A Letter To Me

Posted by Connie.

To Me, present and future...

I've been trying to figure out the best way to write this blog, but I can't figure it out, so if it sounds more like a rant and less like a well-composed intelligent thought, thats why.

In my life, I have always had a problem. What is that problem you ask? Well, to put it simply, I give people too many chances. I always lived my life believing that no matter what, people had GOOD somewhere in them, and that everyone deserved the opportunity to show that. So, when someone hurt me, I would let them go for a little while, only to let them back in the minute they came back around. I always thought that I was doing a good thing, but in reality, I was only hurting myself more. It was like I was telling myself that I didn't deserve to be treated right the first time, and that it was OK for me to accept only second best. In the last year, I have made alot of changes in that department. I have let go of alot of people who really just weren't good for me. It was hard, but I did it, knowing that the people that I still have care enough about me to make up for that absence. I have done this successfully with one exception: my mother. As (more than one person) pointed out to me, it's like I am a drug addict. No matter how crappy she makes me feel about myself, my life, and the people who love me, I keep going back for that "momentary high" that I get when she gives me even an ounce of praise. The problem I have come to realize is that its all an illusion. That praise is given with strings attached; with conditions. If I don't fulfill those conditions, it comes back ten-fold in the form of insults, hatred, and just plain meanness. No matter what, though, I always went back. Not only did this hurt me, this hurt the people around me who were finally starting to trust and care about me. This ONE relationship was tearing down all of my other ones. Not anymore.

The purpose of this blog is mostly for me. In the case that I couldnt get a hold of someone like J, M, or K in a weak moment, I can read this to remind myself why I left in the first place. Some of you might wonder "Is it really that bad?" The answer is yes, and so much worse. It would take a lifetime to detail the 22 years of hurt that has been laid upon me; for now, I will use this blog to remind myself of the ones that stick out the most.

When I was 8 years old, my mom took me and my brother to a 60s dance at the elementary school. Back then, I had a "boyfriend" named chris; he was my "boyfriend" because we were 8 and we sat next to each other in school for 3 years, LOL, and he invited me to his birthday party and told his mom I was his girlfriend. Anyway, at the dance, my mom was being a spoilsport, I remember, and I started dancing with Chris' mom. Apparently, this made my mother feel very jealous, and at the end of the night she told me that everyone probably thought that Chris' mom was really my mom because we were both so fat.

I have never been a skinny person. I have always been overweight. Don't worry though, because I never forgot that either. My mother made sure of that. She can say that it was "because she cared" all she wants to, but there is caring, and then there is purposely making someone feel bad about themselves. When I was 10 years old, I couldnt find an outfit to wear to church with my friend. I was upset about this, I remember, and instead of comforting me, my mother told me that "If I wasn't such a damn whale, I would be able to find something to wear". Thats hurtful at any age; imagine what it does when you are 10.

All throughout middle school and high school, I was terrified of getting bad grades. My mother actually thinks this is a good thing, like well at least you would never bring a bad grade home, but I on the other hand, know differently. Yes, I liked to get good grades, and yes I was a good student, but anytime I even brought home a bad progress report or report card (and when I say bad, I mean I got one C out of an entire semester), my mother would lay into me in her passive aggressive way. "Oh sure, a C is fine. A C means average, so as long as you are OK with being AVERAGE than thats great."

While I was living at home with my mother, after highschool and during college, I was working part time, sometimes full time, and going to school full time, commuting even, so my days were long and I never really had a break. I will admit it, when I got home, I was exhausted, completely, and all I really wanted to do was be able to enjoy what little time I did have open by spending it with my friends and, when the time came, my boyfriend. My mom got mad at me because I didnt help to clean up around the house enough. I wouldnt vacuum, I wouldnt do the dishes, trust me if u asked her the list would go on and on. I am not denying that I didnt do much housework, I didnt. It was not because I was lazy, however, it was because I was SO DAMN BUSY. At that point, my mother wasnt even working. SO basically, she stayed home all day and never did anything except play on her computer, yet when Kayla got home from school, I got home, or Marty got home, all from very long days, WE were supposed to do all of the work. Once in a while is fine, ALWAYS is just ridiculous. My mother had the nerve to tell me that having me in the house was like living with an extremely rude roommate. Why? Because I didn't clean up a mess that I didnt make? I barely ate at home, barely spent my time there, and when I was there she was also making me feel like crap. This went on for years and years and that feeling that she made me feel, that I was basically garbage, will never go away.

