I am 55 years old.
I have had food obsessions, compulsive binging episodes and body shaming issues since maybe age 12.
My mom was also a food addict. One of my earliest memories of her was me sitting on her bed when I was around 9 years old. I laid on her bed on my stomach, watching her try on her clothes in a wild feverish panic!
I can recall her face vividly in my mind as she would throw each piece of clothing off her body onto a huge pile while cussing.
‘DAMMIT. NOTHING FITS ME!!!’ NOTHING LOOKS GOOD!!! I LOOK SoOOooO FAT!! I was a young impressionable girl and this vision of my mothers self disgust and self loathing sank in to my subconscious. No doubt!
Yes she SO wanted to be thin and ‘worthy’ and ‘acceptable’ but I realize now that she never ever felt she was. Never good enough. Never thin enough. Never ‘anything’ enough.
It’s sad to think that my mom (now 83 years old) hadn’t ever had a time when she just felt ‘ok’.
So, I was raised by this self hating mom and I’m sure it left an impression on me.
My dad on the other hand was the opposite. He was a world class athlete. A champion handball player and super skinny! He won many trophies for his athleticism that he proudly displayed. He was also a narcissist and loooooved himself with a passion.
(Think Hugh Hefner meets Jack LaLane — the fitness guru — Throw in a little Larry King from CNN and you have my dad.)
I have no clue why my mom and dad ended up together, honestly.
Opposites attract? Who knows?
My dad:
- HATED FAT!
- LOATHED FAT!
- DESPISED FAT
and my mom was …fat.
My mom recently admitted to me that “Food saved me. If I didn’t eat I wouldn’t have survived my childhood. My mom and dad abandoned me…left me alone to fend for myself and Food was the only thing that was there for me!’
She was the daughter of a Holocaust survivor too so she has her own nightmarish stories to tell.
I recall when I was in my teens and really suffering from my own hellish battle with my weight and food issues, my dad came home from work one night with a big carton of “Haagen-daaz’ coffee ice cream (coffee was my favorite flavor!)
He said ‘I’m putting this carton in the freezer Michelle. You and your mother cant have any but your sister and I CAN!” (My sister was also very thin. She had my dads genes obviously).
WHAAAAAT!!! Someone tellin me I CAN’T eat something!!? SCREW THAT!!
I recall running downstairs after everyone went to bed and oh so quietly took a spoon out of the drawer, opened the freezer and then pulled the lid slowly off the carton of the deliciousness while looking around nervously (in case my dad was lurking). I thought if I just scrape some off the top smoothly no one will notice…just a thin layer off the top.(Yeah right!)
Earlier in the night my dad and sister ate some. It wasn’t brand new so it was perfect for me to try to sneak some off it without getting caught!
I was a bit of a rebel obviously.
So my entire life I had an eating obsession. Always, always , always thought I was ‘too fat’ and was always concerned with how much I ate, what I ate and when I would start my next diet.
Ironically in my late 20s I began singing on stages for a living.
Walking around big stages in Las Vegas, Reno, Tahoe to Atlantic City etc. I recall always starving myself before and DURING the run of these shows but as soon as the last show was over (almost immediately after the final curtain call ) I was OUTTA THERE!!
Id zoom to the nearest fast food place, usually TacoBell and get 4 or 5 things off their menu, scarf it all down quickly and begin my descent into ‘overeating land’.
I was also a notorious cookie binger. Oreos, Chocolate chips, even Fig Newtons. I loved ALL cookies!! So Id finish off my ‘reward session’ with a bunch of cookies in milk. UGH!
It was a pattern my whole life.
As soon as I felt relieved because a show was over Id DIVE IN face first back to the food.
RELIEF BINGING?
Now I see I was relieved because now no one would be staring at me from the audience.
No one would be noticing my excess blubber.
Now I wouldn’t be in the public eye, shunned or defamed for my excess pounds.
I have a memory of one instance from my past that has haunted me for a long time.
Once after a show in Vegas a guy from the audience walked up to shake my hand. I thought he was gonna say ‘good show’...or “I liked your performance’…but instead he asked matter-of-factly, ‘SO when are you due?”
‘I’m not pregnant’ I blurted.
‘Ohhhhhh I thought you were’.
NOW can you see why I was always so damn freaked out about being fat on stage? UGH! Who wants or needs that pressure? So I purposely and maybe consciously left showbiz back in 1996.
I was DONE with ‘that shit!”.
No more being scrutinized, looked at, noticed. OOoOOOOO. Now I can EAT!!
So, I then became a visual artist.
Funny but throughout my life, even now at age 55 I see this same pattern of ‘relief eating’. The other day I bought a whole packet of cookies. I knew I had nowhere to be, no expectations on me, noplan to be around any humans so I got a variety of chocolate stuff..and dove in!
I am still observing this pattern in my life and I see where it all comes from now.
There are some days when I still feel out of control and full of angst especially about the sad state of the world — so I say ‘SCREW IT! I don’t care about being fat anymore!! I’m gonna enjoy my life dammit!!’ but another part of me knows I want to get healthier for my older years.
So this is a constant challenge for me and it might always be.
The good news is that I’m able to write about it and get it down on paper. That’s when the greatest insights happen.
Here’s a poem I wrote about this from my poetry book ‘Catch a Poem by the Tale’.
FAT SKINNY AND IN BETWEEN
Fat skinny and in between..
yeah I’ve been those sizes.
was I more content when bones stuck out?
Nah, I wasn’t wiser.
I thought it equaled happy
to be more thin than stout.
what a precious waste of time.
what WAS that all about?
HAHA oh what a worry
all those years of such concern
I was always in a hurry
to get those cal’ries burned.
So here I sit past 50
50 years on this sweet earth
concerned about the size of boobs?
and cellulite and girth?
What use did all that do me?
I thought I might just die
if I had excess blubber?
Oh damn that wicked lie!
My kitties they still love me
I’m still the same ole me
Fat, think and in between
I think I’ll let it be.
THANKS FOR READING!
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Artist/Owner at ARTISTIC SHOES FOR THE SOLE www.artisticshoes.comwww.etsy.com/shop/michellemonetart
