I'm Giving In To You...

(Yes, I used an Adema ear worm of a song as the title for this... I feel no shame!)

I don't know if therapy today was helpful...

I'm realizing how much work I'm putting into improving myself and I'm loving the results.  I'm self confident for the first time in a long time (if ever).  I like myself and I'm learning that I can even eventually love myself.

Today my therapist questioned why I still want the gastric surgery when I'm losing weight on my own.  I tried to explain my thought process to her but all I could manage was "I've put the work in to get approved for this surgery so I want to see it through."

As I drove how this part of therapy stuck with me.  The truth is I don't want to be over 200 pounds anymore and I don't think I have the power to drop 80 pounds on my own through just diet and exercise.  Is getting surgery giving up?  No.  Getting surgery is me realizing I need help and allowing myself to ask for it.

I'm not ashamed that I'm still getting surgery.  I'm proud of the weight I lost and the milestones I've reached (2 months no caffeine!  No NSAIDS!) but if there's a surgery out there I've spent 3 months mentally preparing myself for and changing my lifestyle and eating habits entirely for... why not get it?

I'm not selling out on myself by getting surgery, I'm buying into the person I'm becoming as I grow mentally and emotionally with these boosts in self image.

If I'm off-base, by all means tell me.  But I'm very much of the mindset that my mindset isn't wrong here.  I've made a lot of decisions the last few months to better myself and asking for Gastric surgery is not one I regret in the slightest.

Taking Self-Validation Into My Own Hands

A part of me is looking for validation from other people about how well I'm doing.

Fuck that, I'm validating myself: I'm doing fucking amazing work here. It's not even May and I can safely say I've...

* Flown for the first time... four times total on two different days!
* Been further west than Lake George, NY
* Been in 3 states in 1 day twice
* Learned why legalizing marijuana is a good thing
* Managed to lose 15% of a Taser weight-wise
* Gone almost 2 months without caffeine and I'm not really missing it at all
* Went to a concert by myself without worrying about what other people would think
* Went to a handful of parties where I knew no one by myself and made friends
* Found the new doctor for the pacemaker surgery and went through with making a call and getting it done
* Pro-actively asked my doctor about the gastric sleeve surgery and went through with all the tests and doctor visits required for my hopefully future approval for it
* Found a new dentist to replace my other new dentist (It's so difficult to find a decent dentist with good bedside manner when you have state insurance)
* Got my first tattoo and then another... so 2 tattoos... for now
* Cut WAY back on fast food
* Contacted my local YMCA and received a scholarship to use their gym and pool as soon as I'm healed up from surgery
* Got past any insecurities and fear and actually spent a day and a part of a night in New York just exploring on my own.

I've done so goddamn much and I'm not the same person I was. My friend Thierry, before the concert we went to the other night, asked me why I was doing all of this...

Obvious answer is obvious... I would really like to start dating regularly but the real reasons kind of flooded out of me as I talked to him: I didn't want to die in my sleep. Last year I planned every contingency just accepting it was an inevitability and, if I continued to live that way, it would have been. I don't want that. I don't want constant pain in my back and legs when I walk. I don't want to constantly be afraid to sit on furniture at other people's houses in fear of breaking it. I want to be comfortable when I go to a concert at places like Mohegan Sun with their tiny tiny seats.

I want the freedom to do what I want and to be who I want... and I'm realizing I already had that freedom. So I'm using it to its fullest to be the best possible me I can be. Can I undo all the damage I've done to my body from years of isolation and pill popping? Probably not. But I'm still here. I'm still alive. And as long as I'm alive I want to live.

I don't want to be a tortured artist that's too tortured to make art anymore. I just want to be a happy artist that shares his art with the world. I want to be someone positive instead of being someone who dwells on the worst case scenarios all the time and worries about everything.

It's not an easy journey but I'm finding each step to be almost fun to take. I haven't hit that wall yet and maybe I won't.

I'm learning that I deserve happiness and so much more. I'm learning that I'm actually pretty cool and I shouldn't let other people be the only ones to see that. I've got to get a piece of that action myself.

I'm allowed to be proud of myself and my journey.

And I am.

Surgery is a Full Time Job

I have absolutely no idea how someone can go through gastric surgery while working.

This shit is my full time job now.

Today I met my surgeon (she's awesome), one of my nutritionist (she's also awesome), had blood drawn, x-rays, scheduled an endoscopy, and they also gave me appointments with a Cardiologist (just for a check up) and their OWN psychiatrist just for one appointment.  I didn't check but I'm pretty sure both of those are next week and the week after that is the outpatient endoscopy procedure.

I'm exhausted.  I was going to go to a vanilla meet up for kinky people tomorrow night at a Ramen shop but I'm just so so tired.  If I'm too tired to go, so be it, my health comes first.

