This entry is hard for me to write but I keep coming back to feeling like this is something I HAVE to do. I wasn't going to post this and just share with a few people who have been so very important in my journey thus far, but the more I think about it, I don't think I am going to be able to really move on without just putting it out there and acknowledging the past and the role it played in letting myself reach 338 pounds. I also need to admit that even after all these years I still struggle to deal with trying to move past all those insecurities and fears.
I cannot explain how badly I wish I could look in the mirror and think "hey you know what Alicia, you are beautiful--inside and out" or that someone will tell me that one day and I actually believe them. But I cannot see a day yet where that will happen. I have had things happen and allowed things to happen to me that have made me feel ugly, disgusting and unworthy of being loved or even feeling like I matter in this world. I no longer hate myself or feel completely disgusted by who I am or what I look like, so that is progress but I'm a long way from thinking I look remotely attractive. I don't know why it is so important to me to feel pretty or beautiful. I
guess it's important to any woman...or man for that matter. Who doesn't
want to be considered attractive? I know it doesn't sound like it but my confidence is growing and my self-esteem has improved so much, but when you have felt so horrible about yourself for so long it's hard to move past that. It's time I put the past behind me. It happened and it's over. I'm not the same person I was then nor will I let it define or destroy me anymore. I am moving past the feelings of being unworthy and am discovering
within myself someone who is strong and wants to be a confident, determined and happy person.
I'm not going to go into a long story about my past-- because it is not something I can go into great detail about and some of you I have already told (or you were there to help pick up the pieces). I don't want to relive those days, I just need to put pen to paper how those things made me feel and I'm getting to the point where I am understanding why I feel the way I do so much more clearly now and I am wanting to really change how I feel about me. I'm also at the point in my journey where tackling my past doesn't hurt and bring me down like it once did. I cannot change the past. Even though it's taken many years for me to be able to turn it into a positive in my life, my past plays an important role in the person I am becoming.
My mom and I always lived with my grandparents. My grandma was diabetic and my grandpa was legally blind. Mom was a single mom and she needed their help with me. I loved my grandparents tremendously and when I was 9 my grandma died the day before Mother's Day. My grandpa was heartbroken and died the following March. He was never the same after she passed away and that summer changed my life forever. I was way too young to be exposed to what he did to me and didn't understand why it was happening. I remember dreading the days when my cousin decided she wanted to stay home and not come into town and stay with us. I was safe when she was there and he would leave me alone. He was never mean and I remembered him crying at times so I have to believe he didn't intentionally want to hurt me and that he wasn't really aware what he was doing. After a few weeks I did tell some of what was going on to my mom but not much. I didn't want to hurt her. She talked to him and it did stop after that. The ironic thing is after she spoke to him, the three of us went for ice cream and it was like nothing ever happened. She and I didn't speak of it again until much later when I was in college and had just gotten out of a brief but very abusive relationship. I never pinpointed my dependence on food throughout the years until going through this journey. Ice cream is still one of my main comfort foods. When I'm upset or down, that is exactly what I want to feel better. Once I realized that moment when I was 9 is where my dependence on food started, I also realized that was when I really started gaining more and more weight. I had always been chubby but after that summer I steadily would get bigger and bigger. I cannot tell you how much I weighed in jr, high or high school but I think it was probably more than what I weigh right now. My dependence on food got to the point where I would binge which carried over into adulthood and even now when I get upset or down I really struggle to fight the urge to binge. I get down or upset and I turned to food--any food. Just the act of eating something helped numb whatever pain I was feeling. I would then turn the guilt for binging back on myself, telling myself I was a failure and fat and worthless. It was a never ending cycle.I know I could have easily become a bulimic but I could never make myself throw up.
