So I noticed that I had not put anything in my Journal for a week. I have been posting pretty regularly on the boards and at my other bloggy/networky site so I don't really feel like doing a general life update... been over it a ton recently and frankly it is a little depressing.

Earlier today I saw someone had posted a general question about how people got started with their ed / body image issues and I thought that it was an interesting topic. However I did not chose to answer it because when I am explaining the why of anything I do, let alone something as complicated as this, I always seem to have to go back to when I was like 4.... and I write a novel. I feel bad putting epics like that on the boards... but I'll do it here. Journal is supposed to be about me eh? And I am allowed to be epically long here. Ha ha.

So - to start off with at this point I am would not say I have an ED. I certianly have never been diagnosed as such. I definately do not fit the diagnostic criteria for Ana, I don't purge - never been a binger or compulsive eater. I'm not really a stress eater, or starver. I do sometimes skip meals when stressed because I am too busy to get around to it, and I do tend to consume excessive cals when I do eat when stressed, but again that is a busy thing - I eat fast and convient food which is horrible for you. I do have a few ed tendencies so I suppose an argument could be made that I am ENDOS - but yeah.. I wouldn't really feel comfortable owning that.

The tendencies: I do have a bit of an encyclopiedic and self taught knowledge of diets, nutrition, digestive science, as well as random Cal / fat / sugar / carb counts stored in my head. I also tend to be an elaborate and obsessive cook. I have baked my own bread for years, not becuase it is better for me (although it is) but because I can, and I like it... and I like to give it away. I have a serious fetish about feeding others. Whenever there is company, and often when there is not I make super super elaborate dishes - it isn't USUALLY stuff I won't eat or stuff I wish I could eat and so want to feed to others, but then again I haven't done restriction very long either. I just like the act of making something fancy and complicated. I also almost always try something I have never made before for guests - which lots of people say is crazy because every once in awhile it doesn't turn out. That is half the fun though. :) 

Now outside of that nuerosis my parents have had me in therapy since I was 4. Not really sure why it started in the first place. I do know that between 5 and 10 there were 5 major deaths in my family, but I THINK the therapy started before that. I had a very dual world too - my parents were only married for 6 months, and that happened when I was already 3 years old. They both had children who were much older than me from previous marriages.

My dad was a plumbing contracter that came for a very blue collar family - but he made a CRAP ton of money - but he is really weird about the money becuase he grew up poor. Also his first wife was seriously crazy, like psycologically disturbed, and my brother and sister on that side were smokers and into drugs and very disrepectful in general. They were into the whole 80's hair band / metal thing.

My maternal Grandfather was a superintendent of schools and while he came from labor oriented parents my mother's childhood was much more middle class. However the maternal grandfather died very young, screwed my grandma up, which doubly screwed my mom up and she ended up getting knocked up by an alcholic at 17. She got married and had an additional, planned kid to boot. She left that husband a few years before meeting my dad - but for whatever reason my brothers on that side turned out really... I mean REALLY Christian. (in fact one of them just came out of 9 years in the mission field and has transitioned nicely to being a youth pastor) They were creepily perfect children. In fact the only real issue was that the younger one (still 8 years older than me) was such a perfectionist that it was occationally a nusance. So many wholesome activities to corrdinate and all that - oh yeah and he graduated with a 4.3, then moved on to grad. top of his class double majoring in English and History at Cal poly... arg.

So on my mom's side I am the total bad kid, but on my Dad's side I am by and far the most together kid. Weird. Then, esp. when I was really young, before my brothers went to college, my mom was really really really poor. She didn't go to college because of my brothers until I was a year old. She finished her degree in 3 years while raising 3 kids by herself. My dad did pay child support and she got s.s. for my brothers, but still.  Our electricity got turned off at the end of the month a couple times a year and sometimes she would tell me to ask to spend the night at my friends because there was no food at home. She never said that, and she was really good and never feeling sorry for herself or making us FEEL poor - but looking back we def. were. Of course at this time my dad bought a sports car and stuck a magnegtic sign for his plumbing business on it for a tax wright off - very strange living between these two worlds.

The women in my family are amazons. Reasonably tall (were all between 5'9" and 6'2") but not in that willowly way. I am (at the moment) by far the most overwieght person in my immediate family (my mom's first cousin and her kids are pretty big but they are like once removed or some such thing from me and not around much) but none of the women are danity. My mom weighs maybe 160? right now at 5' 10' - maybe more, she was a size 12 last time I checked. She does fluxuate pretty bad though - anywhere from a size 10 to a size 16 ( I don't think she's ever gotten above that). However she has the worst body image ever. She is convinced that she is the most fat disgusting woman alive. (which is rants about in front of me all the damn time... just love that, cause if that is true what the hell am I?)

