The one chance...

So as you can probably guess, throughout high school and college nothing I did was good... not good enough- GOOD PERIOD; not my friends, not my choice of a career, not my clothes. And good heavens if I did have a boyfriend...he must be a freak for liking a fat pig! And my mother would treat him like such, and sooner than later he would begin to treat me that way. After all, he got the cue from the horse's mouth! Which brings me back to my first post; at the age of twenty-nine, I decided to go back to school, possibly find a career that would give me security and better pay. I went to nursing school and graduated... passed my boards as a registered nurse in one of the most difficult states to test in! I was happy, working hard and making some new friends. A casual ad placed in the local personals netted me 3 responses, one of which was intriguing and exciting...this was Michael. Again, as I noted in the first post, he had his problems, but I did fall madly in love with him. He was sweet and funny, a nice italian boy. But I was stupid, and didn't realize that he was my one chance at happiness. How different my life would be now if I had known... If I realized that he was someone I could trust, no matter what, even through his faults, that he was sincere. Even though its been ten years since I've seen him I miss him everyday. He is married, and I do hope that he is happy...I love you Michael, and I always will...

Outside looking in...

I can clearly recall my first day of school and knowing that day without a doubt that I would hate it all the way through...and I did. I won't bore you with depressing story after depressing story, but suffice it to say that I certainly didn't fit in, and my mother's prediction of "no boy will ever like you" was right on target. If mother ever thought I wasn't listening to her as she assailed my self esteem on a daily basis, she was quite wrong. I can remember being as quite young and knowing that I was an embarrassment to my otherwise normal family. My mother would always say that I absolutely was not fat as a child, but that was only because if I were fat at that time then obviously since children don't control the food in their homes at this young age then maybe, just maybe someone would think she was resposible for my obesity; so it was said only to deflect any blame away from her...no no, she became fat as an adult, you see, when I COULDN'T stop her from ruining herself. But of course, the pictures from my childhood don't lie. After high school I did control my own food, and at times things did get better. I would lose a little... and it was good, if only to allow me to walk a little better, or maybe not feel so freakish. I can recall going on a diet with my much smaller sister and when her mere 20 pounds was gone and she looked fabulous, I trudged on thru the numbers, losing appox. 30 pounds. And as mother oohed and aahed over every new piece of clothing that my thin sister bought, she patently refused to acknowledge my accomplishment in any way. My older sisters who could see the frustration and shame on my face, would say to her, " Mom, Isn't you-know-who looking good, too?" She would turn her face completely away from me and say coyly,"Oh, she has a long way to go..." Why she thought it would kill her to compliment me I don't know. She would say to my sisters that she didn't want to compliment me because she thought I WOULD STOP MY DIET! I never believed it for a second. To allow me to succeed, or assist me in succeeding would take away her control to make me feel like a loser, a bad person, lazy, a glutton. This is what she thought, this is what she KNEW, and so she could not allow me for one second to believe otherwise.

The non-girl...

Mother always looked beautiful in all the pictures in our house: her engagement picture in the dining room, in the photo album, the Maid of Honor picture from her sister's wedding, standing with my father, the precision of youth polished on their faces...I used to think they were breathtaking, those pictures. I could never be sure which one of them I most closely resembled. Neither of them seemed to me they could be responsible for what I was. The older I became, the larger I grew, the harder it was for Mother to look at me as she did her other daughters. My sisters and brothers sensed it as well, and whether it was more me or more them, I did not know or even wonder: I knew that this body would allow anyone, even my tribe, to look at me as their cross, their shame. I would wake for school, and head for the bathroom, only to see through eyes full of sleep Mother standing in her bedroom doorway, standing still, but looking like she was vibrating with fury, waiting for me to appear, waiting as if she had been there all night, standing and waiting and vibrating; my shoulders would slump and I would take the walk of shame to the bathroom as she followed, and pointed to the bathroom scale. I would step on, she would scream the number out loud, and this was the rest of the family's cue to whoop and roar over the expanding non-girl; at thirteen I remember one of these eary morning bombardments ending with her telling me that no boy would ever like me, and if he did he'd never admit it because he would be embarrassed in front of his friends to do so.

In remembrance...

It's amazing to me that I can so easily go back to that time that appears in front of my eyes and removes me from the now... I remember thinking how I could just fall in love with him, like just flowing away. Even with all his trials and burdens which I could see instantly, not because I'm a keen judge but because well, there they were; I simply wanted to be loved. To be beholden to someone in a pair, one of the someones in a pair...and soon I am back to here. Here is my wisdom of age: no one knows what is in store for ourselves, where life rides through. You just end up there. Recently I was out amongst with friends and we were talking with a man who was the drummer in the night's entertainment. My friends, both female, petite, (as a woman is smaller than most men: smaller hands, smaller waist, narrow shoulders) were relaxedly sitting on the high pleather bar stools; I was leaning against mine, unable to actually sit on the tall small slippery seat. This man turned to me and as he was speaking to me, clamped his hand on my left shoulder. I stood there, my eyes locked on his face but no expression in mine; I had known immediately the view of the fatgirl that this man had that made him be at his ease to touch me, when he had not touched either of my friends. I have lived in this body my whole life. Oh yes everyone does, but a body of layers is much different. I was aware of the distortion (as was everybody else) as early as six years. A boy in my kindergarten class used to follow me home, knock me down and then sit on me, grinning while I squirmed under him, not crying but full of fear. My parents asked the school crossing guard to walk me home after she had gotten all the children across the busy Park/Court Sts. intersection towards their homes. However they never told me; so all I knew was that this stern-looking woman in a very official uniform would tell me to "wait here until I'm done". I thought I would be arrested, so I would run away from her as soon as she turned her back, cutting through the church with a quick terrified prayer to God to please tell me what I'd done. At about nine years of age I remember the realization that I was not just a disappointment to my mother but also an embarrassment, and that while she could maybe live with the former, she hated me for the latter. Mother grew up in the days of WOP, dago, greaseball, and she never wanted us to be the big wild guinnie family with a ton of kids, literally. Some of my sisters were chubby but no one was like me. At family gatherings my father's sisters would sidle up to my mother, whispering feverishly in her ear that they were so sure she was frantic at how fat I was and what was she planning to do about it? And with each of these instances she resented me a little more.