Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it. --Ferris Bueller
For the last 6 months, or maybe most of my life depending on when you start counting, I’ve been working toward having surgery that will help me lose weight. As I’ve gotten older, my weight and lab results have creeped upward, and it has become apparent that I need something to help me lose the weight that will keep my health where I want it to be as I age. It is ironic that this is happening when my own acceptance of my body and appearance is at an all time high, and I’m in a relationship with someone who not only tolerates me the way I am but seems to actually love me this way.
Things happen when they happen, and now is when it is happening. Life doesn’t give a shit about irony. Or maybe Life likes irony as much as I do…Life never says.
In one of those moments which seems to accelerate life, on Friday I got a call from the surgeon’s office telling me that my insurance company has approved the surgery. They wondered if I could do it on June 4th. Just that morning, the process still seemed pretty far off. Remote. It was going to happen at some point, but not now. I knew intellectually that it would be sometime in June, but that was “some day.” After speaking with the surgeon’s office and checking my work calendar, apparently “some day” is in two weeks.
Two weeks makes it real.
Nothing else has changed. My job is still in limbo. I have insurance right now, and presumably for at least a few more months but maybe not longer. Maybe I should worry about what happens if I lose my insurance? I’m in this new relationship that is really wonderful and maybe I should worry about how the two of us will handle it? Maybe I should worry that I won’t be able to drink alcohol for at least several months. Maybe I should be sad that I will probably never be able to drink a Car Bomb ever again. Maybe I should be worried about side effects, sudden death, blood clots or having saggy skin if I lose weight.
The thing that fascinates me is this: I’m not worried about any of that. I am a championship level over-thinker, and I am not overthinking. About anything. I’ve thought about it all, of course. I’ve considered the pros and cons. I’ve considered continuing to try to lose weight on my own until my work situation becomes more clear. I’ve cut back my living expenses. I’ve considered if this is really the best time for me to go into a new relationship. All of it. But I haven’t been stressing about it like I normally would, like I was just 6 or 8 weeks ago.
Maybe I’ve spent my whole life being prepared for an emergency and now that it’s happening I don’t recognize it, or maybe I’m finally just prepared to wait and see because I *am* prepared. Prepared go through with my original plan for surgery. To accept that sometimes people come into your life at times that seem inconvenient or difficult, but it’s the right time for your moment in time. To realize that if my job ends I can find another one, even if it’s doing something different. To be happy in challenging circumstances.
I just feel like I’m ready. For all of it. For whatever happens professionally, for an amazing relationship, for a healthier body. For anything. For things to happen when they happen. For change.
The last seven or eight months have been hard. So hard that there have been many times when I genuinely believed that I would not be able to get through it. If someone had told me in February that I would still be in professional limbo in May but I’d be at peace with it, and happier than I’d been in decades? It wouldn’t have seemed possible.
My life isn’t going to get any simpler this Summer. It’s going to get a littler messier. A little harder. There are going to be times when I feel like I’ve made a horrible mistake. There are going to be times when I feel like I can’t do it. There are going to be a lot of times when I thank the sun and stars that Thirteen appeared in my life when he did. There may be times when I need to lean on the people I love more than I am comfortable with.
It will be hard, but it will be OK.
Life is all about being a work in progress. Life is never complete until you die. Life is all learning and changing. Becoming who you are. Over and over again.
I’ll keep making things. Keep learning things. Keep loving my people. I do know the best people.
Life is too good not to keep doing it, as best I can.