Personal Stories

I was a very shy, introverted girl.  I kept to myself and had very few friends.  I lived in a little hamlet called Hopeville.  This little place is about 50 miles south of Owen Sound, Ontario. I am a Canadian, eh!  

Approximately 50 people lived in Hopeville when I moved away for college.  Because I had to be bused to school, my social life was very limited as I had to be driven everywhere.  There were very few kids to play with in Hopeville and the ones that were there were snotty.  My parents were introverted, too, so there were very few opportunities to interact with other kids outside of school.

My parents were old when they had me.  My mom was 38 and my dad was 50.  That was pretty rare for the late 1960's when children were had young.  My parents were old enough to be my grandparents.  My younger brother and I were my father's second family.  My two half-brothers were already adults when my brother and I came along.

Stirling, my younger brother, is almost two years younger than me. We were both born in January, him on the 9th and me on the 31st. My mother takes great delight in describing the day she brought him home from the hospital.  She laid him down on the bed and I got up to see the baby.  Apparently he made a face at me and I punched him.  The fight was on!  We never really got along.  We didn't play together, we fought!  It wasn't sibling rivalry; it was sibling hatred and it was pretty physical.  I used to bite him until he got big enough and started biting me back. 

My parents were so frustrated by our fighting and other issues that they institutionalized us in a hospital for teens with behavioral problems.  That would have to be the first defining moment of my life.  It changed me.  I felt even more like an outsider at school.  I had just had an experience that none of the other kids could even relate to.  I was so ashamed of being sent away that I told everyone that I had been to a boarding school.  I just couldn't tell them the truth.  I was already a freak.

I loved reading.  Books were my escape from my life.  I would have to say that books became an addiction for me.  Until my mid-20's, I would have preferred reading a book to talking to a person.  The worst punishment I ever received was being denied a trip to the library because I lost a library book.  I still remember the book, too. It was “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton.  You can be sure that I was very careful with library books when my privileges were restored.

I also loved watching TV.  My parents tried to put limits on my TV watching but it never worked.  The summer I was 13 my parents made a deal with me.  If I would babysit for a family member for the whole summer, they would buy me a TV.  I got my little black and white set and I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.  I think my parents regretted it because they never saw me except for meals.

I found great joy in sewing, too.  Sewing is a talent that comes naturally to me because my paternal grandmother was a seamstress.  She died before I could get to know her but I like to think that she passed her love of sewing onto me.

I used to make doll clothes.  I was in my early 20's when I realized that my doll had a better wardrobe than I did.  Then I started making clothes for myself.  I admit that some of my fashion choices were not the most flattering.  My best friend and I still laugh about my yellow polka dot clown pants.  I was heady with the realization that I was free to make and wear anything that I wanted.  I took full advantage of this fact.

 

I was really close to my dad.  I was very much a daddy's girl.  I was never and am still not close to my mother.  I love her because she gave birth to me but I don't like her very much as a person.  She is a very negative woman.  I don't remember her ever hugging me or telling me that she loved me until after my dad died when I was 19.  I think in some ways she was jealous of my closeness to my father.  She always told me that he came to see me in the hospital when I was born before he went in to see her.  I think that bothered her.  With maturity I've come to realize that she is just incapable of showing her love because she suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child.  I've forgiven her for the way that she raised me because she did the best that she could with the resources that she had at the time.

However, one thing I cannot forgive her for is telling me that she loved my brother more than she loved me.  That just wrecked my psyche.  I don't think she realizes the damage she did to my sense of self and my security within the family with that one comment.  I am positive that the sibling rivalry would not have been as severe if my parents hadn't chosen favorites. 

 

I could also play the “what if” game and say that life would have been better for Stirling and I if we had grown up in the city.  There would have been more kids to play with and perhaps we wouldn't have “played doctor” with each other.  This is very hard to write because it is so shameful and I have suffered a great deal of guilt over it.  I was the older one so I feel more responsible even though he was a willing participant.  From what I've read, playing doctor is normal behavior for little boys and girls.  Unfortunately, we were so isolated that there wasn't anyone else to play with.

I was seriously screwed up by these experiences.  I struggled with the guilt and shame for as long as I could until finally I snapped and told the wrong person.  He was someone that I was seeing and he reacted very badly to my confession.  His reaction and my guilt made me want to die.

Instead I got therapy.  I saw Jonathon for a year.  He was great and I felt very comfortable with him because he was non-judgmental.  I think I shocked him sometimes though.  He was a grad student and he really had a learning experience with me. 

