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My Story

by: Beth

My whole life I have been made fun of because of my weight. I was FAT. I have always been fat, I am fat, and I always will be fat. I was teased every day by nasty little kids... I would come home from school, crying (yes, crying) because of them. Pretty soon, I learned how to ignore their bashing comments. I knew I was fat, but I decided to hold my emotions in and not let them bother me. Years past. I was constantly picked on and made fun of.

As I entered middle school, I started to bottle EVERYTHING up. I didn't tell my parents anything, yet alone anyone. I shut them out of my life. I didn't really have any close friends; I was all alone. I had nothing. The funny thing was, I taught myself how to do something new that year. I taught myself to not eat. And I was proud of it. It was MY THING, something I was good at, that nobody else could do. See, other people had their talents, like sports, or theatere, or art for example. I had always had very low self-esteem and believed I was good at nothing. So this thing, this "not eating" was mine. I felt as if this was the one thing I could finally CONTROL in my life.

As I started to lose weight, I felt an extreme sense of power. People started to notice my weight loss and this triggered a number of things. I became better friends with my group of friends and the popular croud started to treat me with some respect. I found myself making new friends every day because of my changes in appearance. This was probably all because of coicidence or people just plain maturing, I really don't know, but I think that I was some how making myself believe that losing weight was solving ALL my problems, physically and socially. And as the pounds started to drop off, the compliments started to come flying: "Oh Beth, you lost so much weight!" and "Oh, Beth, you are getting so skinny!" I would become embarrased most of the time, a natural reaction, but what people didn't know was those comments were my motivation. I thought, "Well, If I get these many comments from losing this much weight, think how many I would get if I lost even more!

And that was just what I did. I lost more weight. I was becoming thinner everyday, thats what people said at least, but of course I brushed it off and thought it wasn't true. When I would complain about being fat, people would reassure me that I was thin, but I would never believe them. I allowed myself to believe that I was fat, and to tell you the truth I still have the mind pounding idea in my head that I am, despite what any friend or teacher or anyone says.

I think it was probably around that point that the positive compliments on my body started to lighten. When that happened, I took it the wrong way of course, and thought that I was letting people down. I was dissapointing people! Why weren't they saying nice things to me anymore!? Had I gotten fat? How could I let them down like this?! These thoughts kept consuming my brain. I was so wrapped up in that that I couldn't see past it and understand what the decrease in compliments really meant. People were concerned about me and thought I was heading for trouble. And they were correct.

Pretty much, this whole weight thing was all that mattered to me anymore. And it showed. My grades dropped because I didn't care about school. It was so insignificant compared to getting skinny. I didn't care about basketball, either, which I used to enjoy playing with a passion. As a matter of fact, I pretty much didn't care about anything. I was obsessed and it was taking over my life. Pretty soon I started to withdraw from social life beliving I was too ugly and fat to hang out with people and that they were lieing when they invited me to go out, and they were "obligated" to ask me to get together. Sometimes I would even think up excuses not to something with someone so I could avoid the food and eating. I would say I was too tired, or I felt sick, etc. I cou ld never eat in front of people, but I could alone.

Ocassionally, I would attempt to purposely vomit my food when I "overate" in my oppinon and when it didn't work, I would get more and more frustrated. My life as I knew it was spinning out of control. I began to become very depressed, to the point where I was suicidal.

The whole thing just took over my life. Pretty soon my miracle "diet" became a routine for me. I never ate break fast or lunch, just dinner. If I ate, I would gain weight, and thats not good. I would convince myself I wasn't hungry. The voices in my head would keep saying "You had better not eat that or you knw you will just get fatter," and so I listened to the voices. Now, I am torn between 2 sides: 1 side is staying the way I am and having a feeling of control and feeling satisfied when I can go a day or 2 days or even 3 days without eating....Or, i could go see a shrink and either gain weight back and stay the same, which i am not satisfied with. So basically no matter what you say, I am fat. I have trained my mind to believe that throughout time. I know will never look like Kate Moss since I am big-boned so that is pretty much impossible to achieve, but i can't stop thinking about it and my brain goes out of control somtimes. I do things i regret.

Whenever I look at the food, it becomes my enemy. You may laugh at this but it has this little evil face on it and it screams at me to not eat it, and my body some how compensates. I am able to neutralize my hunger to the point where I no longer believe I am hungry.

When I am forced to eat, the food feels like a burden in my stomach and I feel weighed down. So when i can't throw up, I feel as if I have failed in some way, I have let something or someone down. But the person I let down is myself.

That is my story.

©1999 Beth. Reprinted with permission.

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