There is a moment I think about a lot. I am sitting in my aunt’s living room in Monterrey. My mom and my aunt are talking, not to me, just to each other, about someone they knew who had bariatric surgery and how well she was doing. I did not say a word. I did not ask a question or jump into the conversation. I just listened. And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, without telling a single person in that room, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I was going to have bariatric surgery.
I was going to figure this out. I was going to make it work. Even though I knew it would be hard. Even though the finances scared me more than the surgery ever did.
Nobody knew. I just sat there and decided.
What Happened a Few Days Before
Before that living room moment there was a party.
My cousin organized her baby’s first birthday and I want to be clear, this was not your average first birthday. This was incredible. Live bands, amazing music, the kind of celebration that was just as much for the adults as it was for the kids. I wanted to dance. I love dancing. And then I realized I couldn’t. That was not okay with me.
I did not hear Techno Cumbia playing that night but it was playing in my head. Si vienen a bailar, pues vamos a gozar. If you came to dance, let’s enjoy it. And I couldn’t. I stood there with that song running through my mind and felt the distance between who I was and who I wanted to be.
Then at my tia abuela’s house there were stairs. Only slightly steeper than the ones at my apartment. A difference so small it should not have mattered. But there was friction between me and the next floor, a resistance I was not prepared for. I was flabbergasted. How does such a tiny difference feel that significant?
My body was done being patient with me.
Why This Decision Belonged to Me
I want to be honest about something. I have always been someone who did not particularly care what other people thought. That has generally served me well.
But there were two moments that landed differently.
I was in middle school, walking the hallways, wearing a brown denim skirt. I felt good that day. There was a girl at school whose mom held a leadership position in the PTA. I had a positive opinion of this girl. She had thick dark black hair, a beautiful bob cut, the kind of presence that could have put her in any late 90s early 2000s TV show without anyone questioning it. Her mom had a pixie cut and was equally striking. I had no issue with either of them.
And then I heard her mom say I looked fat.
I was a size 4.
The second moment was in Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas. I was around 15, walking in front of my grandma’s green house, about to go play with the neighborhood kids or run an errand to the tiendita for my mom or grandma, I forget which. These were people I thought cared about me. And I heard them. Hay que gorda se puso Brenda. Look how fat Brenda got. A gasp. Not concern. Judgment. Said out loud like I wasn’t worth being careful around.
I was a size 11.
I never said anything. Not to a friend. Not to any adult. I don’t think anyone ever knew I heard them. But I heard them. And for a while I did not want to go back to a place I loved because their words got there first. My grandma’s house. The plazita. The elotes and aguas frescas. I loved all of it and their words made it smaller for a while.
Both of those places should have been safe. School. My grandma’s house in Mexico. They should have been safe.
This is not the reason I made my decision. But it is part of why I protected it the way I did.
2013
I first explored bariatric surgery in 2013. It got pushed down by someone close to me. Some people in my life believe it was not out of genuine concern, that this person did not want me to become the best version of myself. I hope that is not true. Either way that is neither here nor there anymore.
At some point after that I went down a YouTube rabbit hole purely out of curiosity. From what I recall it was mostly horror stories. I closed the laptop. Forgot about it. The person who pushed it down in 2013 was someone I had built my life around at the time, and they were still in my life during that moment. It sat quietly somewhere in the back of my mind until a living room in Monterrey woke it back up.
December 2nd
I flew home December 1st, 2024. The next day I reached out to MTY Bariatrics. They accepted bank transfers and payments via Oxxo. Since I was in the US the authorized bank was IBC. I paid the $50 consult fee that same day. Two days later I was on a Zoom call with Dr. Jose Eduardo Garcia Flores at 10am. He walked me through gastric bypass and gastric lapband. I already knew bypass was right for me. I was 271 lbs and 38 years old and I had already made up my mind on that couch in Monterrey. That consult was about getting the information I needed to move forward. The very next day I reached out to a bariatric clinic in San Antonio.
I want to be clear about why. It was not because I did not trust Dr. Garcia Flores. I trusted him enough to pay for that consult and take everything he said seriously. He was a real option. If my San Antonio surgeon had not been the right fit I would have gone back to him without hesitation. I chose San Antonio because complications, while I felt they were unlikely, were not impossible. I wanted to be near my care team if anything went wrong. That is not distrust. That is being practical about your own life.
The Part Nobody Talks About: The Money
People want to call this the easy way out. I need to address that.
This process is not easy. Not emotionally, not physically, not mentally, not spiritually, and absolutely not financially. Bariatric surgery is a significant financial commitment. For me that meant pausing my Lyft driving during recovery, which was real income I counted on. My corporate job does not require strenuous physical output so that part was manageable, but the financial piece kept me up at night more than any thought of complications ever did.
Nobody hands you this. You plan for it, you figure it out, and then you do the work every single day after.
Who I Told
Almost nobody.
My mom first. I needed at least one person and I knew she would show up for me even if I saw concern on her face. I did see it. But she was supportive and that was everything.
My aunt in Houston found out in conversation not long after. My younger sister next. In February 2025 I was dating someone and I told him about the surgery. He was open minded and genuinely supportive. He also gave me a gift I did not expect, one that would become a pivotal part of my journey through pre-op and post-op: Oliver, my dog and chaos goblin. My support system and my greatest source of stress sometimes within the same hour. He pointed out that Oliver would be great for my recovery since walks are critical right after surgery and beyond. That relationship did not pan out but Oliver stayed. That is a whole separate post.
A few weeks before surgery another aunt also found out. Two weeks before surgery I told my dad, my brother, and my other sister.
That was it.
The Pre-Op
Before surgery there is a pre-op diet. The purpose is real and important. It reduces the size of your liver and makes the surgery safer. I understood exactly what I was doing and why.
This was something I wanted to experience intimately, on my own terms, without outside input. There was one person who kept pressuring me, asking if I had eaten enough, offering things I could not have. It was not ill-willed. But I had not gone through months of planning, research, and financial sacrifice to have someone else’s anxiety become part of my process. I just wanted to follow the guidelines, protect the surgery, and do this my way.
Why I Am Telling You This
I am not ashamed. I was never ashamed.
I kept this private because it was mine to keep. Because I was not going to spend my energy defending the most personal decision I had ever made to people who had not sat in those classes, had not done that research, had not done the financial planning, had not felt what I felt at that party.
I made this decision for my health. To be able to dance all night again. For a better quality of life. And I want to be clear: I have loved myself and my body at my biggest, at my thinnest, and at every evolving stage in between. This was never about hating where I was. It was about choosing where I wanted to go.
Your Story Is Yours
I am sharing this now because I do not want anyone else to feel ashamed for making decisions that improve their quality of life. Whether that is bariatric surgery, GLP-1s, natural weight loss, lifestyle changes, or any decision that has nothing to do with weight at all. You do not owe anyone an explanation for choosing yourself.
Your story is yours to keep until you are ready to tell it. And when you are ready, I hope you tell it exactly the way you want to.
That is what Always Becoming means to me.
Have you ever made a decision you kept close to protect it? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
