The word is: Dysmorphia

Can you use that in a sentence, sir, please?

*sigh*

Yeah, that would be me. D to the Y to the S - M - O - R - P - H - I - A. I have no idea who I really am and how I got here. Psych consult for one, please!

This body dysmorphia has been taking over me and my life since I started putting on weight after I gave birth to Thing One. Before baby, yeah, I was a little bit on the pudgy side of things. But no more than your average Jane. I wore a size 14 or a 16. It was all good. Sure I could have stood to lose weight, but damn, my boobies looked good so life was just fine.

But slowly and surely, the pounds crept on. Slowly they came, step by step, inch by inch, until I turned into this 300+ pound whale that I find myself. Imagine my surprise!

The problem really isn't that I now find myself so overweight. The problem is that I still think and feel that I am that 175-pound girl that I used to be. And because of that? I am an accident waiting to happen.

Now, I've always been clumsy. My feet have always been a little bit on the big side of things, and when you have Goofy feet, you tend to trip over them. Often. But over the last several years, I have developed a very nasty habit. You see corners? Well, they just don't like me. They up and jump out in front of me, making me smash my hips into them because damnit if I'm not supposed to be this large and should actually be able to get around them without this problem. You know, of them running into me.

As a result, my body is usually in some state of bruising somewhere. When I take off my clothes at night, The Husband will often say, "How did you get that bruise, honey?" And I'll have to tell him about the vicious attack desk that decided to move itself out two feet into the walkway because it just had to have some of my epithelials or blood cells in its wood because it just likes me in that kind of a way.

I've even had doctors ask me if The Husband beats me because I have so many bruises on my body at times. Ummm, no, he just has a wife that is a complete clutz and doesn't know the width of her own body, thankyouverymuch.

Lately, as I've gotten to this heaviest point in my life, my accidents are starting to get worse. Case in point, about two months ago, I was walking in our yard from the chicken pens to the sheep pen, helping the girls do the chores. Midway, I tripped over my own two feet and fell violently into a rotted 2x4 with my knee. As I lay there on the ground, stunned, I felt the pain overtake me in a way that I never have before. The girls were hovering around me, and I managed to grit out that they just needed to take care of the chores and mommy would be just fine.

But little did mommy know that she was NOT fine.

I managed to struggle to my feet and began to limp back to the house. I was pissed because there was now a small rip in the knee of my brand-new jeans. Sonofabitch. The Husband emerged from his garage and noticed me painfully making my way to the house and came to help me. He asked what had happened and got my sorry-ass tale of tripping over my own damn feet.

We made it up the steps and got inside and that's when The Husband noticed it. The red stuff. Because I couldn't bend down to take off my shoes, he helped me out of them, and as he was putting them away I started to take off my jeans. And there it was. A huge freaking gash in an L-shape across the top and down the side of my kneecap. And it was wide. The Husband came back out of the bedroom, looked at it and immediately pronounced "You're going to need stitches." That's when I started to cry.

Here it was, a late Sunday afternoon, and I - the girl who has never even broken a bone before - am going to need stitches. And my brand new jeans are fucking ruined. Great. Just great.

The Husband wasnted to call an ambulance, but I was having none of that. All I needed was stitches and the damn thing wasn't even bleeding much so BY GOD I was going to drive myself to the emergency room. And, well, I did. I mean, really. It was my left knee, and I didn't need that to drive the truck. And I didn't want The Husband there because while he used to be an EMT and all that jazz when he was much younger he really can't handle things well when I'm the one that's hurt. I just didn't need that kind of crap if someone was going to have to STITCH MY FLESH BACK TOGETHER.

So somehow I bludgeoned him into loosely bandaging my knee up and letting me go on my merry way into town to traipse into the emergency room to get doctored up. I mean, really. The girls didn't need to be there, and God knows how long it was going to take, etc., etc. I really pulled the wool over his eyes on that one, so to speak, didn't I?

Anyway, three hours, eight stitches and a vicodin later, I was good to go. It was hell living with this injury for about a week and a half, but it obviously got better, especially once the stitches were out. Now I'm left with this c-shaped scar that curves perfectly around my kneecap. It's actually kind of cute. But it could have been sooooo much worse, and I know it.

This was the latest injury in a series of twisted ankles, deep bruises, wrenched backs and all sorts of painful things. All because I weigh so much that I either can't control my own balance anymore or because I think that I'm not as big as I am. The only thing that I haven't done is break a bone, and I'm just counting the days until I do something that makes that happen.

How do we get this way? Why can we not see ourselves for who we are? Yeah, I can see the fat in the mirror, but why in the hell can't my brain process that I'm wider than my actual hipbones now? It's not like this happened all in one fell swoop overnight. It's been building for a while for crying out loud!

And they tell me that my body is going to do the opposite thing once I start losing the weight with the surgery. That I'll see myself as this really big fat person when I only weigh 125 pounds. It appears that I'm going to be doomed to body dysmorphia no matter what happens.

But at least I won't have any more vicious attack desks eating me for lunch anymore.