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.