Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Here's your profile....

NOW FIT IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is going to be hard to put into words. But I'll try. The changes this surgery has brought to me physically - increased stamina, fewer aches and pains, my lifelong bout with asthma almost becoming non-existent - were to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the increased amount of introspection this profound change in my body has caused. Before my surgery it was easy (for me) to define who I was - I was the fat guy. Nothing else about me mattered and being "the fat guy" trumped anything and everything else about me. I let it define who I was even though I can now see that's wrong. That said, now that the weight is going, going and hopefully and ultimately gone, the focus becomes who I am if I'm not "the fat guy." And I've done a lot of thinking along those lines.
I've expressed here before how much I love music, songs and songwriters. Ok, so surely the type of music I listen to can help define me. Alas, it's no help at all. The cd player in my truck holds six cd's. At one point you could go from Roy Acuff to Miles Davis without missing a beat. Can there be two more opposite ends of the spectrum than Miles Davis and Roy Acuff? Let's get even more basic than that - "Pick-up truck" and "Miles Davis" don't belong in the same sentence. I'm odd, I tell ya..........
I've also mentioned in this blog how I generally try to avoid politics. As my father once told me, "don't discuss religion or politics with people - there's no right or wrong answers and folks just get mad." But, for the sake of our discussion, perhaps my political leanings could give me an idea of who I am. Again, no help at all. I'm not a liberal. I'm not a conservative. I'm somewhere in between. I sure don't claim any party affiliation...I have a general mistrust of all politicians from either side of the aisle. I've grown profoundly sick in these last few months of individuals who assume they know where I stand politically based on my age, ethnicity, etc... I actually had a work-acquaintance riding to lunch with me last week who was bemoaning the skills (or lack thereof) of a coworker...he raked her efficiency over the coals and ended his summation with "and you KNOW she voted for Obama..you can just tell it......" Of course he thought he was safe insulting this person who he thought HAD voted for Obama because surely a forty-five year old, caucasian, southern male like myself had not. I let it drop and didn't let him know how I voted either way...but his presumptuousness peeved me. But I digress...
I'm a beer and chicken wings while watching a ballgame kind of a guy. But I'm also a write poetry and watching babies laugh makes me cry kind of a guy. I like watching NASCAR but I religiously keep up with who's doing what on All My Children. On my nightstand you'll find Eric Clapton's biography followed closely by Robin Roberts "...Rules To Live By..." I'm ODD I tell ya.....
I was raised by some men that, in my mind's eye - were MEN in every sense of the word. Even now my father-in-law (who I couldn't love anymore if he was my biological father) fits this role well. Men are men, by God and they have answers and strength and wisdom and courage. Chronologically I'm forty-five but still feel as bumbling as a seventeen-year-old senior at Stone Mountain High School trying hard to figure out what in the hell to do with his life. I know that if I peeled away layers I'd see the frailties and insecurities of these men that plague us all. But still I use them as a measuring stick of who I should be...and it's an ideal that I'll never live up to, given the pedestal on which I've propped them. So we're back to me just needing to be "me." Great.....
Dear God...if a mental health professional reads this I'm going to be admitted for observation.

2 comments:

Melinda Sileo said...

So now you see the problem of identifying yourself with something that changes and pulls the rug out from under you. I was a schoolteacher for 30 years and now??? A stay at home mom and housewife? From career woman to June Cleaver?
But we both have the chance to redefine ourselves in whatever way we want....wow! What an opportunity that is!

Timothy Freeman said...

The "kind of guy" you are is the BEST! I love you ! Rhonda ( :