This is an article I posted on my blog. Its about my past, and it is not directly about obesity, but it gives you a good idea how you can make a person become 403 lbs. It also gives you a good idea what I have been battling with in the past. Hope its ok to post it here.......
"I have been thinking about writing about where I come from, how my past was..... Sooo people here it is:
I had a pretty normal childhood to begin with. I lived in a house out in the country, with the nearest town being 5 min drive away. Instead of going to the school for this rural area I went to the school in town, since it was much nearer my home. Because I didnt live in the town, I hadnt bonded with other children or formed any relationships, so I got to be the odd one out, and that gradually evolved from being a social isolation into a full blown bullying. It started when I was 9 years old, and I vaguely remember the first bully session being about my boots being of a certain color (green instead of black as the majority of the kids wore). I have always been a very emotionally sensitive person, and the bullying certainly touched a nerve, that the kids sensed so from then on there was no going back. In the beginning of the bullying era I had started to use food as an emotional comfort and I gained weight very rapidly in those years. That gave the kids a REAL reason to continue harrassing me, and my weight was for me a very delicate personal issue so it hurt me really deep when I was tesed by it. At the age of 10 I was bullied every single day at school. In the classroom I sat in the back, alone, trying to keep a low profile so I could be left alone, but the kids used every opportunity to humiliate me and make fun of me. The recess was the worst time. When the bell rang I stormed out of the classroom, putting my shoes and coat on as quick as I could, so I could go and hide before all the kids came out. Many times I could hide myself so they didnt find me, but the times they did were extremely emotionally painful. To experience a group of children storm at you, surround you and shout and scream the worst things that they can think of calling you, is pretty intense. Not so much the words they choose to call you, but the hatred and resentment you feel towards you from the whole group. You cant go away, because they will follow you, you just have to stand there scared out of your wits and take it. I remember my whole priority when I got bullied was not to cry, I had the biggest lump ever in my throat every time but I never cried infront of them, because I felt if I would cry then they would do worse things, like I would have given up and exposed my inner sanction. I never really understood why they hated me so much, because I had done nothing wrong, except being the person I was, so the message that I got from them was interpreted in my mind as there was something profoundly wrong and bad about my person. As a result of the bullying I sometimes didnt even go to school. I went with the schoolbus but walked out of the school and spent my day just walking around in the town. I even remember being so desperate one day that I brought a knife to school and waited for the next one to bully me. That started the only action from the school the whole time. I found out later that a school pshycologist had been in a meeting with my parents, and he basically said to them "be good to her". I was never called to talk to this guy, and he never met me. I think if you have a 10 year old girl in your school bringing knifes because of desperate attempt to stop the bullying you will need more then "be good to her".
The school authorities never did anything nor my teacher, even when they were fully aware the whole time on what was going on. If anything they participated in the bullying. When I finally got the courage to tell my parents about the bullying I got a reaction that made matters worse. They said to me that the bullying was happening because I didnt react correctly to it, that if I did this and that the bullying would stop. I tried desperately to act according to their advice but they only made things worse. I was also told by my parents, teachers and other adults that if I just would go on a diet the bullying would stop. I know they didnt mean anything bad by saying those things, they simply didnt know better at that time. In my 10 year old mind the feeling that I was flawed, that there was something wrong with me got increased, and in the end I blamed the whole bullying on myself, that the bullying existed because the kids somehow sensed that there was something wrong about me, and therefore had the RIGHT to humiliate me. Looking back I see what emotional havoc came out of this thought, because I was actually so angry inside about the bullying. I really hated the kids for humilating me and making my life miserable, but that hatred and anger wasnt accepted by anyone in my surroundings, so I had no chance for expressing it, getting it out. To keep that much hatred and anger inside at 10 years of age is so hard, specially when you feel that you cant direct it at the ones causing it. That meant that in my child mind I channelled all that anger and hatred towards myself, because I felt I was too blame for all the bullying, because I didnt react correctly, I was too fat, I was a person that was flawed and bad, so I should be the one to hate. This was not a conscious thought, and in fact it was not untill recently I figured out the reason for my raging self-hate through life, I knew it had something to do with the bullying, but never thought of it futher. And to have no friends or adults or anyone telling me that in fact I was not so bad, that I wasnt the things the kids called me, that I was worth something made things much worse. When all the persons in your life have just negative things to say to you, you will of course believe them, because you arent hearing anything else, and thats conditioning BIG TIME.
