My first year… Five women (and one man) share their rollercoaster stories

… after getting sober. Or losing 95 kilos. Or leaving an abusive husband. Five women (and one man!) share their rollercoaster stories.

I’ve been plus-size since I was 10 years old. Food was like breathing air for me. I couldn’t get enough of the good feeling that came from eating. So when my husband and I found out that our son, Ayden, had autism, food was my comfort. You have all these hopes for your child, and to find out he has autism, well, that diagnosis hits you.

I gained so much weight that I was almost bedridden. When I hit 199 kilos, the doctor told me about the possibility that I had only five years to live. I realised that I couldn’t keep eating this way; Ayden is going to need me for a really long time. He was my motivator.

The surgery was scary, but not compared with what came after it. For six weeks I was on a liquid diet. It felt like forever, especially when I was making spaghetti for my family, and then drinking a protein shake. But I lost 22 kilos during that first month.

Within six months I was down by 45 kilos, and every time I looked in the mirror, I was like, “I want to buy something! I look great!” I got new clothes for every five kilos I lost. What fitted me one week didn’t fit the next!

Through it all I had to learn how to deal with life without using eating as a crutch. The relationships that were food-focused revealed themselves – those people aren’t in my life anymore, but that’s OK.

I can’t eat for comfort anymore; it makes me ill. So I’m still learning coping methods for dealing with my feelings, but I don’t muffle them with food. It’s scary experiencing these emotions. Not everything feels good, but at least it is real.

I was most nervous about how the surgery would affect my husband and me. When I was 199 kilos, I’d think, ‘He probably thinks I am awful to look at; he can’t love me.’ But he told me, “I have always loved you. Your weight has never been an issue.”

Three years after the surgery, I became a plus-size fit model. It’s now my job not to lose! I weigh 104 kilos, and I’m healthy; I’m active. Because of my surgery I am accomplishing my dreams – and being there for my son. I once mourned the child I thought I had lost, but I never lost him: He has always been there, leading me.

The lady on the other end of the phone said, “Don’t come in tomorrow.” I asked her to repeat herself I was so shocked. Later I cried, out of fear, frustration, worry, abandonment. I had worked there for seven years and was surprised at how dispensable I was, even if I had suspected I might be dismissed – people had been let go over the years.

At the beginning, I had days when I felt deep down that everything would work out; then I had moments when my soul felt injected with lead, and I could not get out of bed. And I had an apartment I could no longer afford.

I checked Linkedin constantly and contacted friends to circulate my CV. And I picked up odd jobs, like being an extra on a TV set and dog sitting.

For my 30th birthday, my friends threw me a black-tie party. It was a glorious evening. I was surrounded by the people who loved and believed in me, celebrating in the midst of all the troubles! That night I felt pure exhilaration and gratitude.

Their support helped me gamble on a whim: I moved to another city. The first month was hard – I was sleeping on a friend’s air mattress. For two months after that, I subleased a room while I searched endlessly for a job.

And somehow, despite all the rejections, my creative impulses sparked and I started to write: a blog, poems, essays. With no luck finding a full-time job, I became convinced I needed to make a freelance career work. To build the world I want for myself rather than bang on perpetually closed doors.

I never imagined I could survive without a regular job. Now, a little more than a year later, I have more conviction than ever that losing my job was one of the better things to happen in my life. It put me on a creative path I might never have had the courage to fully jump into. And I don’t say this from a place of success – I’m still couch surfing! But I have learnt so much: how to become my own PR, how to pitch new projects. Now I’m in pre-production for a podcast and travel show.

It can be unsettling not to have a steady paycheck, but I’m a more compassionate person having suffered this upheaval, and that means I can be a better friend, a better daughter and a better person. I am more fearless. From the moment I met Mitch, he made me laugh. He was fiercely funny and a little bit odd, brilliant, with such a big heart. We’d been married two years when he died. I had been learning how to be a wife – suddenly I had to learn how to be a widow.

That first night, my parents took me home with them, and I never went back to my house. I stayed there for nine months, and my brother moved in, too. Friends from all walks of life showed up soon after with nothing but love to give.

During the first week, my mom made sure I did not sleep in my bed alone. She had my girlfriends rotate nights and hold me while I cried. I was having a hard time eating, so when my dad found out that I would drink smoothies, there was one in my hand every day for a month. Simple gestures like that mattered a lot.