This one is a sensitive topic, but one of the BEST ways to remind myself just why its best for me to stay away. When I FINALLY confessed to my mother that my brother had molested me for 9 years, she barely batted an eyelash. She gave the standard "oh really, im sorry" blah blah excuse, but she NEVER wanted to talk about it. Talking about it is what I really needed, and she just wouldnt. Even worse, after I told her this, she was still going out of her way to communicate with him, making sure he was ok wherever he was at, not making stupid decisions, worried when he started acting crazy, etc etc. And she would ask me about him and if I had heard from him, no matter how many times I told her I didnt want to hear about him at all. I remember crying on the phone with my friend while I was at work after my mom had called me and freaked out about Bobby. I was so upset that she just didnt seem to care about what I was feeling. I understand that Bobby is her kid and she will always worry. What I didn't understand was why she had to act like she was SO concerned with him, so worried about him, when she never acted that way towards me. I felt like no matter what, I would always just not be good enough for her.

And finally, the most recent BIG THING I guess, even though there are thousands of others. In February, I had to have emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder. And by emergency, I mean ambulanced out of work during a 3 foot snow storm emergency. James drove from Fairfax to Woodbridge in his truck with horrible traction, in the snow, to be by my side. He was there with me for 9 hrs, and drove me to CVS after, got my prescriptions, drove me home, etc etc. He was there taking care of me and making sure I was ok the WHOLE time. The next day, I called my mom. I was upset because I did not have insurance, and the surgeons deposit was going to cost me 1500. I didnt have this; I wasnt using my credit cards and I didnt have any in savings. I didnt want to, but I asked my mother for help. Yes, she helped me out and for that I am very thankful, but it didnt come without cost. First, she told me that this was all my fault; that it was from the way I lived my life. Then, when I told her that I might need her to drive me to the hospital on the day of my surgery because James wasn't sure he would be able to get the day off, she insulted him and made me feel bad at the same time. She said, and I quote "What good is it to have a boyfriend who lives near you if he can't take care of you?". Im sorry, but what a horrible fucking thing to say to your daughter. My boyfriend had spent the last 9 hrs in the ER with me, by my side, holding my hand, etc. SHE didnt even come to the ER. (And by the way, James took off work and took me to the surgery, my mother never even came.) Jean, (the lady I live with) drove me to the pre-op appt. So yes, my mother gave me her money. I guess that meant she didnt have to give her time.

Like I said, this probably didn't sound like the most put together thing in the whole world, but I felt the need to get it out of me, to put it in writing so that I would be able to come back to it. There are people in my life that care about me; people who are GOOD for me. Its unfortunate that my mother isnt one of them, but at this point, it doesnt even matter. I just need to remember to call them first.

Ce La Vie

Wrecked

Posted by Katie.

I’m afraid I’ve wrecked our future. And we’ve only been married for 6 months.

This failure goes back, way back, to 3 years before I met you, to my freshman year of college.

I hated college. I hated every single minute of it. And I was scared of coming home because I simply don’t do failure. And calling and saying that I wanted to come home from a college 2 hours from my house because I was homesick was my definition of failure.

I called my mom twenty times a day, always in tears, unable to cope with anything. After several weeks, my family decided that it was time to stop this cycle of depression and get me some help. And I resisted, oh how I resisted. But my doctor convinced me that anti-depressants were the right choice. At the time I was embarrassed. I failed at keeping my emotions under control, I failed at being happy. I failed at something so innate that it shouldn’t be something you can fail at. But I did.

And that failure flipped a switch in my head. It was as if from that moment on, I needed control in my life. It didn’t matter where. The medication helped and the crying slowed down and my moods stabilized, but the fact that I couldn’t even control my own emotions without pharmaceutical aid ate away at me.

And so I turned to food. Not in the, gobble down everything in sight way, but rather in the, control every single calorie that my body ingests way.

I started slowly. Just cutting back on sweets, eating a little healthier, reading some fitness websites. And then I began running. And running was this freeing process where all that was going on was the wind and air and whatever music I chose to listen to for the morning. I wasn’t thinking about my classes, or my future, I was just thinking about taking the next physical step in the run. It was amazing.

But before long, it wasn’t just eating healthily or running for the exhilarative freeing feeling, it was a problem, a sickness. It was counting every single calorie I ingested. It was calculating the speed and distance I ran to convert it to calories burned. It was stepping on the scale each morning, and despite it showing a weight lower than what I’d been since middle school, it was wanting to drop just two more pounds. Or three more pounds. Just a little more.

It was anorexia.

At the height of my eating disorder, I was eating, (at best) 1 cup of cheerios in the morning, a salad of only vegetables and fat-free Italian dressing for lunch, a snack of green beans and a dinner of either a bagel or the same salad as lunch. On a wild day, I might throw a whole apple into the mix. But I always felt guilty about it.

There were days where my calorie count was easily less than 500, but I drank water and tea so I didn’t feel the hunger. I had over $1000 out of my initial $1400 from meal plan left at the end of the semester when most everyone else was completely out of money.

