There is an old story that I tell about myself that I am sick and tired of telling. I am sick and tired of knowing how the story plays out around me. 10 years ago, I began to entertain the idea that I could change this story, that I could exert control over it. So I reached out for help and had some success. Everyone congratulated and encouraged me, it felt great. I felt like I could shape this new story. However before long the old story began to reassert itself, and the progress made was lost.

So I let the story go, told myself the lie, it didn’t matter, and that there were plenty of people who shared my story. It was, after all, just part of the story that made me who I was. It was not like I was a bad person, I was doing well in the world. So I continued to tell myself the old story for a while it seemed to work.

As is the way with lies, my story began to crack even to myself, I could see the holes in my story, I could see the long term consequences of my false narrative. So again I thought maybe I could tell a new story. So I began again slowly. I reached out for help and found it. I began to learn the habits, and information I would need to support my new story, to keep it grafted to me as truth. Again, slowly I began to have success, slowly the success began to add up, and slowly I began to tell this new story of who I am more easily. This new story began to feel like the real me. The old story, the one I am sick and tired of, could see it’s passage into history, into what once was. Then like any fairy tale foe, it reared its ugly head for one last effort to seize the narrative. While I am sick and tired of this old story, it sure has been with me a long time, it’s like an old friend and suddenly part of me wanted to cling to what was known and sure. Suddenly I didn’t want to win, the cost of losing this old friend seemed too high. 

My new story and my old story began to fight to be the ones in control of my narrative, and I stood on the sidelines unsure of who I wanted to be victorious. Both stories seemed equally matched, equally strong, equally capable of walking with me from this point forward. Then I began to remember the list of reasons why I wanted to create a new story, this lists of pain and sorrow the old story caused me, the list of joy the old story kept from me, the lists of small injustices my old story inflicted on those closest to me, the list of prejudices inflicted upon me. 

So today I am walking into the ring where that battle is taking place and declaring that the old story shall become part of the new story, but going forward it is the new story that will direct the narrative. It’s not that old story lost, the old story is becoming, just that, the old story. This new story isn’t as well developed, still plagued with plot holes and where its leading is less clear. But I am sick and tired of telling the old story, of living the old story. I have been for the majority of my life what doctors call morbidly obesis, I have just called it being fat. I am tired of being fat, and tired of feeling like this is my only story. So with the help of Doctors, nutritionists, nurses, and medication over a four year period I have lost nearly one hundred pounds; but this is not enough to radically shift my story in the way it needs to be shifted. So on November eighteenth I will undergo gastric sleeve surgery. November first I will start a restrictive and specialized prescription diet that in the next 6 months should drop my weight another one hundred pounds. This is exciting, this is marackelous, this is what I have been working towards the entire time, and it is terrifying, new, and risky. If I don’t follow the rules I could lose my hair, I could re-gain weight, I could let the old story control the narrative again. In so many ways this new story does kill off the old story that despite its negative effects I love. While I have declared the new story the winner, my old story it’s dead and gone yet.