One day I went to my house to pick up a bag someone had packed for me. They didn’t notice that it had blood spattered on the side. From then on, I was terrified of anything that had been in my bedroom.

I was also afraid of life without Mitch. I had witnessed Mitch’s

“I had been learning how to be a wife – suddenly I had to learn how to be a widow.”

death, so fear came in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Everything was a trigger for me: noises, the dark. I was afraid that I would see his ghost when the lights were out. The writer CS Lewis said, “No one ever told me grief felt so like fear.” At times it felt I’d imagined being married, as if Mitch wasn’t even real.

Many months later, a form of anger settled in and it hasn’t left. It’s easier to be angry than to let real pain and hurt exist, so it’s become a protective layer. I’ll work it out, but I’m just not there yet.

Grief isn’t predictable, and a loss like this never goes away. You don’t ‘get over it’; you learn to manage it in your life. I’m trying not to rush myself. I write a lot – it lets me process things in a way that speaking out loud just can’t.

One of the hardest parts, and one I still struggle with, is dealing with people speculating about why this happened. They want a cause or a diagnosis, but suicide is not so easily understood. I think Mitch kept his pain to himself partly because he didn’t want to be a burden.

Since Mitch died, I’ve been humbled by the experience of unconditional love, and I cling to that relentless love of my family and friends. It gives me peace and the hope that there is a lot of beautiful love in this world to go around. One weekend morning I fled in the middle of an argument to avoid being hit. I had to go to court as soon as I could to get a protection order. I didn’t have my children with me, and hewouldn’t let me pick them up. When I finally got them later that week, they asked if we were going back home. I told them no.

Before there had been battles when I tried to leave, but I made up my mind not to go back in spite of all the hurdles, like my finances, the legal fights, and where my kids and I would live. If I had stayed, I probably would be in my grave or in a mental institution.

After we left, my children and I were in a domestic violence shelter for a month. I had good and bad days. I had to focus on what was really important: I was free of the years of chaos and turmoil.

The legal process was stressful and exhausting. It took two years. It’s hard not knowing what’s going to happen in the court system with your children and not knowing if you will have the finances to care for them. All I wanted was to be divorced.

I’ve overcome so much, by the grace of God. I was in church, I started therapy, and I went to support groups; peer-to-

peer groups helped my kids. I took financial classes. All this gave me strength when I felt life was too tough. I’ve found my voice over this year. The more I spoke out, the more it helped me heal. Leaving the marriage, I didn’t know who I was; I was lost, angry, confused, depressed, and I just felt like nothing. For so many years all that negativity resonated in my spirit. I had to train myself to release those thoughts.

Now I know who I am: I’m not a victim, I’m a survivor. I have the victory. To anyone in an abusive situation: don’t wait. Go get help. There is life after domestic violence. I’d already had top surgery and spent three years taking testosterone before I felt ready to date as a passing trans man. (That means when people first see me, they think of me as a man.) My first date was with a woman I had met through friends. (I made macaroni and cheese, and I could tell she was probably into me when she suggested we “Lady-and-the-tramp this mac and cheese”.) When I drove her home, I came out to her as trans, in a panic. I can’t be totally comfortable unless I’m being true to myself. She was really sweet about it, but we didn’t last.

I’ve met most women I’ve dated through a transition-related event or group, so I usually don’t even have to tell them I’m trans. When I do, a lot of women don’t bat an eyelash, which is probably my favourite reaction. A few have seemed surprised and said things like, “You look so manly!” They mean well, but they make me feel like I’m supposed to be or look a certain way. A better reaction? “Tell me about your experiences around that,” which could lead to more meaningful conversations. A few women have been inappropriate; they ask, “Do you have a penis?” “Do you still have a vagina?” “How big were your boobs?”

Then there’s been the issue of sexuality: Early on I feared that if I dated a lesbian, she would still see me as a woman (albeit an incredibly butch one). But I also worried that if I went to a straight bar to talk to a (presumably) straight woman, I’d feel like I had a taboo secret – although I wasn’t keeping being trans a secret! It was all exhausting.

I thought about it more, and began to understand that I don’t care what someone’s sexual orientation is. If we’re mutually into each other and the relationship is healthy, then everything else is just secondary.