As long as I can remember she has been on a diet. Now I don't know if this happend because I am the girl or if it happened because I am so much younger than the boys and they were self sufficent or out of the house for most of my life - but my mom had a hard time being my mom. She was more my buddy in a lot of ways. She is / was pretty strict about being respectful and not violating the established rules, but I dunno... She also got her teaching degree when I was in Kindgergarten. She is an elementary school teacher, and by then my brothers were in highschool - but she was my teacher for 2nd - 3rd grade. Then I was homeschooled in 4th (she was taking the year off to get her masters) and she was my teacher again in 6th grade. We spent a LOT of damn time together. Everyone knows dieting is WAY better with a buddy - so I was my mother's diet buddy.

When I was a baby my dad was dating my mom so when he visited we were all familish - then after they got married / divorced they didn't talk for about 4 years. My dad has some issues with instant gratification. He is super active and although he's got a beer gut he's been 150 (at 5'10") forever and ever. In fact, other than the alcohol induced gut he was down right scrawny - but he loves his food, rich, fried, sugared - and a lot of it. Until he was diagnosed as a diebetic he would eat until he was so full he was literally sick - like sometimes it made him throw up sick - EVERY SINGLE DINNER.  So when I was at my mom's I was on a diet, because she was on a diet. At my dad's I could have anything I wanted. This is also a little bit of a money thing because my dad would take me out a lot and mom couldn't afford that. Usually this wasn't a big deal because it was just every other weekend - but a couple of times my mom would go on vacation with my brothers in the summer and I would be at my dad's for a month. I would just BALLON - because there was suddenly nobody telling me to eat my veggies, and feeding my ONLY veggies. Dad let me pick dinner every night, not matter what I wanted. Plus donuts and sugary cearal and snacks and stuff like that. I couldn't have a snack at moms... ever.

So between about 5 and 9 there were a couple times I would get overwieght during the summer at my dad's. Then my mom would freak out and we would diet and I would lose most of it - but of course my general body composistion was just a little worse than it was before.

Then between 9 -10 my parents started dating again, I was being homeschooled, and my mother went through the worst diet phase of her life. She went through lots of diets but the ones that stuck real bad were the rotation diet and slim fast (which was brand spakin new then) She also fell in love with richard simmons. So everyday we had to do richard simmons. My one brother at home teased me about this terribly, and I adored this brother which made me hate the enforced videos that much more. We also biked EVERYWHERE because my mom was back in college and we couldn't afford to drive the car unless we were going to the store or something like that. I also grew nearly a foot this year. Any idea how many cals growing a foot burns... yeah.

Now the rotation diet was honestly a whole lot like ana boot camp. You eat for three days (very specific and restricted) you got things like cottage cheese and chicken the first day then by the third your main meal was half a grapefruit. Then you fasted for a day. Once a month you fasted for 3 days. 9/10 year old should not fast 3 days a month. And honestly, the whole slim fast thing wasn't a lot better - those shakes didn't do shit for me. The most prominate memory of that year was being hungry. I was always hungry. One day, I was freakin starving because it was fasting, cranky in general, and particuarly pissed off about richard simmons - I was whiny and my mom lost her temper and freaked the fuck out.

She dragged me by my hair to the bedroom (which we shared because then we could live in a smaller apt. - I just slept on the couch when my dad came every other weekend) and dug out an undershirt that was a couple years old and I had outgrown. She put me in it and had me stand in my underwear. She said if I wanted to be fat and ugly then that was fine with her. That she would force feed me ice cream until I was sick for every meal and every week we would take pictures of how fat I was, blow them up and hang them all over the house so I could be surrounded by my fat. I of course was sobbing, then she took out the camera.
She of course did not force feed me ice cream - nor blow up the pictures... but the experience was fairly horrific all the same. The worst part was, a few years later I told my grandmother about it - because my mom had us on yet another diet (my grandmother also generally approves of diets) and I was trying to convince her that what my mom was forcing me to do was messed up. My grandmother didn't believe me, she told me that I had a nightmare and it was so real I though it had actually happened. A few years after this I found the set of pics that those were in when I was cleaning the garage... I stashed them... still have them. Don't really know why - but I actually started to believe my grandmother at one point... and knowing I didn't imagine this incident is important somehow.

That summer I got my Dad to take me to the grand canyon - and my mom couldn't go because one of my brother's still lived at home and hell if he was gonna spend a 2 weeks in an RV with my dad... That trip I think I gained 25 lbs - which is a crap ton when you are all of 5' 3" - I had been, for all gen. purposes, hungry for a year - and not by choice. My dad of course let me eat whatever I wanted - and I ate like I was storing up for freakin winter.

When I got home my mom announced that we were moving to Nevada, because she got a job there. Then she looked at my dad - right in front of me..... and said this is why I don't like you to take her on your own - you always bring her back so damn fat. Thanks mom... although to her credit I was pretty chunky at that moment.

