Today I have been on LL for a month. I feel like a bit of mile stone has been reached and to celebrate I am going to put on a swimming costume and take my son swimming!!!
I have been thikning about going through the times when I have put on all the weight and why. It has happended three times and I did not realise this until we did the time line in group. I just thought that I had spent most of my adult life a fatty and is was because I loved food and booze too much.
Slowly (and is has been about 10days!) I have realised that it has been because of unhappy points in my life. I just went through the last 17yrs thinking that fat was in my genes and there was nothing I could do about it. But that is not true because I have been very slim at two points in my adult life and so I know I can be a slim person.
I met my first husband when I was only 14, he was 8 yrs older than me and I only got with him because I wanted some attention from my parents. At the time my older sister was getting married (at a very young age) and everything was all about her. I started smoking, drinking going out with boys on moterbikes and then I met "him" (I will call him T from now on).
Any way things went on, I got generally ignored, the wedding was for June 1990 and in October 89 my granddad died and my mother was then greiving for my granddad and planning this wedding and looking after my younger sister. I was just ignored really, I don't think they did it on purpose but I certainly was a very lonely time. T would then say things to me like he was the only person who was supporting me and if I didn't have him I wouldn't have anyone. So at 14 I belived him and all the little things he would whisper in my ear.
I was still with him when I turned 16 my my mum thought that life would be best all round if I went to live with him as he had his own house and worked for his dad on a good wage. At the time I felt as though I was being cast out of the family and I told this to T and he said again and agian that he was the only person who was my supporter and my friend and there wasn't anyone else who cared about me. Again I belived him, I belived everything he said.
Life went on, he took me on foreign holidays and got me through my driving test when I was just 17 and to me it all felt like i was living some kind of a dream life. I didn't have any friends, I thought it was all donw to them being jealous, or at least thats what T said.
On my 20th birthday he asked me to marry him and of course I said yes! My sister was on marriage nuimber two and two kids by then. I thought it would be lovely to have my mum as involved in my wedding as she had been in my sisters. But by the time it had got to me, she was jaded and fed up with weddings and she took no time in telling me and telling em she had no money to put towars it either.
T wasn't bothered by that, all he said to me was he had the money and he would look after me because he was the only one who had any way.
Well, the wedding was awful, he wouldn't spend the money on me to have a lovely dress and we had the reception at our house. He did pay for a night at a local hotel but he just watched the movies all night and then went for a swim. I went to bed and in the morning we had to leave before breakfast because he was going away for the weekend with his bike club.
So away he went and I stayed home on my own. Thats when the eating started, I was so lonely and sad and I couldn't call my parents and I didn't have any friends so I ordered a takeaway. I ordered what T and I would have eated together and I ate the lot. The next night I ordered another takeaway from another place again enought for the two of us and again I ate it all to myself. For four days the only time I lef the house was to go to the garage or the drive through.
When he got home I was so down and lonely all I wanted was some company. But he didn't want to talk to me, he was tired from all the riding and then he saw all the takeaway rubbish in the bin and thought I had had friends round. I hadn't but he wouldn't beleive me, he was saying things like I was having guys round behind his back and I was drinking and smoking when I knew he wouldn't let me do those things. (I was smoking by the way, rebelious child!) So push came to shove, litterally and I walked away and went for a bath so we could both calm down. About ten minutes later he came up, pulled my out the bath by my hair, dragged me down the stairs and threw me out the front door, naked. It was quite late at night and I was only there for about 30 seconds. But the shame and the shock were over whelming. He never said sorry, all he said was if I wanted to act like a dog then I would be treated like one.
Things went from bad to worse and in our six month marriage the abuse while he never actually put me in the hospital it was bad. But the verbal was worse, that was the stuff that made me eat. I never told anyone what he did to me until I told the wonderful husband I have now.
I would eat in secret, I would eat every meal on my own. In the six months we were married we never ate one meal together. We even managed a holiday and still didn't eat together. I carried on smoking behind his back and he carried on treating me like a dog and doing what he wanted.
I left him because he punched me in the head and knocked me out over a bottle of ketchup. I don't know why that was the thing that broke the spell but it was. I had to get out and I had to do something.
While I was packing up my stuff he called hos mother for her to come round and talk to me. When that failed he beat me while she watched. He punched in my car window and told me he would see me dead. I went to my sisters and by the time I got there the police were waiting for me as he had told them I had threatened to set light to him in his house while asleep. I had my chance to tell them he was a woman beater and I didn't. I told my sister how he used to punch my in the head, the same place every time. But she didn't believe me so I didn't tell anyone else.
In the six months we were married I went from being a size 12 to a size 20, and in the six months after I left him I went back down to a size 10.
He killed my self worth and he destroyed the ability for me to show any feelings I had for a long time.
I met some one else and all the weight went straight back on because I felt exactly the same with that man as I did with T. He didn't beat me but I managed to beat myself up with food. I hadn't even begun to deal with my marriage breaking down and why it happened to me. So all the issues came back along with the weight. I hadn't even been slim for 8 months.
God, guys sorry to ramble but that is the first time I have written that down and I needed to do that.
Puffed out now!