The next years the visible bullying got less, or maybe I got better at hiding. I dont recall much of that time. I think I just dissapered inside myself, literally. I remember I started doing better in school and in fact was top of my class. That was my own little quiet revenge against the kids in my class, and also a thing that was saying to me that maybe I wasnt all that bad. I remember that I read a lot in that time. I was always at the local library reading books. Not in the public area because I got bullied there, the librarians allowed me to go to the private reading section, where I got left alone, where I could disappear from myself and just sink into the world every book had to offer, forgetting for a while how my reality was, how much I really hated myself. It is in fact a good thing that I got into books so much. I know if I have had the opportunity I would have taken any drugs that would have been offered to me...... I really didnt care about my own person, my body, my mind, I felt like I was a prisoner in my own self, and anything that would have taken my mind from it would have been appreciated by me. I was tuned for self-destruction, and in fact I had my first suicide attempt when I was 10 years old. I went to the medicine cupboard in my home, took all the pills and put them in a small bowl (the bowl got to be full of pills, could have been maybe over 100 pills in there), and swallowed them all, went to my bedroom pretty content to be put out of my misery. I didnt die, just slept for 20 hours, making excuses that I was tired to my mom, and she has never talked about this incident ever. I dont even know if she discovered that I had taken the pills, and I for sure didnt tell anybody. The years to come I constantly thought about suicide, how I could do it, what would work, gaining courage to actually do it, tried couple of times with pills, guns, toilet drains, poisoned plants etc. No one really knew about the suicide attempts, and how much I wanted to die. My family, teachers and other people in my life made remarks to me that I was a "sorehead", and that I was reserved, but I really dont think they knew what was going on in my mind, the agony I felt, the deep depression and the feelings of being trapped in myself. I didnt tell anybody, because I had told them about the bullying and I had got the reaction that I wasnt good enough, and I was afraid of being turned down and critizised for feeling this way.
This is how I lived my life from 11-14 years old. Reserved, withdrawn, socially isolated, but not a trouble child. I did good in school, played on an instrument and was a part of the schools brass band, where the kids actually talked to me. But I was in such emotional pain inside. I kept it all inside, having the occasional nervous breakdown in the solitary of my home, and my only escape was food, books, and the occasional over-the-counter pain medicines that I took to feel somehow better. Then puperty struck, and my self-hatred mixed with the madness of the era of puperty made things a lot worse. I started drinking and smoking cigarettes at the age of 14, lost my virginity at 15, and was totally out of control. The only good thing about this time was that I came out of my shell and started to talking about the bullying, my emotional pain and sucicide attempts, and I actually was accepted by few persons in my school, which I started to hang out with, and that was the first time where I felt accepted. Later I realized those people really treated me like shit, but that didnt matter to me, because I felt I was shit. The bullying still continued and I got bullied a lot when I went out on drunk-binges during the weekends. Alchohol really made me feel good, and it boosted my confidence so I had the courage of being out in the open, not hidden away, and that made me a target so I had to experience a lot of bullying and rejections when I was drunk. The worst things was the boyfriend-girlfriend thing that is so essential for the sense of worth when you are in puberty. I really put myself out there for anyone to use that wanted me, and I am totally honest about that. I just had this urge to feel accepted and most of all loved...... and I gained that feeling for a few minutes when I got into bed with some guy. But it was also a very hurtful experience. Being the "fat" girl in town, having sex with me was something the guys really didnt want others to know about, since they would get teased for being with me, the lowest of the lowest girl choice in my town. So the standard line I had to hear when they had finished with me was "dont tell anyone I fucked you!!!!".
That thing really made my self-worth plummet down further, but I kept on putting me out there, in the hope that some day a guy would turn up that would accept me and maybe love me. I felt so ugly and disgusting and fat so I thought the guys had the right of telling me those things. I never questioned their right to humiliate me that way. I sincerely thought it was just a part of being a disgusting fat whore. When I see myself in pictures from that time, I really see that I was not at all as ugly as I perceived myself to be. In fact I was a pretty girl, little overweight yes, but a pretty girl the same. I really thought I was the ugliest thing alive, I felt ugly and bad and I got treated like I was ugly and bad. I desperately wanted that someone would tell my otherwise, that someone would say to me that I was beautiful and a person worth something. I remember when I was very drunk to utter to someone "I am sooo ugly, right?", in the hope they would look me deep in the eyes and tell me "no you are beautiful", and that I could see in their eyes that they were telling the ultimate truth, but of course that never happened. In fact I didnt have a single boyfriend that whole time from 14-20 years old, my reputation in the town as the "you know the fat ugly chick", actually caused boys not to engage in relationships with me, even when they really liked me, because doing that they would have had to stand against the whole bullying empire of the town, that would have put them automatically in the same social category that I was in. I had a "friend" circle from 16-19, but I found out that they accepted me more out of pitty then for being friends to me, and of course very few of them keep in touch with me still (in fact just one girl still keeps in touch, thanks Gutta
).
