femaleformYes, yes, I am touching myself.

Seriously, it sounds horrible, it really does, of course I worded it that way intentionally to get a laugh out of you, but the truth is, it is NOT that far off.

If you are the type of person that is going to have an issue with the fact that I am opening discussing my private parts, masturbation and body image I highly suggest you stop reading this particular blog post, you won’t like it much, but come back, I’ll go back to the usual post Bariatric topics of flatulence, bowel movements and food issues soon enough I promise.

Okay so imagine this for me for a second. You have been overweight since the sixth grade. Morbidly obese most your life, you’ve lost 260 lb and you’ve had three bouts of reconstructive plastic surgery to get your body closer to what it might have been like if you had not battled this disease we call obesity. However, you have won the fight; your obesity is in remission, as long as you do not fall back into unhealthy behaviors. Your entire body is new to you. It’s been cut in just about every which way possible, you’ve got scars under your breasts, around your nipples, from armpit to elbow, from armpit to hip, from groin to knee and all the way around your body at your bikini line. Everything feels different from how it did before, your body is foreign to you and you have numbness in strange places all over your body where the feeling hasn’t quite returned yet. kissingJordan

Okay now let’s talk boobs. We all have them. Before my surgery mine touched the floor. OK not quite but they hung to my waist for sure.  I can’t remember a time my breasts didn’t hang like that, for the first time ever I have hardly any under boob, I have perky breasts. And my nipples, seriously, night and day difference. Pre Reconstructive surgery I had inverted nipples that hardly ever came out of their shell of boobage, now I have these pert nipples that get hard all the time, it’s cold, it’s windy,  I took my sweatshirt off, I opened the refrigerator door. It’s constant and at first it was actually painful when it happened. That is where the touching thing started. When I told my plastic surgeon how painful it was when my nipples got hard she told me to work on de-sensitizing them by touching them.

Let me pause here and say that I am a very tactile person.  There is something I can’t explain that makes touch a more important sense to me than anything else. I remember as a child lying next to my Grandmother rubbing a scar on her arm that was softer than the rest of her skin over and over again. I’m the type of girl who loves to cuddle and touch and if I find a place on your body that is softer, a raised bump or something like that, I will just rub it constantly, back and forth with the pad of my finger. I’ve had partners that used to smack my hand away after I had rubbed the same spot for so long that it had driven them crazy. I’ve been called a “rubber” on more than one occasion. Even when I sucked my thumb I used to curl my index finger up and rub the tip of my nose over and over again for hours. I can’t explain it I’m a freak.

So I was told to touch my nipples to desensitize them. And I started doing it. Whenever they would start hurting I’d reach in, rub them, and try to warm them up, make them not so hard, and desensitize them. I must say it works. I have less reactive nipples months later. I also, appear to me fondling myself constantly.  I was sitting here at the computer today and suddenly I realized I had my hand down my tank top and was rubbing my left nipple back and forth just like I did to the tip of my nose when I sucked my thumb, just sitting there in thought, idly rubbing my left nipple with my right hand.

When I realized what I was doing I burst into laughter. All I could think of was… crap; I bet my household thinks I’m crazy because I’m constantly touching my body. But it’s all new to me and I am just learning it. I’m not masturbating, it’s not sexual, it’s… exploratory! I can squeeze my whole boob into my hand without having to lift it or anything! My stomach feels flat. I can feel bones and muscles I never felt under my skin before. I can see my muscles move when I do. I can feel them flexing if I have my hand on them as I move.

I’m learning my body and I’m a touch oriented individual. So apparently, reconstructive plastic surgery turned me into Al Bundy only instead of having my hands down my pants in a comfortable resting post I have them down my shirt. Now that I have realized this, I of course, I’m a little embarrassed about it. But then I thought, why should I be, I mean, how the hell do you learn your own body if you don’t touch it.

If I lost my sight this is exactly the way I would learn my body, and for me, seeing it in the mirror doesn’t work for that, not for me, that’s why I take pictures because I see the changes in myself more in photos than in the mirror. And that is why I touch myself and explore my new body with my hands. Because it FEELS different, my skin feels different on me, and my body doesn’t feel the way I expect it to when it is touched, so by touching it myself I am learning how my new body works and responds. I touch my boobs, I touch my sides, I touch my inner thighs, I caress my body where all my scars are on a regular basis.

So yes, I am touching myself.

Yes I am playing with my boobs and learning my body.

The only issue I really see with that is why someone isn’t else doing it for me. I jest. But only a little.

And for those of you that are really uncomfortable with the fact that I am talking about playing with my nipples and fondling my breasts in a Christopher Columbus fashion, well, let’s just pretend I am practicing self-breast-exams and call it good eh? DSSPostSig