Tomado de: CyberPsych.
Posted By: Shannon
Date: 20 May 2008, at 4:20 a.m.
I'm sorry this is so long; I hadn't intended to launch into my life story when I came here but it kinda turned out that way. Please bear with me.
I've been overweight/obese my entire life. When I was very young it never struck me that this was a particularly important thing, but as I got older I guess I started to notice it more. Other people started noticing too. I remember being ridiculed and made fun of fairly often; I at least was always aware of how my classmates saw me, even if they didn't say it to me directly. They said it enough about the other fat kids that it wasn't hard to figure out. I never thought I was that different from anybody else until I was about 9 years old. At that point, I started having periods (having hit puberty the previous year. At age 8, yeah. Try explaining to your friends in the changing room after swim class why you have hair down there and they don't. Sucked to be me.), and they were so heavy that by my 10th birthday I had become anemic.
My mother took me to a local clinic, and the doctor's solution was to put me on birth control and an iron supplement. This worked for a few months, until my periods stopped completely. When that happened, I thought it was cool because I was 10 and obviously didn't find bleeding profusely every month to be an enjoyable pastime, even though I remembered my mom telling me once that having none at all wasn't a good thing. I wasn't really feeling better, so I asked if I could stop taking the birth control and my parents told me I could. My periods have been extremely irregular ever since.
My mother had irregular periods and trouble with her weight as well, so she went online trying to find solutions to those problems for both of us, and found a site about a disease that she soon suspected we had: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). That lead to a number of doctor visits, and when I was 11 I was diagnosed with PCOS and insulin resistance. Ever since the birth control I had started to put on even more weight. At an age where boys and clothes and making yourself look as pretty as possible come into the picture, it sucks pretty bad when you look at a picture of yourself and your friends and they look like delicate little princesses next to this giant, fat ogre that eats kids under the bridge. Or troll, whatever.
I was homeschooled -- to disastrous effect -- in fifth grade. I'd begged my parents to teach me at home because I was sick of people staring at me and talking about how fat I was behind my back. When I returned to public school for 6th grade, our PE teacher and our nurse had everyone in my grade weighed at the same time. I forget why. It wasn't hard to overhear as the PE teacher recited the weight of each student to the nurse, who was writing them down at a little table nearby. My turn came, and I got on the scale.
Twelve years old. Two hundred twenty-two pounds. 222 lbs. Which meant I'd gained more than 60 pounds in less than 2 years.
I guess they were arranging their list by weight, because when everyone had had their turn on the scale the nurse and PE teacher launched into a short discussion of whether I was bigger or smaller than my other obese classmate. "No, I think she's a little bigger. What were their weights? Okay, so she's a little bigger than him." Etc. I heard it. If I could hear it, I know everyone else could. I told my mother what I weighed later that day, on the way home from grocery shopping, and though I don't remember the rest of the conversation, I remember one sentence distinctly: "No 12-year-old should weigh 200 pounds! Not even if they're six feet tall!"
I think that's when my shame really kicked in. Which I guess gets me to the point of my overly long story. Again, I begged my parents to homeschool me. Now people 3 grades ahead and 3 grades behind me were talking about how fat I was. My mother was steadfastly against homeschooling me because of how things had turned out the previous year; I had basically been left to my own devices with a heavily Christian curriculum that I didn't understand, having never been taken to church, and when I took the entrance exam so I could move on to 6th grade I failed (miserably so) the math part of the test. The only reason I wasn't held back is because my reading/writing scores were so high.
My parents disagreed over the prospect of homeschooling me. My mother eventually said that if my dad homeschooled me, she refused to help me with my work and I would end up being left to do everything myself like in 5th grade. I didn't believe her. Maybe part of it was that my dad was always right there telling me (or yelling at me, rather) that if I wanted to be homeschooled, I'd be homeschooled, and to hell with my mom. I was absolutely certain that being home where nobody would call me names and I could learn at my own pace was the perfect thing for me, even though it hadn't worked out before. I was sure it would be different that time. Dad promised me it would be different and that he'd help me every day.
Well... Mom didn't help me. I sometimes wonder if she's proud of that but that's not really the point. My dad didn't help me either. He went and bought the same Christian curriculum for me, set the boxes of books -- noticably lacking a Bible, which I would've needed to read -- down in front of me, and went to watch TV. The few times I decided it was okay for me to interrupt his nap or his tv, I was informed that he was too sick right now but he'd help me later. Which is true in a way I guess, since he broke his back when I was 6 and has various other health problems and medications that make him feel less than stellar. But there I was again. On my own with books and concepts I didn't understand, and no one willing to help me. After 6th grade, my dad didn't even buy me any more school books.
I tried learning what I could through the internet, which quickly became my new social life. Over the next year or so I completely lost contact with my school friends, in spite of living only a few miles away from them all. I had a friend a few years older than me -- we'll call her Amy -- on a 3D chat I played on a lot, and she became my best friend for a long time. We grew apart, and when I was 13 I met a girl my age -- we'll call her Cassie -- online, on one of those little virtual pet communities, and she became my best friend for the next six years.
