Personal Stories

Jane

The thing I remember most about my childhood was my lack of self-esteem. I also remember being quite active. I rode my bicycle everywhere, climbed trees (fell out of them frequently too) until I was 16, but also spent a fair amount of time reading. Reading was my big escape. When our mother would send us outside to 'get some exercise', I'd bring my biggest book and sit on the steps and read. My brothers and I swam in the creek, and played hide and seek in the bushes. I played softball, too. And tennis. I loved tennis, even if I wasn't good at it. I used to go on 20-mile walkathons with my friends at least once a year. I still love getting lost in a book.

Sometimes I remember the good times of growing up. We had family reunions with my father's family, visits to my mother's sisters, and camping trips. My mother was the pack leader for my brothers and my girl scout leader. My father was the boy scout leader. We spent at least 4 summers at a boy scout camp. I loved that camp. Now that I think about it, it must have been a lot of work for my mother, but I personally remember long carefree summer days in the lake. It's almost as if, because my mother never really had a childhood, she worked extra hard to make sure we had the most carefree childhoods that she could make happen.

But there are times when all I remember is the bad times. I wish somebody, somehow, could have seen how unhappy I was. Our mother was abusive. She hated herself and therefore couldn't love anybody else. When I was a child, I remember wearing long sleeves to cover up the belt marks on my arms. She'd beat us until we bled. If that happened today, we would have been taken away and she'd be forced into treatment. But in those days, she was seen in public as a delightful, funny, intelligent woman, and only when we were alone did she go into rages and beat us for the slightest infraction. 

I was 5 years old and my mother got me into a cheerleading squad for Little League. But I had to wear a tiny little girdle to fit into my cheerleading uniform, and my mother was so embarrassed. I couldn't do a cartwheel, either. Never could.

My brothers teased me, my mother was embarrassed and critical, and my father loved me anyway (except that he was very quiet about it). But it wasn't just my weight. I was a talker, and they got more reaction by teasing me about my big mouth then teasing me about my weight.

I used to think a lot that maybe my mother would love me more if I were thinner. I asked her once about that and she said, 'But I do love you!' But when I think about the past, the fact that my mother loved me doesn't come to mind. Especially near the end, I think she hated me.

My mother helped me with a diet when I was about 8, and I lost some, can't remember how much. Then I guess I gained it back. I don't remember much about that. 

School was miserable for me. I have never gone back for a reunion because I want nothing to do with those years. I was a misfit and was treated as such. So I gathered the rest of the misfits around me and we made up a club of sorts. I never realized it, but my sister was very jealous of me for that. We were good friends, and my mother called my friends 'the dregs of society'.

On one hand, school was an escape from home, but on the other hand, it wasn't much of an escape. I remember getting a lot of fuss made over me when I went back to school at 14. That summer I'd shot up 6 inches and developed, so I was actually relatively thin - briefly. That happens to early teenagers.

I was teased about my weight and the usual boy/girl teasing when the boy thinks you're pretty but doesn't know how to approach you properly. However, I thought they were just picking on the fat girl, so I never did anything. In the pecking order of school, I was next to the lowest, and I dated the lowest. I remember one of the 'fringe friends', someone who was my friend only when her group wasn't around, pulled me aside to give me a copy of the "Christian diet" that she'd gotten from her summer camp. I remember being grateful to her for thinking of me.

I remember being 'wrong'. Whatever happened to me was my fault, no matter what it was. My mother said that they wouldn't pick on me for being fat if I wasn't so fat. So they picked on me, teased me, pulled my hair, and I wouldn't do anything, because I must have deserved it. I couldn't fight back, ever. I never stuck up for myself.

There were a couple of teachers who were nice, but as a general rule, they stayed out of the way when student teased student. I remember teachers who were very nice to me (because of academics), and they encouraged me to go to college in any way possible. I also remember a particular bus driver who actually told me once that I was a very beautiful girl. That was the first time I'd ever heard 'beautiful' applied to me. All I'd ever heard was the 'such a pretty face' line. As a teen, I'd had adult men go all gaga at me, but again, I thought they were just picking on the fat girl, but when I look at my pictures, I know what happened. In my teen years I was well-rounded. No double chin, no belly, but I wasn't scrawny and stick-like like the average teen. I wore a lot of smock tops to cover up my non-existent rolls of fat, but some older guys saw a very beautiful girl with clear skin and long hair. My self-esteem was SO bad that I couldn't even be taken advantage of - I simply refused to believe that anyone could have a passing interest in me for any reason. If any guy at all was interested in me, my thought processes were 'if I'm the best he can do, then I don't want him either'. Kind of convoluted, really. I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as a member?

I thought about suicide a lot. I considered many times jumping out of the car when we were going places. But the few times I tried to tell someone else, they'd say 'but your mother is a lovely person! How could you lie about her that way.' My counselor (from the breakdown) was the first (and only) person I met who believed me.

All of my teen years my mother and I would go on brief diets, like doing a one-day fast after a big holiday to let the holiday food get out of our systems. Oddly enough, except for *trying* to cut back, I've only done a serious diet maybe 3 or 4 times in my life. When I was a teen I joined TOPS with my mother and did very badly. Anyway, then she told me that I was encroaching on her 'night with the girls', so I stopped that. Then I joined OA when I was in my 20s, and she joined the hometown group when I was there, but it just was uncomfortable with my mother there. I couldn't talk about the main reason my eating was all screwed up - her - without making her all upset and guilty and making me feel bad. That was such a washout.

Then, during the time when NutriSystem was big, I did it the right way and went to a Endocrinologist and went on a starvation under his care, with a nutritionist. I lost 45 lbs in 3 months, then gained 90 lbs in 6 months. After I'd lost the 45 lbs, I had an accident at work and burned my whole right arm very badly. Lots of painful 2nd-degree burns. When the nutritionist demanded to know why I was eating again, I showed her the burn and told her how much it hurt, and she demanded, 'Well, does the chocolate HELP the pain?' and I said, 'Actually, YES, it does!', and she said, 'Well then, I can't help you.' I left that program and that's how I ended up at 300 lbs. 

I also had a mild nervous breakdown around that time and spent about 4 years in counseling. That counselor saved my life. I don't think I'd be the person I am today without her. I originally went to find out 'the psychological reasons why I couldn't keep weight off', but she ended up treating me for the breakdown, which I didn't even know had been a breakdown until she told me. She was the first real person to teach me that the actual numbers on the scale weren't important. Being healthy was.

I had another brief stint with Diet Workshop in my late 20s, but then my mother died and I gave up that crap. That's about the time that I realized that my eating was all screwed up, and it was BECAUSE of those diets, not my fault! So I worked very hard for about 2 years to get a handle on my own body, learning to listen to what it wants. I didn't realize how successful I was until I moved back home for college for one year, and my brother would finish off every cookie bag that I brought home for a treat. I'd buy a bag, eat a couple, and he'd finish off the bag that night.

That's when I realized that I truly had conquered my compulsive overeating. Except for a couple of things, like fudge, I really COULD keep a pan of brownies around for more than a week, eating just enough to satisfy my chocolate craving and leaving the rest for later. It was an amazing revelation. When food is no longer the enemy, the whole relationship changes.