Not going to lie: this has made my fears of going through all this work only to die out of the blue in a car accident or something worse.  I'm trying to tell myself that fate is fate and worrying about it can't help.  The only thing I can work on and improve is my health and I'm working my ass off on that front.

Secret Ingredients May Include...

There is this Icon for Hire song that hits particularly close to home when I listen to their last CD...

A few lyrics resonate pretty well with me.  "I don't know if I'm ready but I want to move on... and I've never said that before" can pretty much sum up the last 4 months of my life.  "Make me better, I can't stay half way dead forever" is another one.  But the big one is a simple question:

"When you take the sick away who am I supposed to be?"

So many close people in my life and even doctors and therapist have told me that I'm more than a diagnosis and, to whatever extent my OCD allows me (see what I did there?), I believe them.  But there is always this fear: I've lived my entire life with OCD and anxiety disorder which lead to almost constant depression.  If you remove those, how much of what makes me me was a byproduct of those conditions being severe?

It's a similar situation with the idea of "How can I know what peace feels like if I never experienced true peacefulness?"  There has only been one moment in time where I was able to sit, lose myself entirely in the moment, and not worry about seats or the people around me or anything else.  When we opened up for the band VAST their live show was just amazing.

Sure, it's a bit influenced by the likes of the Cure and such, but their music was just so layered and perfectly performed that I was able to sit there in awe and just enjoy every beat and note without worrying about stupid things like "What if I don't recognize this song" or "Are my friends having fun?  Should I check in on them?"

Old therapist have told me to try to search inside myself to figure out why this is.  I've been to dozens of concerts and I've never really felt that peaceful sensation before.  Maybe I was already tired because we just opened for them two bands before they took the stage, maybe their music has a soothing quality to it, I don't know.  VAST isn't even one of my favorite bands anymore yet I still look back on that show as one of my favorites.

These are two issues I have to focus on as we move on through the year and more and more changes pile up to create what is essentially a Taser 2.0... "What makes me me is me... not my OCD or Panic Attacks" and "How to find mindfulness in social situations and just enjoy and have fun?"  There's still the overreaching "Learning to love myself" self-confidence issue that is at play, too, as well as learning and practicing as much Cognitive Behavior Therapy techniques to combat unwanted thoughts as I can, but I feel like handling the idea that I'm not who I am because I have an illness or I'm not who I am because I'm fat is probably a good thing to cover, too.

This year is going to be a bonanza of change and awesome.  I just have to allow myself to let things happen without overthinking everything which is so much easier said than done.  But I'll do my best.

Sometimes a Taser's but a Taser...

I haven't done one of these in a while and I'm hopped up on High Caffeine Tea, so why not:

Name: Daniel Tase Hayden
Age: 35
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 295
Tattoos: Celldweller/Circle of Dust Logo mash-up on left inner forearm, Rocko on my right lower calf
Instruments played: Keyboards, Binary Guitar, Bass

Favorite Movies: Deadpool, Cloverfield, Fifth Element, Saw VI, Turbo Kid
Favorite Foreign Movies: The Raid, Lady Vengeance, Meatball Machine, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, Gothic Lolita Psycho
Favorite Actor: Ryan Reynolds
Favorite Actress: Asami
Favorite Bands: <PIG>, Hate Dept, Innerpartysystem, Chemlab, and Gary Numan
Favorite Song: SKOLD's Neverland

Favorite TV Shows: Frisky Dingo, Hell's Kitchen, Law & Order SVU, Jessica Jones, and Scrubs

Favorite Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Baka & Test, No Game No Life, Himouto Umaru-Chan, and Devil is a Part-Timer

Favorite Books: Ready Player One, Snowcrash, Neuromancer, Treating OCD with Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Dummies, Soon I Will Be Invincible

Favorite Comic Series: Deadpool, Empowered, Hack/Slash, Mercs for Money (RIP), and X-Statix

Favorite Male Superhero: Deadpool, Booster Gold

Favorite Female Superhero: Ms. Marvel, Harley Quinn

Favorite PC Games: City of Heroes, Shadow Warrior, Saints Row IV, Gal*Gun Double Peace, Outland

Favorite Console Games: Splatterhouse, Bayonetta, Deadly Premonition, Deadpool, Bioshock

Favorite Handheld Games: Donkey Kong vs. Mario, Project X Zone, Steamworld Dig, Slayaway Camp, Tetris

Favorite Mobile Games: Threes, Card Thief, Crashnauts, Lost Socks: Naughty Brothers, and Million Onion Hotel

Movies I'm looking forward to: Untitled Deadpool Sequel, Black Panther, Infinity Wars, Wasp & Ant-Man, Rampage, Pacific Rim II