I think I used the weight to build a wall around myself to protect myself from being hurt. The uglier and fatter I was no one would want to touch me. It didn't quite work that way though. At 13 I started seeing an older guy that lived in my neighborhood. He was 18 and when he started to show interest in me I realized how much I wanted someone to like me. I found myself in a situation I could not get myself out of and I was not physically or mentally strong enough to stop him. I gave in and remember being so scared. He would have been deaf and blind not to know I was not wanting to, but he didn't care about that and after that I didn't care about it either. I started caring less and less about how I felt about myself and worried more about what others thought of me. I wanted so badly for someone to love me because I couldn't love myself. I would start seeing a guy (and definitely not the right kind of guys---unfortunately most of them were quite a bit older than me and either already out of school or had dropped out and really were only interested in one thing). But I could only go so far and they would leave because they considered me to be a tease. That would in turn make me turn to more food and beating myself up about not being good enough for anyone to love. Thinking about it now, I guess during that time I did have a little self worth left albeit not much. If not I probably wouldn't have stopped them and just did anything they wanted to.
I had friends in high school but only a couple close friends. I wasn't
one that went to a lot of social events. I wanted to blend in and not be noticed. Any confidence I had was tied into my school work. I studied constantly and was a perfectionist. I was not satisfied with anything less than an A. I guess it was the one thing I had control over and something I excelled at. I graduated 3rd in my class and had high hopes for a new start at Butler. I excelled at Butler too, made the Dean's list and got involved in a bunch of different organizations--even leading a few of them. I didn't do much of the whole frat party thing as I was too self-conscious and felt out of place. Joining a sorority was definitely out of the question. I think I was relatively content at Butler. I did have a lot of fun and met some great people. Met my best friends Jenn and Frances and have some great memories of college. Then I met Saeed. He was a foreign student from the United Arab Emirates who moved in down the hall from me. We started seeing each other, but it quickly turned into a bad situation. Perhaps it was his culture, my fear of men and strong desire of wanting *anyone* to love me. I'm not sure and I will never know, I just know that what happened in that short month we were together brought everything back from when I was 9 and 13. It got to the point where I wouldn't put up any fight, just let him hit me and use me. I'm not proud to admit that but at that time I could have cared less about whether I lived or died. If it wasn't for Jenn and Frances, especially Jenn I probably would not have survived. Saeed moved off campus and then I finally broke free. I was a total and complete mess though. I couldn't sleep. I was lucky if I got an hour a night. Jenn and Frances took anything from my room that I might hurt myself with. I don't know if I really would have tried killing myself although I wanted all the pain to end. I hated myself, I was damaged, and after that time period was when I really remember feeling so worthless and disgusting. How could anyone ever want to be with someone like me? After all, I had let all those things happen to me. I started skipping classes and just didn't give a damn about anything.
I probably should have taken some time off school but I refused to go home because what happened with Saeed brought up the memories of my grandpa. I couldn't be in the same house that everything had started in. I can't remember what got me started in counseling. I couldn't say whether it was something I knew I needed to do if I wanted to survive or if Jenn and Frances convinced me to go. I just know I went and they put me on trazadone just so I could get some sleep at night and start dealing with my messed up life. It did help me sleep but I felt drugged or hung over most of the time. I think I went a couple times a week to counseling. It's strange I can remember just about every detail of what happened before counseling but during that time I think I just kind of shut down and became foggy on some things. Maybe that was my brain's way of letting me work things out. Slowly I started putting the pieces of my life back together. Luckily most of my professors knew what kind of student I had been and worked with me but I did have to drop a couple classes. I stayed in counseling until she wanted to start talking about my weight and what I felt like was her wanting me to blame my mom. I stopped going and for the most part after that I was doing okay except I would get flashbacks and have horrible nightmares. I remember all of a sudden I would just be in a trance and I wouldn't know anyone else was around me. I would see, feel, smell, hear Saeed and I would be back in his dorm room. My counselor had taught me enough on dealing with the flashbacks and getting through my days that eventually I was able to know how to stop them when they started. I do feel like I dealt with the fact that I was molested and raped and for the most part have been able to put that behind me. I just hadn't dug deep enough with what those things did to how I felt about myself. And at times I wonder if I have fully forgiven myself for letting what happened lead me to some of the poor choices I made. I had such little self respect. After Saeed I seemed to do the same like I did in high school only this time I didn't have any feelings of self worth left. I didn't care what I did or who I did it with. Definitely not proud of that and even writing it now makes me feel disgusted. But it happened, there is nothing I can do to change that and I know I'm not that person anymore.
