a mostly calm demeanor to the world outside of himself . Certainly I am more confident than I was and I am full of opinions and no small amount of bull**** once you get to know me, yet I can see in the eyes and facial expressions of the new people I meet that I am not at all what they expected me to be. Those expectations are based, I suppose, on the previous experiences they have had with people who look like I do now. It’s like they want me to be an outgoing, charming, gregarious macho guy and are disappointed when I am not those things. Their apparent disappointment doesn’t bother me too much, though, because I feel more alive and better about myself than I ever have.
I don’t see the fat guy in the mirror any more, and I am not what other people expect me to be; whatever I am now is still emerging…not so much the physical part of me, but my true nature, the man or beast within. It is a weird place to be on my journey, not where others expect me to be, nor where I expected to be, but perhaps where I was meant to be, not a new man, exactly, one who is familiar, yet changed in some profound way that I am struggling to understand. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that other people don’t know what to make of me when I am still trying to do that for myself. It sure makes life interesting, this WLS twilight zone between preconceived expectations and changed reality, but I have to say that I like it.
RP