When Jonathon left to finish his PhD I started seeing his supervisor.  She was aware of my issues because he had to report his cases to her.  She and I just didn't connect.  She told me that I was probably sexually abused before the age of 3.  It is entirely possible that this happened as one of my half-brothers was living with us during that period.  There are huge chunks of my childhood that I can't remember.  I don't know if this is normal or if they have been blocked out because of some trauma that I may have experienced at an early age.  I try not to think about it.  If I was traumatized then the blocks are protecting me, which is a very good thing.  Needless to say, I didn't continue therapy with her.

When I look at pictures from my childhood, I was a normal little girl. I only started gaining weight after I had my tonsils and adenoids removed when I was 6.  I came very close to dying when I hemorrhaged on the operating table and lost a gallon of blood from my little body.

After the operation, my weight gradually started increasing.  I don't know exactly when I knew that I was fat.  It must have been somewhere between the ages of 6 and 9.  One of my dad's hobbies was photography.  I was going through my photo album and found a mock Wanted poster that he had made of me.  On the poster he put my picture and a physical description.  I weighed 94 lbs. at the age of 9.  I was 4' 2“ tall.  I was a chunky little monkey!

 

Academically, school was great.  I love learning.  I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge so school was fun for me.  The teachers liked me and I liked most of them too.

Socially, school wasn't so great.  I tended to latch onto one friend at a time to the exclusion of all others.  I was very possessive and jealous.  Apparently my mother was the same way as a child.  I wonder if it's hereditary.

Because I was a fat little girl, I developed very early.  This was before there was a name for it: precocious puberty.  I was the only girl in the second grade wearing a bra.  The boys would snap my bra band.  It was humiliating.

I got my first period the summer I turned 11.  That was pretty early back then.  I had to wear Kotex belted pads because those were the ones we carried in the store.  They felt like thick diapers between my legs.  I hated getting my period.

I stopped growing when I was 12.  My parents took me to a specialist and he said that I probably would only grow another couple of inches.  I ended up being 4'10“.  So not only was I fat, but I was short, and I wore glasses.  Three things guaranteed to get the s**t kicked out of you in school.

It probably didn't help that I couldn't wear the same clothes as the other kids.  I didn't get my first pair of jeans until I was 13, and they were BOYS jeans.  My mom made all my clothes up until grade 7 or 8 when I refused to wear them anymore.  Polyester, yuck!  Actually, looking back, she did a pretty good job on those clothes since she despised sewing and she wasn't too happy about my size, either.

High school was pretty much the same thing.  I did well academically but I didn't have very many friends.  The whole last year of school I spent every lunch period in the study room doing homework.  I hated the cafeteria.  Most of the other students were annoying.

 

I was teased for being fat during elementary school up until grade 8 when a group of boys started flirting with me.  I'm not really sure what that was about.  It was probably their idea of being funny.  It was kind of flattering though.  I was getting some positive attention from the opposite sex and what teenage girl doesn't like that.

Another incident that sticks out in my mind is when I had a knife pulled on me.  My mother wanted to get me to exercise more so she would make me walk to a designated spot after school and she would come into town to pick me up.  One day an older boy accosted me and threatened me with a knife.  I know he said something to me but I can't remember what it was because I was so scared of that knife.  My parents reported him to the principal and he was suspended.

I also remember being on the school bus and being deliberately kicked in the head by one of my classmates.  It really hurt because I cried.  Once again, my mother reported him to the principal.  I was called down to the principal's office and he told me that he would be bringing the boy in and I would get a chance to hit him back. This kid walked around the corner and I socked him in the gut. Now that I think back, it was a very poor solution to the problem. Fighting violence with violence never works and I didn't even want to hit the kid.  I would have been happy with an apology.

College was different.  I had broken free of the nest and I went wild. I was finally in a place where I wasn't criticized every day for my size.  It was a blast.  For the first time I had a social life and lots of friends.  It was a wonderful, liberating experience.

I don't remember feeling bad about my weight personally.  It was just a fact of life; like the fact that I'm short, that I have brown hair and grey eyes, and that I need to wear glasses.  I only started feeling bad about it when other people commented on it negatively.

My father was very supportive of me.  I was his adored little girl and he loved me unconditionally.  He didn't say very much about my weight that I can remember except as a show of solidarity with my mother.

My mother was very concerned with my weight because she was large herself and she didn't want to see me suffer the way she did. Unfortunately, her method of helping me was emotional abuse.

The first instance of abuse that I can remember clearly (and the one that still affects me to this day) happened when I was 10.  I wanted to go out Trick or Treating for Halloween but my mother said I was too fat to go out for Halloween.  I didn't need the candy. Boy, that one did a number on my head.  It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I stopped buying massive amounts of candy at Halloween time and eating it all myself.  It's very possible that my weakness for candy stems from this incident.

