April 28, 2005

• On a personal note, I bit the bullet yesterday and joined Weight Watchers, but it is with fear and trepidation. What has happened in the past is that I have lost 20-40 pounds, then get scared, and go off the program, and gain back the weight. So this time I am trying hard to break this pattern.

  
  

  I started the study the Lord’s Table (which you can get for free on the internet).to go along with the weight loss, but plan to use the Weight Watcher’s plan which is healthier for me. I figure I haven’t been able to stick to Weight Watchers alone, so perhaps by adding God to the mix it will be easier.  And I am also asking you, my Xanga friends to help me stay accountable to this.

  
  

  One thing that I started thinking about was the aspect of food in my past. Most of you know that my past was filled with abuse. If you do not know my past, I started writing about it on March 15,  and then there are other entries every few days after that. Well, food also was incorporated in that, so I figure I will explain some of that and maybe find a key that will help me to find a way to fight this stronghold.

  
  

  As a kid there are a few horrid memories about food. One was when my father wanted me to taste a particular food item, awful ones like pickled pigs’ feet or beer when I was 3 or 4 and I made a face. That caused me to be backhanded, and I soon learned to eat whatever was put in front of me, without reaction.

  
  

  My mom was a member of the clean plate club, in that whatever she put on my plate I had to finish it, and she put way more than a child should eat.

  
  

  One thing that I did was to take cookies in secret from the cookie jar. It was stealing so I was breaking a commandment in that, but for me it was one tiny aspect of my childhood that I could control. There was little that I had any power over, but I became quite adept at taking the right amount of cookies that wouldn’t be noticed, removing the metal lid quietly, and there was a sense of triumph because I pulled one over on them.

  
  

  My mom was very subservient to my father. As you know, he was an alcoholic and a mean drunk, so when he came home, which would be at all hours of the day and night. He could get very brutal if his food was not quickly served. So she would partially cook the meat, leave it coagulating in the fat on the stove, cook all the other food and leave it sitting. Now we couldn’t eat before he got home, so we sat there for awhile. When it got to be about 7 or so, she would quickly serve me, because I had to go to bed. But when she served me I had to scarf down the food so quickly because it was a sure beating if I was caught eating and didn’t wait for him. Now the problem is there were nights when he didn’t get home until after midnight, and sometimes he ate out.

  
  

  We never ate around the table. My father would eat on the sofa watching TV, and I ate at the kitchen table. My mom would serve my father and me, then take her dinner to the tv table in the living room and eat at her chair. One time, she accidentally slopped some spaghetti on his stomach (he sat in his underwear). He was furious, came into the kitchen, banged his plate on the table, causing everything to jump, and I had to sit there eating calmly on the outside, but not reacting by pulling back or making a face or crying, for then I would have been beaten for he was furious.

  
  

  Most times there was yelling and screaming in the house, or I would get a beating for doing the wrong thing. The wrong thing was something like smiling when I should have laughed, not smiling, laughing when I should have smiled, being  in a room that he thought I shouldn’t be. I don’t know what the rules were, because they changed all the time. So I spent most of my life tiptoeing around trying not to make a sound, not to cough, not to move, not to react, and to try and read what they wanted. I failed often. And when I did I got beaten or yelled at, and so most of my childhood I was controlling tears that couldn’t be shown because tears would cause a beating, unless you were being beaten and you had to cry the right amount of tears, not too many or not too few.

  
  

  Do you kind of understand why I tiptoe around Abba Father God? Even though I know that He is not like my earthly father, I still fear him and am afraid that one day I will do something that angers God.

  
  

  Anyway, after the beating, or when the tears were there, I often had to eat as if there was nothing wrong. That meant, my hand couldn’t shake, I had to chew and smile and swallow, when everything sort of made me want to puke, but puking was out of the question. I really didn’t taste or enjoy the meal, I just wanted to get through it so that he would not come into the kitchen and find something wrong with how I was eating, chewing, or whatever.

  
  

  So food was not dealt with in the ordinary way when I was a child, and this was stuff that happened before the serious sexual abuse occurred. When that occurred, things got even worse, and food became a way to stuff feelings.

  
  

  I will write more later, but right now Jim needs the computer. Please pray for Jim and his heath, and that somehow this stuff will get worked out.

  
  

  I thank you for your patience with me as I sort this stuff.

  
  

  Heather

  • 12:04 pm
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