And the numbers on the scale dropped. 120. 118. 115. 110. 107. 103. I went from 145 to 103 pounds in less than 6 months. On my 5 pound 5 inch frame, these weights were dangerous. I looked gaunt, my hair was falling out, and worse, I hadn’t had a period in months, a fact I outright lied to my doctor (and mother) about when she asked after rightly assuming that I wasn’t just “exercising and eating healthier,” but rather, killing myself.

It wasn’t until the end of my freshman year, after all but one of my friends completely deserted me (understandably since the most important social part of college is meals and I wasn’t participating in any), that I realized that I had a problem. I remember getting into a car with my only friend and saying out loud what I had known for weeks, maybe months. And before I could stop myself, I blurted it out. “I think I have an eating disorder.” And she hugged me and said that she knew, but also that she knew I needed to realize it first.

I went to the school counselor, which was a huge failure (“You don’t look underweight, you’re probably fine”) and eventually just worked hard to let myself eat again. To get past the voice in my head telling me that that muffin over there would go right to my belly, or thighs (never my boobs of course). It was miserably difficult, I was forbidden from stepping on a scale and I hated myself. I could feel myself getting fat again and I hated every single minute it.

In the end I gained too much weight back, a fact that I came to peace with, and tried to move on with my life. But the damage I had done over the past year was not damage that could be fixed simply by gaining the weight back. As it turns out, depriving your body of fat and nutrients for more than a year is not a safe thing to do.

And that brings us to today.

One of the things that my gynecologist talked to me about recently is that because of the severity and length of time of my eating disorder, I may be infertile. We can already see that my bones are too thin and it makes sense that the after effects of my anorexia aren’t confined to just my skeleton. She said, actually very compassionately, that because I went 14 months without a period from being malnourished that there’s a good chance that I won’t be able to conceive a child. Ever.

Suddenly it’s hitting me that our dream of having children may already be over.

I know how badly you want kids, how badly I want kids, but I’m afraid I might have already ruined that life for us. What if what I did 7 years ago keeps us from the lifetime of happiness we’ve both wanted? How can I un-do something like that? What if my life and my mental illness caused us to be childless?

I know that you’ll forgive me and tell me it’s okay, because you love me. But I know I’ll never forgive myself for ruining the future we were supposed to have, because I know it’s my fault.

Fat

Posted by Anonymous.

I love my mother. She understands me better than anyone in the world, because we are the same. She calls me her heart

About eight years ago, I had to tell my mother that I had an eating disorder. I pulled away from her. I didn’t want her to take the news so hard, so I tried to be distant and mean so that maybe she wouldn’t feel it.

I felt embarrassed and guilty. I tried to make it about me.

She approached me, crying. “It’s my fault.” I showed her anger, told her not to be ridiculous and to get her own problem. Stop meddling with mine.

I lied to her. It, of course, was my fault that I was not taking in enough calories. It was my fault that I was throwing up on the hour. It was my fault that I was costing my parents thousands of dollars in therapy bills. It was my fault.

But it was about her, too.

I can remember the first time my mother called herself fat in front of me. I was 4. She had just had my sister, and was depressed. She cried. I understood then that being fat was one of the worst things in the world. It was to be feared and hated. Skinny people were worthwhile. Fat people were not.

I grew up scared to mention anything about my mother’s appearance, even if I thought she looked pretty. I knew what the answer would be: “Oh, my rolls are showing. My butt looks big.” Though she always told me I was beautiful, talented, smart, loved and worthwhile, I knew differently. I, after all, was just like her.

And I felt those feelings festering inside myself. And I hated myself for being weak like her.

I don’t have an eating disorder anymore. I told myself I’d had enough, and I am very careful to eat well, exercise and enjoy everything I denied myself.

The eating comes easily, but the fear still lurks inside.

I cried this morning because I gained five pounds in a month. I just started a new birth control pill. I knew this could happen, and it should not bother me. These things always straighten themselves out.

I am healthy, strong and beautiful. I live with a man I love, and who loves me always. We have a nice home, jobs, family. And I cried over five measly pounds.

I’m scared to get married to the man I love, the man I have lived with for nearly three years, because I’m scared to have children. I want them desperately, but I don’t want to see the click in my daughter’s eyes the first time I slip up and she, too, equates fat with worthless.

I refuse to let this carry on into another generation of beautiful, talented, smart, loved and worthwhile women. But I don’t know how to go about changing. Yet.

The victories come slowly. The first time I looked at myself naked without judging. The first time I bought a swimsuit without sobbing. The first time I went months without weighing myself.

But there’s always the accompanying sweetness of knowing that, maybe, the next one will be the last first time.