As I grew older, her barbs grew too.  Clothes shopping with her brought out the worst in her.  I think she was so frustrated with me that she couldn't help but to criticize me.  I heard over and over repetitively that I was too fat to get a boyfriend or to get a job unless I could be stuck in the back room. 

Well guess what?  I did get a boyfriend and I've also had many jobs.  I met my first boyfriend at the institution that my parents stuck me in.  It was a long-distance relationship so we wrote lots of letters back and forth.  He came down for my Grade 8 graduation and stayed overnight.  I lost my virginity to him the next day.  I kind of regret that I was so young (I was only 14).  It wasn't enjoyable. In fact, it was incredibly painful.

My mother never knew for sure that I lost my virginity that day but I think she suspected because she had a big talk with me that night. It was all about respecting myself and my body and not doing anything to make her ashamed of me.  Now that I think back, that was pretty ironic because she didn't respect me or my body. My mother has serious boundary issues. 

I also think my defloration happened for a number of other reasons. I was very mature physically, I cared for him a great deal, I was already sexualized anyway, and most importantly, it was a way to get back at my mother and prove to her that I can be desirable.

The next time that I had sex I was 22.  This one I did tell my mother about.  We were out for dinner and she started in with the old “fat = no boyfriend” refrain and I snapped.  I told her that not only did I have a boyfriend (slight white lie there) but I also slept with him. The look of shock on her face was priceless.  Then she went ballistic and started scolding me in the middle of the restaurant.  I still chuckle over it when I think of it.  I shattered her illusions of me and boy, that was fun!

As for the “fat = no jobs” refrain, I've had a great number of them and they have mostly been in customer service.  No back room for this chick!

As for the rest of my family, my brother was a big pain in my butt. He teased me for my weight but I would tease him for being stupid ( I always got great grades while he struggled in school).  We fought less after the institution.  I don't think he actually cared one way or the other that I was fat.  It was just a hot button that he could push to get a reaction.

The only other person in the family to ever make anything out of my weight was my Aunt Irma, my mother's sister.  One time she tried to bribe me with a whole new wardrobe of clothes if I lost 30 lbs. Failed miserably at that one!  She got to keep her money.

I remember being taken to the doctor when I was 10 and being put on pills.  They must have been amphetamines.  I don't think I took them for very long.  I can't remember if I had any bad reactions to the drugs but I must have or I would have been on them longer.

At the institution I was put on a diet (it was one of the reasons that I was there for - to lose weight).  I lost 12 lbs. and gained it all back when I got home.

In middle school, I persuaded my mom to buy Fibre Trim for me.  I took those by the handful and all they did was give me the runs.  I don't think I lost very much weight.

I also tried all of the diets du jour from the magazines.  They did squat as well.  I would lose some and then gain it all back and more.

Because my mother was so strict about food, I became a compulsive overeater.  It didn't help that my parents owned a convenience store and we lived above it in an apartment.  I'm ashamed to admit that I would steal candy and chips from the store and hoard them in my room to eat later.  My parents had to have suspected me but they never said anything when their stock went missing down my ever increasing gut.

I would also spend what little money that I had on candy from the school cafeteria.  I can remember buying  4 rolls of Sweet Tarts and eating all of them at once.  This happened on many occasions. I had a real problem with food.  To this day, candy is still my weakness.

The last diet I went on was in my early 20's.  I would probably still be struggling to diet if I hadn't run across this one doctor.  She was a substitute for my regular doctor.  She told me that I had to make up my mind whether to devote myself to dieting or give up.  I was pretty angry with her at the time but now I see that she did me a huge favor. 

I decided to stop struggling to lose weight and start trying to accept myself.  It has been a long, hard journey.  It took a long time to shed the negative beliefs about myself that my mother instilled in me throughout my childhood.  There are still days where I look in the mirror and go “Yuck!” but at least they are few and far between. If I hadn't gone through all of my early trauma, I don't think I would be the person that I am today.  And since today is a good day, I think I'm pretty wonderful!

 

I wish everybody could have seen what a worthwhile person I am. My body is just the outer shell for the caring, loving person that I am inside.  I think my parents and teachers knew that I was very intelligent but it was overlooked because of my weight.  My mother seemed to place more importance on my looks than on my personality.  She, along with many others, have underestimated me my whole life.  It's fun to shatter their illusions of me.  By breaking their stereotypes, I have become a stronger, more confident woman.  Someone I am proud to know!