When I was 20 I moved from Iceland to Denmark, you could label me as a social refugee
I just had to go from this town, and everything that came with it. Soon I fell head over heals over a guy from Algeria, and in june just before my 21 birthday I was married to him. I really loved him with a passion, but he didnt seem to have much affection for me, and I thought that was just normal, because I wasnt good enough for him. In fact I was the sole provider for the first year in our marriage. I worked in a fish-smokery, that was intensely hard work (plus it took me 45 min of walk to get to work at 6.30 in the morning). To make matters worse i got muscular rheumatism / fibrositis in my whole right side that got so serious I passed out repeatedly at work because the swelling was blocking the main bloodartery to the brain. The pain in my body was pretty intense, but I didnt stop working because I didnt have any choice when he wasnt working. I really dont want to talk negatively about him, but in the end I found out that the only reason for him marrying me was to get a permit to stay in Denmark and not get deported to Algeria. So in fact he didnt love me at all to begin with, I was just his pass into the country. That also explained why he was so often not home, why he always walked in front of me or behind me when we went outside. I really wanted so much to hold his hand and show him my love when we walked outside. I wanted to show him my love all the time, but he rejected me so many times, and it hurt so bad each and every time. I really had put my heart out, and the only thing that happened was that it was at best ignored. I was married to him for 4 years, and I took all his rejections one at a time, swallowing the lump in my throat constantly, untill one day I woke up and felt no love for him anymore. He had reached my tolerations limits, he had made me feel bad one too many times. It would have taken a normal person few weeks or few months to reach that point but it took me 4 whole years.
At the time of our divorce we had moved to a bigger town, where I had started studying in the university. We were staying at his brothers place, and those months were so difficult for me. His brother was like the "evil" version of him. He was one of the persons that is incredible selfish, both materially and emotionally. He didnt work at the time, and my ex-husband was also without work. I was studying full-time at the university plus I had a job on the side to support me and my ex, so I was very busy. Still his brother expected that I would cook and clean for them both, and that caused a lot of tension, with the brother of my ex lashing out on me, calling me all kind of names, when I wasnt doing the housework. I literally cried myself to sleep every night, and I felt exactly in my heart as the time I got bullied. I was so afraid of what his brother would say to me, and I felt like he was bullying me, trying to find any excuse to humiliate me. I was so anxious and afraid that I felt nauseated all the time. That resulted in a total nervous breakdown when as was at my doctors because of another thing, and I got into the whole danish mental-health system and ended up with a pshyciatrist that made a diagnose: borderline personality disorder........ That wasnt really a surprise, since I had all the major symptoms, except that I had the type of BPD that lashes to oneself instead of others, more introvert.
Well now 6-7 years later I am finally on the right track as the ones that follow this journal have realized. This post is already a mile-long so I have had to leave stuff out, for. ex. that I used cannabis daily for 3 years in my marriage in Denmark. That since my diagnosis I got very sick mentally, I was on very strong tranquilisers and was barely alive (then I mean intellectually, I became a zombie in my mind because of the medications). I made many serious suicide attempts, plus my self-mutilation got out of control, but as soon as I stopped drinking and doing drugs I got on the right path, and have experienced my life and emotions without the symptoms of BPD for over a year now. I am in a relationship with a man (for nearly 6 years), but I dont know if it will last much longer, time will tell. The thing is with this realtionship I am in, that it has involved a lot of mental abuse and some physical abuse in the past. The only reason why that isnt going on anymore is because I stopped it. I simply made him an ultimatum, either he changes or hes out. I just have such a hard time forgiving him for what he did to me. The period when the abuse got out of control was when I was just starting to get my life back, and I feel like he was trying his best to sabotage that, because he wanted me to be mentally sick, an emotional zombie and miserable, because then he felt he had control over me. It was like he didnt want me to gain happiness because that would interfere with the need of dependence I had for him. And to try to prevent me from gaining happiness for the first time in my life, after living in agony all those years, is such a cruel thing to do.
This is a thing that I really dont talk a lot about. I have no girlfriends that I complain to, I just swallow the lump in my throat as I have always done. I think he sincerely wants to change, but I have to be on guard 24/7 towards his behaviour, to stop him when he shows the slightest behaviour pattern that will end in him abusing me mentally or physically. I am so tired, so exhausted to be always on guard. I have been on guard since I was child and I just want to be left alone in peace, not having to worry if the person sleeping next to me wants to humiliate me the next day. I am so tired having to deal with people. I just barely feel I am able to interact with people online, because my emotional pain threshold is so low. I get hurt very easily, and there are times when I am vulnerable that I feel every single word directed at me is in fact a hidden criticism towards my own person, and that hurts beyond belief. People hurt me all the time, even when it is not their intention, and thats why I am so afraid of letting people get close to me. The only times when I really speak from my heart is through the online journal, and only the english one, since so many that I know read the Icelandic one, and I really dont want them to know about those things, because I still have the fear that it will be used to humiliate me.
I know this is a very negative subject I have written about, but its my past, and it happened, cant change it, shouldnt let it ruin the rest of my life, shouldnt let it control my life. In fact I spent a great deal of time and effort in condition myself to become a "winner" and not a "victim", and that set of mind really has helped me gain control over my emotions and to get positive about things. I even went so far as to blame all my misfortunes on myself, and in fact that helped a lot to come to terms with the past. Now I am in the process of letting the past become a recognized part of my life, and that process is really hard and hurtful, but will work in the end of letting me become more matured and understand and cope with the past. So you will have to bear with me being negative at times, going through this phase because the outcome will be good."