I am an embarassment to them--a shame; they can't stand the fucking sigh of failure, and to them, that is exactly what I represent in my "failed body."
But try living on disability: your problems are just beginning!!! Eat, find a roof over your head without a husband and family support? Good luck! You'll need every bit of it....
My pain, spasms, need for medication to get by, for government social programs is the ultimate humiliation for all of them. My spasms. My open wounds that ooze, sometimes smell, my broken body that has betrayed me, they see as a failure towards them; my body's betrayal of me is my betrayal of them.
I have somehow betrayed or hurt them with imperfection.
But as one of my nursing professors said to me: "Asking oneself of perfection is setting yourself up for total failure." I literally did not understand: I was clueless. I had set the bar so high for myself, I was flunking my tests: it was the projects and assignments that saved my ass. I was already getting severe migraines, and at 6'2, my weight was about 127. Too high, I told myself when I told my dad I'd gotten comfortably into a six, he offered to purchase me 2 pairs of jeans. In high school, I'd been in a 14.
It's called anorexia nervosa.
It was triggered (not that I blame him--he just has an unrealistic view of women and what they should weigh), as do the assholes who set the BMI or Body Mass Index that says to be of "normal weight" I should weigh, at most, at age 37, at now 6'0 (yes, I am shrinking!!! LOL).
But at age 19, when it was triggered by when I shoved myself uncomfortably and the jeans clearly were too small at a 4, I needed a 6, my father said, "That 's great honey, keep up the good job," a remark that may have been unintentional triggered me into a path of near self-destruction. Dr. McClellan saved my life by prescribing Ensure (so insurance would pay) and I was instructed to drink four a day and if I hadn't gained 3 pounds in 2 weeks when we worked again together, he was going to have the Mental Health Professionals detain me, admit me to the hospital, and force feed me by NG tube, a process he knew I abhored. But if I weighed a mere few pounds more:
Ages 18-19: BMI Medical
6'2 and 127 16.3 Underweight
6'2 and 135 17.3 Underweight
6'2 and 144 18.5 NORMAL????
I looked like a ghost at 144, not much better than 127!!!
What did I want? Acceptance. I wanted acceptance and love by my father--as my mother would never give it. I knew enough about her disorder that I'd never be good enough, and do anything enough to satisfy her and God, maybe if I made myself disappear, my dad would love me too.
Then I was involved in what is now called a "spree shooting," and when I lost more weight, and under threat of hospitalization by my collegues, who pooled their Paid Time Off, so I could take the last couple hours of my shift for ninety minute sessions with a 15-minute break in between.
And we quickly got through to the issues that brought about my anorexia. By then, I had an NG tube only I was having a home health nurse come and oversee my care. Thanks to a professor who also nailed that I had bipolar triggered by the shooting.
But for the longest time, I just wanted to disappear anyhow--I hated myself, and that the trauma I didn't share with my therapist: I was pregnant at the time of the shooting~~my son was given up for adoption; I knew I didn't have the financial resources to care for an infant who was two-and-a-half months premature.
I recently got a letter from my eighteen-year-old son: he hates me for giving him up.
I pray that he one day understands, and will forgive me.
But no matter what, unlike my parents: I love and adore him unconditionally. Even though he truly belongs to another woman. She raised him. I wish I had the pleasure and the time to be his mother:
His first photo in the hospital he was born in
High School graduation----------->
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