After being homeschooled the second time, I learned a lot about my family, my parents in particular. When I was a kid I always thought a "broken home" was something that I just wasn't part of. Not me. Not my family. Of course I knew my parents fought. I'd seen and heard them do it before, but being home 24/7 for one's entire adolescence is a very eye-opening experience, to say the least. My whole life became this huge, insane screaming match to which I was expected to play referee. There were doors being slammed constantly. Things were being thrown constantly. Holes were punched into the walls and doors. Doors were kicked in. Dad refused to give my mother any money and took her paycheck when she got it. My parents threatened physical harm and sometimes death on one another. My dad even threatened to hit my younger brother, who for some reason he's always deemed a lesser form of life, especially compared to my older brother, who is the "prince" of the family. At one point my mother was even putting urine in my dad's food and drink.
When there was a family problem or a disagreement between the two, there was NEVER an attempt made to solve it. It was always a blame game. There was a problem, so it had to be SOMEBODY's fault, so THEY had to fix it because THEY caused this mess, etc ad nauseam. As it happens, my dad treated my older brother like he was the next Jesus, so he tended to be on my dad's side of the "support team" -- and my mom was the only parent who treated my younger brother like a human being, so he tended to be on my mom's side of things. Being the middle child, I was the leftovers, and as such I was brought into every possible argument as a way to "settle" the issue. If I disagreed with one of them, they'd yell at me. If I asked not to be involved, they'd yell at me and tell me I was a failure. If I tried to physically get away, they'd come and drag me back. Out of their screaming fits and character assassination, 5% of the time it was about stuff that MIGHT actually matter on some plane of existence. 15% of the time it was about stuff even I, at 13, knew was beyond idiotic. The other 80% was about nothing. NOTHING.
I'm now 20 years old, and I'm... stuck. I've spent most of the last 9 years neglecting myself and trying to escape my home life through games and the internet because I didn't know how to face it. What little education I got from the internet isn't enough to get me through life in the real world. As a result, I haven't been to college, haven't even attempted to get into one, and the only job I've ever had (which I only got because my mother greased some wheels for me) I was fired from after only 11 months. I have no money. I still live at home. I made the mistake of "loaning" some big chunks of money to my parents and I'm positive I'll never see it again, and I'm left with very little from my job. My health problems are significantly worse now, and I'm probably the fattest I've ever been. Once again I find myself saying "I haven't had a period in over a year", and that in particular scares me and makes me think there's something terribly wrong with me. I can't go to a doctor though, because I have no insurance.
I'm too stupid and untalented to get a job, so I have no money. I have no money, so I can't get insurance. I have no insurance, so I can't see a doctor. I'm afraid to see a doctor because I'm pretty sure they'll just tell me that I'm fat and need to diet and send me on my way, or they'll find I have some horrible disease that I can't afford to get treated for. I had a falling out with Cassie and, to a lesser extent, Amy last year, and the only friends I have now (also online) are a bit younger than I am and turning out to not be the people I thought they were. I can't even drive because the only two people in the house who know how always say they're too sick or too tired to teach me -- or my brothers, for that matter.
I know I'm stupid, but not so much so that I don't know what needs to be done. The problem is I don't know where to START, how to keep myself from giving up for the thousandth time, or how to get certain things done in a situation that makes it seem like doing those things simply isn't plausible. You would think that since I have no life to speak of, I wouldn't be so stressed out, but I feel completely overwhelmed. I've tried losing weight for a decade now, and I've done very well at times (lost 60 pounds once in a few months, but ended up gaining it back during and after the holidays.), but I have very little control over the food that gets purchased in my home.
I'm so scared that I'll never make it out of here. I don't have anyone I could ask for help. Even if I did manage to get out every now and then, I don't know what I'd do. It might sound crazy but I've forgotten how to interact with people. I forgot how to make friends, and seemingly how to keep them. These days I'm so ashamed of my appearance that I don't like going shopping. I don't enjoy meeting new people, because I feel like they're judging every aspect of my being. If I shake hands with someone I feel like they're judging the quality of my hand. I'm actually AFRAID of talking on the phone for the same reason; I feel like the person on the other end is judging the quality of my voice, or judging my intelligence by the words I use or how I pronounce them. It is killing me.
As I said before, I'm sorry this is so long. I understand if no one had the patience (or time) to read it. I've been keeping all this bottled up for so long -- this is only the second time I've ever come out and said anything about it. If anyone has anything at all to offer me -- a little insight, advice, encouragement, anything -- please do. I don't know how to proceed, and so much of my life has already passed me by. Please help.
I have only one more thing to say before I finally shut up, and I apologize for the cliche... but if there is any sort of student reading this, be that a child, teenager, or college student: STAY IN SCHOOL. For your sake, please stay in school. Don't end up like me.
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