Recovering

A Breif History

     Food has always been an issue for as long as I can remember. As a child I never really realized how big of an impact food would have on my life. Looking back at pictures before we moved to Wichita I seem to be fairly normal, a little on the big side but normal. My issues with food first started when I was 10 years old. After the move my parents became more lax. They no longer said "you can only have one cookie" or "It's too late to have a snack". Being a young child and given the emotional trauma I was going through I turned to food to help cope with all of the change.

     I started binge eating and very quickly gained weight. I don't know what I had weighed at 10 years old but just a couple of years later I was 190 pounds. A size 18. Shame overcame me. I was the fat friend. I couldn't wear all of the clothes that my friends were wearing. There aren't a lot of pictures of me from back then and I am so glad. Every time I do come across an old picture of myself I am horrified and disgusted. I looked like the girl that turned into a blueberry in Willy Wonka. I had big fat shiny red cheeks. Long (badly dyed) blonde hair hung from my head. My clothes were not stylish at all. I did still play sports at this point but I felt so unfit. I was surrounded by thin athletic girls. I was only 12 at this point. I didn't realize these things yet. Yes I knew I was fat but it didn't bother me too much at that point.

     I had lost some weight maybe a growth spurt? Anyways for the longest time I was at 150 pounds. A size 12. I started to care about my weight a lot more when I was 16. I felt so fat and ugly I hated myself so much. After I binged I would sometimes restrict calories. For days I would only eat 300-800. I would run or atleast go for a walk. I was desperate to be pretty. The weight would fall off overnight. In a week's time I would lose 10 pounds. I knew then just like I know now that most of that was water weight, but I didn't care as long as I was losing. I started to pay attention to the pro ana community. I avoided the kitchen and didn't even want to touch food. I was a failure if I ate more than 800 calories in a day even though just days before I had no problem eating 2,000. The hunger pains kept me awake and food was the only thing I could think about. I liked feeling empty and I started to hate even looking at food. But because restricting isn't sustainable I would eventually binge. I HATED food but I was so in love with food. I had failed. I wanted to die. Looking back now I know 800 or less calories a day is ridiculous. A 3 year old is suppose to eat 1,000 calories a day and here I was eating less than a toddler. I was obsessed with food then and I still am today.

     After I graduated high school I got a job working at a restaurant. I worked over 40 hours a week. I spent nearly every day at work. I was always on my feet walking to and from the kitchen to the dining room. I would work 8 hour shifts and not eat anything the entire time. Everyday was relatively the same: wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, go home, run, go to bed. I was walking over 10,000 steps every single day. Luckily at this point in my life I pretty much stopped binging. I was losing weight quickly and I felt more and more amazing with each pound gone. The hunger pains faded and eating little food and running became the normal. The first time I got into the 130s I sat down and cried. It was such an achievement. I felt pretty for the first time in my life.

     Guys finally started looking at me and at one point I had 4 different guys wanting to date me. I started dating a guy named Reed. Even though that relationship was a mess I liked dating him. He ALWAYS made me feel pretty and thin. I always felt skinny near him. When I said I was fat he said I wasn't in a way that I truly believed. He was nowhere close to the perfect boyfriend but I felt like a princess or a model. He has been the only person in my life that has ever made me feel good about myself. I think I only ever ate in front of him twice in the 3 months we dated. I was very sensitive about my weight even though I was at a good size. I was very insecure.

     After Reed and I broke up I started dating a boy named Zach. He was quite different from Reed. We went out on dates which was nice but over time I stopped running and because we were always eating out I started to put on weight. At first I didn't care but the more weight I put on the worse I felt. Each day I felt more and more ugly and fat. I felt like I didn't deserve to go out in public or wear nice clothes. Zach of course didn't understand. He would sometimes complain about me wanting to always stay home but I couldn't face the outside world. The bigger I got the less pretty I felt and he didn't help matters. When we were out in public he would make comments about the bigger people we saw. He even made fun of my mother's weight and my grandpas. Not only did I believe I wasn't pretty I knew he thought I wasn't skinny enough either. On a few occasions he even confessed the fact that he thought I was fat. I hated myself more than he will ever know. I stopped wanting to have sex with him because I didn't want him to see all of my flab. I didn't feel sexy or beautiful or pretty. Sometimes he would say I was beautiful but I never once believed him, it felt so fake almost forced. I will never forget the awful way he made me feel. I was trash. Fat. Ugly. Trash. I started to turn toward food for comfort which just made the scale rise more. On many occasions I asked him for help and support but it never lasted more than a few days. We would always go out to eat and out for ice cream. Part of me wonders if he wanted me to be fat? Maybe there is some sick twisted part of him that wanted to hurt me. Maybe he wanted to feel superior. I will never know. There were so many times I wanted to hurt myself I was in such despair. I hated what I saw in the mirror every single day. I started to get quite possessive of my food. If he and I would go somewhere and share a meal I always felt like I had to hurry and shove as much food as I could in my mouth so I wouldn't miss out. This was stupid he would barely eat anything so I didn't need to scarf down everything in sight. I'm not sure why I did it even to this day. I could've been trying to get back at him for thinking I was fat by eating a lot or maybe I was trying to comfort myself.

     I've gotten to the point where I hated myself so much that I physically wanted to puke. I'm worried that that is how bulimia starts. I have always been so against puking but in that moment I want to. I want to make myself throw up. I have never done it but I worry that if I was feeling that way and was given an opportunity I would. I would give anything to have a normal relationship with food. I want to eat normally and enjoy food for the first time in my life.