Martyn
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!
