You Are.......

FAT!!!!!!!! FATTY FAT FATS MCFATPANTS. Look at you, you lardass, you'd like to think you are a size 12 but you have a feeling the clothing companies are just being nice. FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT..

Jiggle jiggle.

*SHHHHHHUT UP!!! I DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO YOU ANYMORE!!!***

When I was about 5 years old, my first incident with feeling larger than the general populace came from a girl my own age. We were seated in the back of her mom's car, it was summer so we were in shorts. She looked at my legs which had spread out onto the seat and exclaimed "Wow! Look at how fat your legs get!!" She was thin to begin with and I just had baby fat. I wasn't even fat!!

That's when the shame kicked in and I started to loath my body. I would purposely sit hunched over at my desk at school so you couldn't see my little rolls. I thought I had it under control. No one could see that I had baby fat or skin that I had yet to grow into and I was alright.

Fast forward to 1993. I was 14 and my mother had died the year before. I was going through a hard time and I was appointed the "Best Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the City!!" Well, that was a joke. She may have been the most popular at the time but she was also a great pusher of drugs upon teens. I was pretty angry at the world and at my mother for what she did. I don't remember much discussion on that however, I do remember much discussion on which drugs would make all of my problems go away.

I was diagnosed as having depression and attention deficit disorder. That was very popular at the time. As was Ritalin. Ahhhh Ritalin. You turned me into a super-focused zombie with zero appetite. At first I didn't notice the changes in my eating habits, I had never been one to take a lunch to school with me anyway. I continued on Ritalin because I trusted my doctor to do what was best for me. I started to notice the weight loss within a couple of months. I was about 110 lbs when I started on it. I was 5'3. That's a pretty decent height to weight ratio.

I kept getting thinner and thinner. I was loving it. Finally, I would look like Kate Moss!! I hated models at this point but it was a love-hate relationship I suppose. Actually you can just chalk it up to being heavily influenced by the media despite hating what they stood for in the first place.

My Nanna and my psychiatrist were worried about my weight loss. I decided to become cunning and I would come home from school, grab a couple of yogurt containers and proceed to empty the contents into the sink as if I had eaten them and then I would make sure my Nanna would see the empty cartons. I had also cleverly become vegetarian. She said she didn't know how to cook sans-meat and used that as an excuse to not eat the meals she would cook for my Grandfather, herself and I.

I made it down to 89 lbs at my lowest. The only reason I started eating again is that I was threatened with hospitalization should I not gain some weight. That scared me a bit as I was already used to being locked up (hospital suicide-watch and group homes in the CAS) and I did not want my freedom taken from me again. I remember visiting my best friend's place and her dad made a comment on how my back looked "Like a dinosaur!!" when I would bend over to do up my shoes etc. That comment maybe have saved me a hospital visit. I started to look closely in the mirror, something I was not doing but I sure did look closely at the scale on the floor. I saw what my friend's dad saw and I didn't like it as much as I thought. I thought to myself that I was becoming like the models I couldn't stand because of what they stood for. I had to use a lot of pillows in strategic places just to sleep semi-comfortable at night.

I slowly started eating again and gained weight back. I once again fell into the eating disorder trap and I could not see how lovely my body actually was, what I saw was a horrible 200 lbs whale when I looked in the mirror.

That is when I started to make myself throw up. I would feel so guilty for eating, that I would go and vomit. I would alternate between this and starving. It seemed to work alright and no one threatened me with hospitalization again. I moved out on my own at 17 and partying and drugs became more important than food. I was eating maybe a bagel a day if I was lucky. Sometimes maybe a can of tomato soup. This whole time, I was beautiful and I couldn't appreciate it at all. I just didn't see it.

I wore baggy clothes to hide what I thought was fat. I don't think I had much fat, it was skin. I didn't see it that way. I had somehow allowed outside forces to shape who I was and what I thought of myself all the while loathing the industry that promoted thinness in the first place.
I picked up a nasty drinking habit and gained a bit of weight from that but still, I was nowhere near fat. I was maybe 120 at my highest before I got pregnant at 22.

I gained a lot of weight with my pregnancy and I am still fighting it to this day. I gained over 60 lbs and have not been able to reach my pre-pregnancy weight of 120. It bothers the hell out of me and I keep reverting back to binge, purge, starve. I also become very angry at food and decide that it is not my friend and that certain foods I once loved gross me out for whatever twisted reason my mind can find.

I know this is wrong and that the media and fashion industries have influenced these unhealthy choices I keep making. I had been to counseling for this and I have read books. I am fully aware of what I am doing yet, I cannot stop. These days I am into binging and starving. I am trying so very hard to shake these old ways of thinking but it's fucking hard being a woman these days and seeing all the clothes that are made for skinny little things who probably have eating disorders of their own. The worst thing about it is that they make these clothes in bigger sizes too but when I put them on, they look noting like the do on the mannequins and I get depressed and leave. I have continual closet-meltdowns where I can't seem to find anything in my closet that I want to wear. At these hysterical times I am only thinking one thing: "No matter what you put on Andie, you will look fat in it so you might as well give up!"

I fucking hate myself for thinking this way and being easily influenced my the media. I am smarter than that. I also know that eating disorders are not just only about being skinny, but about control. I feel I have no control over myself sometimes and that is what leads up to an episode. I suppose it's time for more CBT therapy only this time instead of focusing on anxiety and panic, it shall have to be my unhealthy body image and unhealthy eating habits.

FAT FAT FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT FATTY!!

These thoughts go through my mind almost on a daily basis. I can't control them when they come and they scare me. I don't like having little fights inside my head. I also don't like the fact that if I let it show, if I let it slip and lose control that my daughter could very well pick up these same nasty habits.

Sometimes I just want to take a knife to my fat and stab at it, slice it off. That would be quite messy I would imagine.