my weight story

ah, where to begin?

birth. i was a normal baby, 6 pounds, something ounces. i was normal until about 7 or 8. that’s when i had my first breakdown. my parents took me out a great prep school where i thought i was flourishing and doing well and put me in a dinky church school with horrible, irritating students and horrible teachers. i think that’s when things went wrong. before we ate catered lunches, and i would eat only pizza and peanut butter sandwiches. strangely, at the new school, where we had to pack lunches, i suddenly wanted junky crap. my mom never let me have lunchables, or chips, or cookies like everyone else. so i traded and whined and borrowed and stole to get what i wanted.

by 5th grade, i was chubby, if not fat. i weighed 105 pounds. people made fun of me, made me feel bad. i don’t think i really cared about my weight at that point, i was just purely miserable in that environment. i switched school again in 6th grade, and although most people say they hated middle school, i loved it. i had great friends, and even a few boyfriends. but i grew more and more comfortable in my place as the chubby funny one. some people made fun of me. mostly i made fun of them. i think i was okay.

in 8th grade, my parents forced me out of school again. i was really, really devastated. this was my first real depression, the first time i started cutting, the first time i really wanted to commit suicide. i don’t know if i gained this year, but i’m fairly sure i got taller, because in 9th grade, when i tried out for volleyball, i was 135. i remember being normal, for once. it was good. i did nutrisystem the summer before 9th grade, convinced that i needed to look perfect for high school, and i couldn’t stick to it. i think that was my first, real failed diet. it felt horrible. my parents, who “wasted” their $200+ dollars on it made me feel worse.

since 9th grade, i have gained around 15 pounds a year…so i was around 150 my sophomore year and 165 my junior year. then i got a car, and a job, and everything spun out of control. the same feelings of always wanting junk food had always been present, but usually only came out during a trip to the mall, or maybe at the vending machine at school. now i could literally eat whatever i wanted, whenever, wherever. and i really did. by the end of the summer, i was probably about 175-180. i don’t know, because for the first time in years, i stopped weighing myself. through the fall i couldn’t stop. i overdrew my debit card repeatedly just have some of this on the way home, some of that. i just didn’t care. by winter break of my senior year, i was about 195. my parents started getting upset. they were always assholes about my weight, but at this point, they felt i had gone too far. my mom poked fun at the stretch marks on my arms, my dad threatened to kick me out of the house and took away my car for a month. because i was fat.

my friends at work, the ones who introduced me to my favorite carryout places, the ones who ate as much as i did and yet never gained a pound started to poke fun at me too. they made me feel horrible. i stopped gaining for the rest of senior  year, but at that point, i was already 10 pounds over the obesity limit for my height. prom dress shopping was horrible. i looked horrible. guys stopped talking to me, girls starting talking about me. if i didn’t have really great friends that year, i probably would have been a lot worse off.

unfortunately, i kept going. i went on a cruise after graduation, and put on four pounds. i went to a summer pre-freshman program planning on losing 20 pounds, and gained 10, putting me at 207 at the start of freshman year. again, i really wasn’t thinking anything. i wasn’t weighing in, if i did, i didn’t care. i was deep within a binge mentality that i just couldn’t escape.

i tried to lose weight again at the beginning of frosh year, and dropped 5 pounds, which i ended up regaining along with 15 extra pounds by the end of the semester. by this point, no one really said anything. i was fat before, and now i was just a little fatter. no guy talked to me. i watched my friends flirt and have fun all semester, all year actually. for me? nothing. i couldn’t shop with them, i had to hide food from them, it was just completely fucked up.

over winter break, i tried to lose weight, and “crisis” after “crisis” happened where i kept eating shit. mostly because i had my car, and i could. i didn’t lose, but i didn’t gain. all second semester, i tried to lose weight. after a week of trying, nothing would come off, and i would get frustrated and go back to binging. this happened again and again, and although it felt like shit, gaining and losing the same 5 pounds, i ended the semester at pretty much the same weight i started at.

my story is that i binge. i eat and eat and eat and eat until i feel like the horrible person that i feel like i am inside. i eat because it tastes good. i eat for the same reasons compulsive shoppers shop and compulsive gamblers gamble. you’re hiding from people. you feel like you have to do it. you want it and you want it and hell, you can’t come up with any reasons why you don’t deserve it. and even when all the reasons why you shouldn’t are staring you right there in the face, you still do it. because you feel too stupid, too weak, too unpretty in the first place to do anything else.

my story is that i have low self-esteem. that i have never been pretty. that i have never been the one that anyone wants. that i don’t even know if people will like me if i’m thin, that maybe i’m naturally hideous. that it’s hard for me to be honest and boring and tell the truth because i’m not sure if people will care.

my story is that i loved sports, and then my parents made me hate them. that soccer, my favorite sport, became tedious and horrible, that swimming ended up being a miserable experience, that i always was embarrassed when we were forced to run the mile. thus i started to hate exercise. i hated moving. i hated doing anything where people might judge me as not good enough.

my story is that honestly, truly? i didn’t care enough about myself to remain healthy. it was always about getting guys, pleasing my parents, looking like my friends. and when that stuff started to fade, when i started to really hate my parents and not give a shit about them and when i got sexually assaulted and started to hate guys, i had nothing to be thin for. now i have everything to be thin for, i think. for my health, for my future. for my right to shop wherever i want to. for my right to wear bikinis. for my right to go braless. for my right to feel self confident wherever i go. for my right to be the best i can be.