I didn't always struggle with my weight. As a kid I looked like everyone else. I was maybe even a little on the small side due to a wimpy immune system - I got sick a lot with colds, the flu, whooping cough. In my kindergarten class photo, I'm pale to the point of looking translucent. But it worked for me. I was a dark haired little bird, with a bit of a lisp and a high pitched voice. I was cute.
It didn't last. Around the age of nine, I started overeating as a response to stress and anxiety.* I couldn't get enough sugar, carbs and fat. It was 1992 and skim milk (and other low fat foods) reigned supreme; I have vivid memories of pouring half a cup of white sugar onto my usual breakfast of Cheerios with skim milk. When only milk was left, I'd toss in another few spoonfuls of sugar for good measure. This was also when my ability to sense fullness disappeared - I would pour another bowl immediately after the first was gone, and sometimes a third. I was trying to fill a void, to cope with some pretty immense feelings, and I had no coping skills. Tubs of peanut butter, loaves of bread, bricks of cheese, even Fig Newtons which I hated - I devoured it all. I would eat half the contents of the pantry and hide the deflated bags and packages under the baking supplies (not that I was fooling anyone - just because no one ever saw me stuff myself didn't mean they couldn't see me putting on weight).
By 11 or 12 I was fat - back rolls, double chin and all. My mom sent me to a sports day camp in an effort to "help me slim down" and I got teased daily about my weight. I started to hate having my picture taken. I felt terrible about myself. I was bigger than all of my friends and gap-toothed and my hair was shaped like a mushroom, with wavy bangs that parted in the middle. I had huge eyebrows long before they were cool. My fingers were chubby. I didn't like my profile. I had painful ingrown toenails that prevented me from walking comfortably. I was fat and flat, which made my belly appear that much bigger. I had a thin upper lip that disappeared when I smiled, and I even hated the shape of my smile - I felt it should go up more at the corners, less side-to-side. I was having a Hard. Time. I was so self-conscious I actually covered my mouth with my hand whenever I spoke, a habit that took me years to shake.
I dreaded phys ed, where my gym shorts would ride up and my thighs would rub together so aggressively I would end up with bloody welts. Running track was the worst, but high jump was pretty horrific too - the teacher videotaped our attempts, then played them back to the whole class so that we could learn from each other's mistakes. I don't think I ever made it over the bar successfully, but I smashed into it like a pro. When I got tired of laughing it off, I started faking sick to get out of class, and I dropped phys ed as soon as I was able to.
For a long time nothing changed - or rather, things got worse and worse. I didn't know how to lose weight and was having a hard time managing my mood. My friendships were tumultuous. In grade 9, I abruptly stopped hanging out with the three friends I had spent all my time with for several years, because they seemed babyish. I desperately wanted to grow up. I made new friends who I considered cool, who drank and smoked cigarettes and went to punk shows and raves. I started falling for my closest friend, A. We were both queer, although we hadn't quite figured it out yet. Late one night, while babysitting, I called her up and we had a long conversation about sexuality and our lack of experience with boys. At one point she asked me "if you had to kiss a girl, who would it be?" and I didn't miss a beat: "you". We slept together that same night. Several weeks later, my mom confronted me with my open diary, pointing to the (long, graphic) entry about losing my virginity to a girl, and that was the end of my relationship with my mother for the next five years. Home life got tough, really tough, and my depression got worse. I hated my body, I hated feeling out of control, and I hated my family. I was angry or on the verge of tears all the time.
That summer, an older friend who I idolized told me that vegetarians were always skinny. She was veg herself, and probably weighed all of 100 pounds soaking wet. Knowing nothing about how to diet safely, I cut out all meat and ate as little as possible for a few weeks. I wasn't very good at being hungry, though, so I started purging after meals instead. My friend was also a runner, so I took up running. I hated it, and it never got any easier or more enjoyable, but I wanted to be thin so badly I regularly ran until I vomited - bonus! There goes dinner! I ran only at night, through my nice middle class neighbourhood, listening to the Run Lola Run soundtrack which was mostly screaming. Earlier in the school year I had shaved my head and I was determined to get thin enough to look like Sinead O'Connor instead of a fat skinhead.
By the time grade 12 rolled around, I had broken up with my girlfriend and lost a bunch of weight - I had no idea how much, since I didn't have a scale, but I was around a size 8-10. On the first day of school, I ran into a friend's mother who loudly announced "SARAH WHERE'S YOUR OTHER HALF" and I wished I could just melt into the floor and disappear. To my surprise, my depression hadn't melted away along with the extra pounds. I felt lower than ever and started self-harming. I sabotaged my relationships - dating girls for a few months, cheating on them with someone else, and breaking up with them to date the new girl. My grades were in the toilet. I cut class more often than not. I started missing work on the weekends because I was too hung over (or still drunk). I wasn't sleeping. I had fleeting thoughts of suicide. The school guidance counsellor started pulling me into her office for check-ins and I never had anything good to tell her, but our standing weekly meetings prevented me from doing anything drastic.
Somehow I made it through OAC (grade 13 in Canada, which doesn't exist anymore) and then got into university in another province. Academically it was a bust, but socially (and emotionally, physically, mentally) it was a good year for me. I became friends with a group of queers and artists and weirdos, and felt seen for the first time ever. I learned to live independently. I started moving my body in a way that actually felt good - I walked everywhere. One of the things I was most scared of, putting weight back on, happened. Nearly everyone I knew ended up putting on 10-20 pounds by the end of first year. But it didn't actually bother me as much as I thought it would. I felt strong and confident. When I dropped out of university and moved back to my hometown, that confidence was what got me a job and a whole new circle of friends. Life was ok! I was having fun!
And then...a bunch of things happened in my twenties and early thirties. Join me next time for a recap of 2003-present.
*The cause of which I might write a post about someday, haven't decided yet.
