Reading people’s reasons for being on SP, I feel in comparison, that I have very little to complain about. My childhood was mostly a very happy and stable time in my life.
I realise now though that the insular life we led was because Mum and Dad were so in love, that they only needed each other and that was enough for them. This doesn’t mean I didn’t feel they loved me, I always knew that. It’s just I grew up with a sense of exclusion, of being judged and constantly found wanting and just not being good enough. After going through counselling, I realised my eating disorder was due to my thinking that ‘if only I’d been a boy, my Dad would have approved of me more.
Of course there wasn’t a lot I could do about being born female, but it didn’t stop my feeling a sense of responsibilty, feeling guilty about it. So tried to disguise the fact I was female by trying not to look female by disguising my shape by being overweight.
I always need to feel needed, that I matter and am appreciated. There’s a permanent gap that will never be filled emotionally. So I try and fill it with food. I’m still overweight. I have been through periods of major weightloss (we’re talking anything up to 8 or 9 stone), but it always goes back on within 18 months to 2 years. I’m told to look at other ways of coping with things rather than resort to overeating. But I’m stuck in a never-ending cycle of loss-gain-loss-gain and I’m soooo tired of it all.
It’s all very well developing self-awareness, but it’s not helping. I just feel more useless because I cannot (or will not) change anything. It will only get more difficult as I get older. Other problems rear up – I have difficulties walking now because my knee joints are knackered due to the extra weight. What a mess.
K