My disfunctional relationship with food....

I have always had an unhealthy relationship with food. I remember binge eating after my mother died. My step mother was always restricting what we ate. She put my younger sister and I on the Atkins Diet, the sugar-free diet and several other diets. I hated that shit! I was just a kid. I remember my little sister and I raiding the kitchen for SOMETHING that might taste good when she was busy or taking a nap after church on Sunday. My sister called this activity S.A.S., or sneaking a snack.

We were allowed to visit our Grandmother once a week on Thursday nights. On Thursday after school, she would pick us up and take us to Burger King. We would sometimes spend Saturdays with her too. Woo Hoo!!! Now i could get some real food! She kept the pantry stocked with whatever we wanted. All we had to do was write it on the list. I would have a whole box of cereal for breakfast, a hamburger, a half a can of pringles, an extra tall glass of strawberry milk, and a Hershey bar for dessert. Dinner was fried chicken from Popeye's or another hamburger. By the time I finished the 4th grade, I was 5'5" and 150 lbs. I do not blame my Grandmother for letting her Grand babies indulge. This is how I mourned for my mother. I binge ate and ate and ate.

My mother was a teacher. She taught at Jeanerette Middle School before she passed away. She did not always have time to cook a meal for us, so the majority of the time we would just grab something to eat on our way home. I wasn't used to anything that did not come out of a box or a bag. When my dad re-married our step mother, every night it was something different for dinner. I did not like ANY of it. I remember the first time I was force-fed. She had enough of my pickyness and decided to MAKE me eat her cooking. I was just 9. She took the fork out of my hand, grabbed my face with her other hand and shoved a fork full of white beans and rice into my mouth, laughing every time I gagged as I tried to swallow it. She force-fed me bite after bite until my plate was clean. She did it again and again. One time I remember she had reheated some vegetable soup for lunch, she had just made me eat it the night before and I was pissed. I was SICK OF HER FOOD! I was 11 years old and she was still force feeding me. So she fed me the fucking soup. I quietly walked to the bathroom and purged myself clean of her god damn vegetable soup. Form that day forward I ate whatever she put in front of me, but I purged that shit right out of my body after every meal.

Purging also came in handy when i would visit my grandmother's. I would eat until I was almost ill and then purge so I could go and eat some more. When I was about 13 I discovered Laxatives. I would drink milk of magnesia. Whatever I couldn't get out by vomiting would come out the other way. I would fake like i was constipated and have my grandma buy the laxatives for me. I was very sick and nobody knew. When I was 14, I remember looking down at my hips and was disgusted if my hip bones wouldn't stick out far enough. I would do 1000 plus sit ups a day. I would lay flat on my back and suck my stomach in so that more and more of my ribs would show. I became obsessed with my weight.

The first person to find out about my eating disorder was my sister -in-law. Somehow she had convinced my step mother to let me stay with her and my step brother after we had come back to LA for my step grandmother's funeral. We went grocery shopping and I asked her to buy me laxatives. She got them for me but she told my brother about it and we had a talk. I don't remember if I admitted to them or not that I was using them to lose weight, but they knew and watched me like a hawk for the rest of my stay.

I continued to purge until I was almost 18. One day I was purging myself before I went to bed and my throat started to bleed. I kept jamming my fingers down my throat because I was sure there was more food in my stomach, but it just wouldn't come out. Now my knuckles were bleeding from rubbing against my teeth so hard and I still kept on. When I saw the drops of blood fall from my mouth and hit the toilet seat something in my head told me to stop. So I stopped and put my head on the toilet seat and sobbed for a good hour. I prayed and asked God why I hated my body so much. I asked him why he had let this horrible woman come into my life and screw up my judgements. He didn't answer any of my questions but when I got up and washed my face off and brushed my teeth, I looked into the mirror and felt relief. He gave me the courage I needed to decide that this was the end of my disease. I was going to stop. It took a little time and work but I quit purging. After that day I stopped obsessing about my weight. He took that obsession away.

When I delivered my daughter, I was 230lbs. Now, I am a good 200 lbs and don't feel very comfortable in my new body. I want to lose the weight in a healthy way and I will. I have not once thought about purging.