The Beginning

This is painful to even start.



The more I write about overeating, the more I am forcing myself to examine why I choose to do this to myself. The more I examine, the more I think. The more I think, I remember. It's not exactly hypnosis, but there are reasons behind me stuffing myself. Right now, I feel like I am stuffed with memories, past hurts, resentment and anger that was never fully addressed. I feel like these memories have stuffed every inch of my body to the brim, and my only choice is to let them spill over. It's amazing how I can still feel so hungry when I am so full.



I was a fat baby. Nine pounds, eleven ounces to be exact. The women on my mother's side of the family were thin and petite; in fact, I come from dancers. My mother was a ballerina and my grandmother did both ballet and Spanish dancing.



The women on my father's side of the family are not petite. They're fat, like me. Tall, fat, Texas stock. They were weaned on gravy, but their teeth on fried okra. I take after these women.



My mother and grandmother are the two most important women in my life, but they saw that I was fat. At three years old, the family pediatrician, Dr. Bronstrap, told them I was fat. So there were no treats in the house. No junk food, no chips, no sugary sodas.



I know it's so easy to blame everything on my family, and society, but knowing I was 'fat' at three years old, really fucked with my head. I don't know any other way to say it. It makes a person feel bad, like they're less than, not good enough, a failure.



I think I started binging around five or six years old. This was right around the time my stepfather entered the picture. I have always felt like my mother was mine, like I had her first, and I deeply resented my stepfather for taking her from me. I resented being sent to bed so that they could have their time together. I hated hearing them having sex through the thin walls of the apartment. I was afraid of him. He was drinking at the time, and came from a long line of dysfunctional family members himself, and he hit me. A lot. He pulled my earlobes, pulled my hair, banged my head up against the walls. He spanked me. He'd sometimes send me to my room and make me wait for him to come spank me. And he could be so cruel. He's make fun of my voice, call me names, tell me I was lazy. Yet, on good days, I was his 'baby girl', I was smart, and pretty, and he loved me like I was his own daughter. I was terrified of him, yet hungry for his approval.



At five or six years old, I didn't exactly have the option of drowning my sorrows in a joint or a bottle of pinot noir. But there was food!



The first time I remember sneaking and binging was when I was about five years old. We were still living in our apartment and I found a huge tray of Christmas candy. I wasn't supposed to have candy, because I was Fat. So I took the candy into my room, stood in my closet, and ate the whole thing. Then lied about it. I didn't want to get in trouble for eating all the candy, because I knew I was Fat, and it would be brought to my attention that I was a Fat Little Girl who Stole the Candy. I don't remember getting in a lot of trouble for doing that. I think I was just grounded to my room for the day.



It continued though. I would go to my Grandma Naoma's house, my dad's mother, and pig out on Cheez-whiz and Jell-O and Bugles and whatever else she kept in the house. And my mom would find out, because Grandma Naoma would tell her, and I would get told that when I went to Grandma Naoma's house I wasn't to eat that garbage. Because I was Fat, and it would only make me Fatter.



I managed to find stuff to eat everywhere though. I could sniff out the tins of Oreos my parents would keep in the garage and eat ten or twelve. I ate an entire bag on fun-sized Butterfingers once. I made myself sick on bologna at my Grandma Judie's house. I found a fancy chocolate bar at my Abuela's house and stood in the closet and ate it. And I would lie about it.



All the while this was happening, my grades plummeted. In the second grade, when I was still fairly normal, I was tested and put into those gifted and talented classes. However, I was Fat and Lazy, when all the other smart girls were Thin, and in all honesty, I just didn't see the point in excelling. I felt bad. It got to a point where I felt that if I wasn't being yelled at for being fat, then it was for my grades, which led to me being a sneak and a liar, which led to me trying to numb out with food. The cycle perpetrated itself. I dreaded six week progress reports. I was essentially grounded from ages eight to fifteen, when I moved in with my biological father.



