First as an explanation, my mother was fat. I was tiny. I was starved, so I was smaller than I should have been. My father was a drunk and my mother was an overeater. I’ve heard that it is often that way, that they pair up like that. All I know is that was what my life was like.
I was tiny, my little arms were like sticks. She would refuse to feed me when I was little and there was no one big around. She used food as a weapon against me. She used her body as a weapon against me. She used my body as a weapon against me.
So I hate and fear fat. I remember being four years old and literally shaking with fear about being fat and ugly and disgusting like her. How she had dark hair, as I do and how I never wanted to resemble her. About never wanting to be like her, in any way.
And then her physical abuses of me caught up with my body. I was in pain all the time and everything that I tried to do to make it better, only made things worse. That was over twenty-five years ago and nothing ever fixes anything.
All the medications the doctors pushed, they only make things worse. They only numb me out, dumb me up, make me a zombie. I already have those issues from the pain, I don’t need meds to make it worse. They only make me gain weight, they all make me gain weight. So I go up and down and struggle and diet and exercise when and as much as I can.
Over twenty-five years I have accrued one hundred extra pounds and that only makes things worse. I want to deny it. I want to pretend that it isn’t like this, but it is. I don’t want anyone to know. I want to hide from it.
My doctor has tried to lecture me and I tell him about what I am dealing with and usually he gives me a look and says calories in calories out, it is that simple. It isn’t that simple and I think how can I continue seeing such an idiot. Finally I insisted on x-rays which led to mri and him understanding what I was dealing with. For once he looked like he got it. Now he doesn’t lecture me, but I still catch him giving me that look.
I’ve lost this weight over and over again. I can lose, I can stop eating healthily and starve myself, but that is what my abuser did to me. It is not good for me to starve myself and perpetuate what she did to me. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like that.
The extra weight, it only makes sleep harder, more painful. It only puts more stress on my poor pain filled body. It only makes the pain worse.
It only makes me look more and more like the sex offender who abused me. It only makes me loathe and hate my body, to hate the fat, to see the ugliness in me. It only makes me look like her. It only makes me hate myself more. I don’t want to starve myself and still not make any lasting losses.
I wish I could be p.c. and say how bad it is to hate fat, to hate fat women, to hate fat men. But I do. And I don’t care. It is my mother I see when I look at them. It is why I don’t have a full length mirror.
Kate Is Rising 
Reading this made me want to offer you a hug. You are completely justified in hating your mother. You look like you. You are sacred and belong to yourself. You are not a sex offender. You are not her.
I was also neglected by not being fed, in the way that drunks and workaholics forget to feed their kids, not like they were doing it on purpose, which I think must be worse. It took me ages to trust there’d still be food in the cupboard, I didn’t have to eat it now before my brothers got it.
People have no idea, sometimes, do they? I have trouble doing exercise that is frustrating, physically challenging or gets my heart rate up, as it makes me flashbacky. It’s going to be a bitch to learn how to do the sword dance again, but I’m in the right place to do it now. I even had to leave to cry in the middle of a stinking yoga class.
May you be blessed by whatever you hold sacred. May your body and heart be whole.
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Hi,
Thank you so much. You are so sweet and kind to me.
My friends who have seen a picture of her say that I don’t, so I hope that is true. And inside I am not anything like her.
I’m sorry that you were neglected around the issue of food. I well know the long-term damage that does. It goes deep.
When eating at the table with both my parents present it was often very shaming and humiliating. And still to not get full, that was hard, even with my father present, I was often coerced into not eating enough, because of the cost of food. I think that is one of the worst things you can do to a child. He had money for alcohol, but would make me feel bad for wanting more food so I would be full.
I too have trouble doing exercise where I get all sweaty and my heart speeds up. It took me a long time to see the connection to the abuse. It is a lot to cope with and it directly impacts in every way on a survivor’s life and body. I’m so sorry that you deal with that as well.
Thanks for your encouragement and kind words. Thank you especially for your words of blessings.
Kate
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Oh, this is so sad. I cannot even imagine it. My mother did the opposite – she made my siblings and me EAT everything on our plates after she filled them. It, too, has had bad effects on my eating habits. I have always insisted no child had to eat anything not wanted while he or she is in my home.
Remember, knowing how you feel is how to heal.
Ivory
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Hi Ivory,
Thank you.
She did that as well when I was in school. She also tried to make me fat when I became a teenager. She was a controller of food and when that is your abuser, I think, it makes it so much worse.
Thank you for your kind words.
Kate
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