She stepped into the quantum leap accelerator and...

published the outstanding (as in late, not spectacular) posts to her blog.

August/September 2009
Can You Put A Cork In That Whine?

OK, lets get back to the ‘me show’.

I asked my GP to refer me to/for Bariatric Surgery. In September I had my first assessment appointment – I was weighed, measured and deeply ashamed. The last was not provided by my local PCT (Primary Care Trust), but courtesy of my self loathing.

How did I get to this point? The short answer is; I ate my way here. But I’m not one to use 5 words when 550 can be typed.

I know I’ve eaten too much, for far too many years, but I still can’t get my head around the fact, that I let it get so bad; I’m at the point where I need to resort to outside intervention. I’m also wondering if my depression is caused by my weight or is my weight is the result of my depression. I’ve always – from my earliest memory thought of myself as fat, even when I wasn’t, and I’ve always been on the path to depression – again from my earliest memories. I never wanted to be me. My first suicide attempt was at the age of 12, but I had been what I now recognise as self harming for years before that. I vividly remember banging my head against my bedroom wall with the hope of losing consciousness, so I would not have to deal with my volatile and changeable mother – I was 8.

My mother was not a ‘bad’ mother, most of the time she was fine, but when I was a child, I believed that everyone’s mood was a reflection of my behaviour; I still think this as a reflex, but now I try to say ‘where’s the evidence’ to myself, before I spiral down the OMG everyone hates me path. This is a well worn scrub-way in the overgrown garden of my psyche. If she was upset or angry I must have done something to cause it, so I would try to improve her mood, which I realise now, probably just wound her up – so she ended up shouting or hitting me. This in turn reinforced the thought that it was actually something I had or had not done. So I wanted to be ‘better’, ‘nicer’, ‘lighter’ and ‘thinner’.

The thing with me is that it’s always all or nothing. I’ve never finished anything in my life properly, I usually just stop (turning up, phoning… whatever). Take my A levels I have five (I’ve studied for six) and in all of them without exception I started out as an ‘A’ student, with boundless enthusiasm for the subject, by the second year I had stopped attending college and scraped by with two Ds two Es and an N. I always turned up for exams, but I just stopped going in and doing my assignments. To be fair to myself I was also diagnosed as being clinically depressed at the time, so I was mostly crying and sleeping when I stayed at home.