Mother Dearest

There have been so many life-altering moments in my short life of twenty-five years.  It’s hard to decide which one is ultimately worthy of detailing completely.  My story Brotherly Love was a moment in my life where my whole life changed forever, however I will not retell the story here.  Instead, I choose to let you go read it if you so choose and lay out another part of me.  It begins where Brotherly Love ends I guess.  Once the sexual abuse Tim subjected me to had ceased, I began a deadly spiral down an emotional descent.  Where only my own madness comforted me.  

I was never skinny; my inactivity in life was due to my interest lying in books and television rather than the insanity of the playground.  Once Tim was gone, guilt and shame engulfed me.  I spent hours locked away in my room, feeling sorry for myself and wanting nothing but food.  I was feeding a hungry heart, hungry for innocence and love.  My parents tried so hard to give me back my innocence and make me whole again, my room towered with presents which fell behind desperately in comforting me.  I had everything a little girl needed to make her happy, and yet I was consumed with my own thoughts.  My guilt was a virus slowly devouring me and my shame mocked me from the doorway of happiness.

How could I look anyone in the eye knowing what I have known?  My brother was locked away in a boys home and I was locked away in my own mind.  Punishing myself with guilty thoughts and shameful deeds, common sense knew I was not at fault, but my mind knew otherwise.  Our family was broken up and anger had made a home in the hearts of my parents.  Food became my best friend, whispering sweet love and filling the void that was my heart.  Fried chicken, cookies, ice cream, chocolate chips, crackers, sweets became my doctors and loose clothing became my savior.  My mother became my crusader in trying to save me from myself.  She began putting me on diets, and took me to doctors that told me I was inadequate in another way.  I was weak and my guard was destroyed as portioned food was laid out before me, my wounded heart began to die.  I began to prowl the house in the dead of night and raid the food pantry, stuffing my face with my old friends.

One night my mother heard my footsteps and came to see me with a handful of cookies, I stood there like a deer caught in headlights.  Soon after, locks were put on the food cabinets.  My comfort was locked away and pleading to be freed, whispering to me through the locked doors.  I finally figured out a way to reconnect with food.  I learned to use screwdrivers and simply dismantled the locks and soon my relationship with food was closer than ever.  My hunger knew no bounds, as I became adept at resealing new bags to leave no evidence of my having tasted the food.  My happiness grew stronger as I knew night after night, that my best friends would be there.

The day my mother caught me reassembling her lock, my guilt amplified to heights I never knew existed.  I lay in bed sobbing and trying to figure out how I was going to get my food without being caught now.  The shock, anger and concern in her eyes began to haunt me.  I bid farewell to my friends and began down another path of self-destruction.  As the pounds fell off me, so did my strength.  My mother saw my new figure as a good thing and I saw it as a terrifying way for men to notice me.  The last thing I wanted was to be noticed by the opposite sex, no matter how much of a crush I had on them, the very thought of being noticed and appreciated simply terrified me to my core.

Oh I smiled and laughed with my friends as we discussed boys we liked, but inside I wished that boys would never see me.  For what did I have for them to enjoy?  I was damaged goods, sullied by the hands of my brother.  The very thought of dealing with a boyfriend who I might eventually have to reveal my past to and risk rejection from…no a boyfriend was really the most terrifying thing I could have gotten.

With my best friends hidden away in a locked cabinet, I began to close myself up and reside in my mind more than the real world.  Tiny cut marks began showing on my wrists, when my mother saw them she got angry with me.  Moreover, told me she wouldn’t do anything about it because I was simply trying to get attention.  So, I continued slicing my wrists.  I heard a girl talking in class one day who was telling someone else how to slit your wrists correctly, to go down the length of your arm instead of across.  I went home and when I was done with the dishes, I took a kitchen knife to my bedroom and waited for awhile before going to take my nightly shower.  I stood beneath the water with the knife held firmly against my wrists, prepared to end it all.  My mother’s face flashed in my mind and I dropped the knife and began sobbing.

I began to hate my mother.  With every pore, my hatred for her built.  Every meal I ate where I was expected to eat more than my fair share of vegetables bred the hate further.  I began to fantasize about plunging a knife deep into her chest, but fear of being caught halted me.  I did try once, I put bleach into her morning coffeepot, but I put too much in the brown liquid and she smelled it.  The moment that the liquid ran down the drain I felt myself go numb.  Realization of what could have happened washed over me and I turned further inward, instead of cutting, I began thinking about drug overdose.  I took 20 aspirin and 8 Midol, trying to kill myself.  Instead, I succeeded in rendering aspirin null and void on me.

Years passed, and my guilt lessened and anger at Tim set in.  I became a very angry person, constantly yelling at everyone.  My guilt didn’t slide into the background, but fought to stay front and center and my anger was directed inward and I became irate at myself for feeling so guilty.  The tumultuous mix of emotions became too much for me to handle and again I turned to food for comfort.  I paid for my own food and hid in the shadows as tears streamed down my face.  My old friends quickly numbed my pain and built a barrier of protection between me and the harsh reality of the world.

Soon, my body was twice the size it used to be and my mother’s frowning face as she looked at me shamed me.  Her own health problems prompted her to see a doctor and she became frightfully aware that her own body was too fat and could kill her.  She sat me down one morning and began yelling at me.  Telling me that I was too fat and needed to lose weight.  That she was embarrassed to have my clothes in with her clothes because people might think they were hers.  My weight caused her to have to pay more in gas, because hauling the extra weight was so hard on the car.  She was embarrassed to be seen with me at all because people stared at the fat girl.  I had never seen anyone staring, and believe me I paid attention, I was painfully aware when other people paid any attention to me and the attention terrified me.  The final blow was the hate in her eyes as she shouted, “And now, the one thing I was scared of happening to you, could be happening to ME!!!!”  I stared at her tears in my eyes and hurt closing my throat.  The things I had always feared from other people, staring back at me in my own mother’s eyes.

I dieted and began to slowly lose weight, defeated completely.  I left home for college, and lost even more weight as I exercised even more getting to classes.  I eventually gained all the weight back plus some, I can’t look my mother in the eye now, and I can’t comfortably ride in her car.  Echoes of her hateful words ring in my tortured mind, and the things I used to enjoy doing with her, just aren’t the same.

It’s been six years since I saw that look of complete hatred in my mother’s eyes.  I have come to some hard realizations about my relationship with food.  I hide within my weight; I’m comfortable being unnoticed.  Whenever I lose weight and feel better its such a fragile balance until I’m crushed and gain it back.  It’s odd what tends to crush it, its attention and praise over the loss.  I fear being noticed by anyone, I prefer to stay in my shell and be unnoticed by the masses than to be unprotected and scrutinized by all.  If that means alienating my own mother, than so be it.  My own survival is more precious to me than my mother’s comfort level with my body.  It hurts to my core that she could think those things, but she hasn’t experienced the horrors I have.  I know for a fact she hasn’t.  However, I haven’t experienced her horrors either, not fully.  She was date raped and gave up the baby created from it that’s pretty tough.  However, she wasn’t taken advantage of by the one person in her life that she trusted and needed.  I loved my brother so much, in the home hopping the divorce can create; he was the one steady rock I had.  To be betrayed by your needs so completely…well, it can drive a person insane.