In the seventh grade, I tried killing myself when my parents went on a road trip to the grand canyon. I'd gotten a bad grade on a math test, and knew that when they came home, I was going to get yelled at for three hours, get every other bad thing I'd done brought up and have my nose rubbed in it, and get grounded for some indeterminate amount of time. Probably till I got my grades up. Which seemed like a waste of time to me. So at 12 years old, without telling anyone, with no note, I took 10 or 12 Excedrin PMs. Obviously this did nothing, because I am here to speak of it. I slept for about 14 hours, which no one noticed because it was a weekend, and woke up feeling fine. A few months later I was in the guidance counselors office for the millionth time and told her I felt suicidal and wanted to die. Of course, she called my mother, who was wrecked, absolutely beside herself. I still felt like she was angry at me though. I remember listening to her on the phone in her bedroom with the counselor, her voice chocked with sobs, screaming at the woman that her "fucking daughter is suicidal." I got put into therapy after that. I always felt like my family thought I was being dramatic or something, when in all reality, I was so miserable, lonely, depressed and starving for normality and consistency that at times, not being alive, not living in fear of getting yelled at, grounded, belittled, lectured or hit, seemed like the most attractive option.



My therapist was wonderful. I remember she told me my hands were beautiful, that when I wore my hair back she could see how pretty my face was. She told my mother that no one had any control over what I put in my mouth except me. I felt very comfortable with her, so I told her about the 'discipline' in the house. The banging of heads, the getting hit with wet towels on wet skin, the throwing of glasses of water in the face to 'cool me off', not to mention the names I would be called or the way my voice would be made fun of. I told her everything.
Guess what happened?

Social services was called. They came to our house. They talked to my parents. My parents were mortified, humiliated, and infuriated. I have wracked my brains trying to remember what happened, and all I know was, after they left, I got into trouble. A lot of trouble.

Things improved a little bit after that. I got really into martial arts for a while, and used it as an excuse to stay away from home. I would come home from school, get cleaned up, and ride my bike to the studio, where I would stretch, or read, anything to pass the time. It helped that there were a lot of cute boys there my age. Fat or not, I still had the raging hormones of a fifteen year old girl.

I also dropped a lot of weight during that time. Considering the bike rides and that I was exercising almost two hours a day, five days a week, it would have been impossible not to. My eating habits stayed the same though, I didn't work out to get in shape, I worked out because I hated being at home. And my grades continued to deteriorate.

By the time I was fifteen, I'd stopped getting 'spanked'. Instead, I was eternally grounded and had the constant threat of my martial arts being taken from me. I wasn't allowed to watch television, or liten to the radio, and there were even attempts at reading being taken away (I've always been a varocious reader). After one horrible "take your parents to school" night, in which my stepfather had, once again, being informed of my failure to reach my potential (and he'd also read a poem I'd written that had been posted on the wall about a girl who lived alone, in a corner, in the dark), he told me that "the only reason we let you stay in martial arts is so you won't turn into a blob".

Any time I did something good, it was tempered with how I'd spectacularly fucked up in every other area of my life. If school was all or nothing, if martial arts was all or nothing, if losing weight was all or nothing, then why try? So I stopped trying. I moved out of my mom and stepfather's house, into my dad and stepmother's house. I thought that with my stepfather in my life every other weekend as opposed to every single day, my problems would go away.

They didn't though. They got worse. Much worse. I quit martial arts, and picked up marijuana. Then cigarettes. Then alcohol. Then acid. Then ecstasy. Then crank. I graduated from high school by the sheer pity of my Economics teacher not failing me. I was at 237 lbs. Some drug addicts whittle themselves down to a chic 87 lbs. Not me. Since marijuana was the most readily available drug, I smoked, and ate. And ate and ate and ate.

Since then, I've given up everything except alcohol, cigarettes, and, of course, food. The only ones I have trouble controlling are cigarettes and food. I've tried quitting smoking as many times as I've decided I'm losing this weight for good. For now, I'm focusing on diet. The smoking will come someday, and I feel that if I can get a handle on the emotional reasons for eating then I'll be healthy enough to weather the storm of quitting the nicotine.

I still retain old habits with food. I want to eat in secret, or I eat quickly because I'm afraid someone will take it away before I'm done. I pick at leftovers. I try not to go back for seconds, instead getting it all the first time. I'm so scared I'll get yelled at for eating something fattening that I feel the need to stuff it in my mouth as quickly as possible, eliminating evidence that it was there in the first place.

The truth is, I am an adult. I work, to buy my food, to cook it, to feed myself and my husband. It is my choice what I put in my mouth. No one yells at me for eating the 'bad' stuff anymore.

No one, that is, except myself.