When Tommy and I started seeing each other, he made me forget about the hell I had gone through. I could get through my days without all the pain. Finally I thought I had found someone who truly loved me and I fell for him so fast. I almost lost my best friends over it and I'm so thankful that I didn't. For the first time in a long time I felt safe and loved. I honestly do not know how it was possible considering how low things had gotten for me (plus I had Toby halfway through my fourth year), but I graduated from Butler with high honors. The flashbacks disappeared and for the most part so did the nightmares. I still had nightmares occasionally but for the most part it was behind me. I was a new mom, Tommy and I got married and I focused on trying to be the best wife and mom I could be. I never really focused on myself, but rather everything I did was for them. Then after Tommy went to prison all my focus went to Toby and trying to give him as normal a life as possible. I never took the time to focus on me nor did I really think much about how little I liked myself. As I've said in one of my first blog posts I was going through the motions. Life was happening to me not the other way around.
Once Tommy came home, I thought finally I'll be happy. I put all I had into rebuilding our marriage and our family. But still didn't put any time into rebuilding myself. I let Tommy walk all over me throughout our marriage, believing one lie after the other, forgiving him when he cheated and didn't give up on him while he was away. After I had found the pipe in his shirt pocket almost a year ago now, I just gave up. I stopped trying to keep our marriage together and accepted the fact that partying and whatever else he was doing was always going to be more important than Toby or me. I couldn't do it anymore, I was miserable and he had disappointed us again. At first maybe calling an end to our marriage was more because I couldn't put Toby through that again. He was 4 when Tommy went away and at the time we separated he was 13. He knew things weren't right and knew I was miserable. It's a big wake up call when your teenage son keeps asking why I kept giving Tommy chance after chance.
When this journey started I knew I had to really look inside myself and be completely honest if I wanted to really change my life. I needed to find myself and believe in myself. I needed to discover that I wasn't just taking up space in this world. I deserved to be here and I deserved to find happiness. I've had a lot of successes in this process but there have been down times too. In May the nightmares came back more frequently than they had in a long time. When they would wake me up I felt so terribly alone and thought about giving up trying to lose weight and getting healthy if it meant I was going to be reliving all that again. I think that was when I really had to dig deep inside myself and tackle how my past had helped create the self-hatred and all those feelings of unworthiness that I had felt for so long. I honestly think that will be a very important part in making this transformation lifelong and not resort to binge eating and gaining the weight back or being a doormat for anyone to stomp their feet on. Over the past few months I've had different times where I pick apart the past and now I'm connecting the dots. I'm no longer afraid to face the past. When trying to decide whether I was actually going to post this for anyone to see or not and after talking it through with a couple friends, the main thing that was holding me back was not wanting to hurt anyone or wanting anyone to think differently of me. They both helped me realize I have to do what is right for me and I truly think that is not hiding behind what happened anymore or being ashamed. That's what this entry has been for me---acknowledging what I went through, living with the choices I made and using all of that to move forward and become stronger. I know I'm not there yet, I still have a long way to go. I still place too much emphasis on what other people think of me rather than how I feel about myself. I still need to learn to love myself before anyone else can love me the way I deserve to be loved. And like I said in the beginning I still want to someday feel pretty and attractive. But I'm definitely not the same person I was in high school, college or even a few months ago. I respect myself now and will not compromise what I want out of my life anymore.