There was some attempts at dieting the next year, but I had a lot more unsupervised time and learned how to get food from other places so it wasn't as effective, I did lose some of the weight but I have been some level of overweight since that time. The around 6th / 7th grade I put my foot down. First I started reading EVERYTHING I could get my hands on about nutrition. This way when my mom started talking about some new fad diet I could pick it the hell apart and argue that she COULD not make me do it. I just refused to let her shove me on a diet anymore. I refused to let her make me exercise.  In some ways this was good - but at the same time I was so stubborn and pissed off that I deliberately went the other direction. There was only so much really bad food in my house but I got seriously couch potatoy - and I baked a lot, from scratch. By this time I finally had my own room - brother's gone, and I had reached the height I am today.

I creeped up 180 and though... yeah that's enough and maintained this for about two years. Then my mom found a boyfriend and suddenly her and my dad didn't talk again - and my time with Dad was unsupervised. I was teenage enough not to go completely food nuts at his house so I still maintianed for a while - but then I decided I wanted to meet the relatives on his side of the family - his dad died young too and so I had never met that whole side of the family - so we went on yet another road trip. We weren't in the RV this time so we had to eat out every single meal - and because they are just every where and right off the freeway I think we literally ate 98% of our meals that three weeks at Denny's. Also - for whatever reason I got a bacon avacado cheeseburger with fries and two side of ranch to dip both the fries and burger in every single meal - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I gained 30 lbs. This put me over 200 --- when I got home one of my friends actually said something to me about it - my mom was too busy with the boyfriend to bother.

Having broken 200 my spirit kind of broke too. I didn't want to be my mom... I didn't want to diet.... so I decided "fuck it - I don't care." I spent the next many many years seriously waving the it doesn't matter if you are fat as long as you are healthy (like that is even possible) flag and being seriously hostile about how society and the media treats women like objects -- yadda yadda yadda. Now I was also an athlete. I started throwing shot-put and discus in elementary school thanks to the brother (who still holds the nevada state high school record) and so I could run amazingly fast and far - for someone over 200 lbs. Between track and occationally submitting to some diet my mom found that I deemed nutritionally sound enough to be tolerable I managed to stay at that 230 or below through highschool.

Then at 18 I moved out - I was in college from 16 - 18 because I left high school early (just wasn't workin out for me) so when I moved out I didn't quite gain the "freshman 15" but it was the same idea. I was on my own, did my own shopping, and had a boyfriend I was secure in becuase we had been dating for 4 years at that point. I ate a lot of junk - suddenly there was no more track because I had left school (well there wasn't track in college either but every quarter I had yoga or weight lifting or SOMETHING) and I put on 15 - 20 lbs. Kept it there until I was about 20 though.... gained it in like the first two months I was out of the house too...

Then my relationship went to hell - I got evicted from my apartment after loosing my job because I was in the mental hospital (swallowed a bunch of pills because I had just way too much shit coming down at the same time) and after living in my car for a while  and couch hopping anywhere that would give me free drugs , I thought - shit... I should I dunno - do something with my life. So I got into a college I  had dreamed of since I was 14, in Seattle - I was going to leave the boy / shitty relationship behind and go do what I loved in a city I adored and get the HELL out of Nevada. WOO HOOO!!!!!

Then I found out I was knocked up. 5 months knocked up. Now I am not saying that I would have gotten rid of the baby if I found out sooner, but when you find out then your options are limited. However, no matter how shitty the relationship had become we had then been together 6 years - and he was basically all I had ever known of men... it was still hard to walk away. We had these plans and dreams and part of me still loved him very much and suddenly there was a baby. We were gonna get married and have like ten of 'em - there one was... all up in my uterus. Well sent the boy flying over the edge and he decided he was sick of me and my crap (no I don't know how him getting me preggers counts as my crap, cause I WAS on birth control yo) and he wanted nothing to do with it. I decided to go to Seattle anyway, and give the baby up for adoption when he was born. However it was a very very very dark time for me... and I was knocked up so I shot right up to 270 - and that was after he was born...

A few depressive / suicidal episodes and moves later I ended up in British Columbia going to film school. Now I got a loan for this - a $30,000 loan. The day I signed the papers this was about $38,000 Canadian. I bought a shiny shiny macbook - trundled up to Canada --- and the dollar crashed. By the time I actually got all my funds over the boarder I was at $32,000. My living budget was $1,000 a month - so I was short roughly 6 months of rent /food/transport. FUCK. I was also an American and unable to work legally in Canada. At one point in Seattle I did a little stint as a phone sex girl... also about a year after I had the baby I wondered why the hell I was being such a good girl? So I became an unbelievable slut. Seriously - between 22 and 24 I went from 3 partners to over 50. When I got to Vancouver I was still pretty slutty, and I got into the Bondage scene... at one point scouring craigslist for odd jobs it occured to me that I fucked everything that moved anyway... I could get paid for it. Yeah I would have to do some guys that I wouldn't otherwise... but the money --- and honestly how much different would it be from the phone sex girl thing? It is different. Really really really different. Truth be told most of what I did was pro-domme, which doesn't involve penetration, and sensual massage ending with oral or hand jobs - but I have had sex for money.

Remember the really really Christian brothers? Yeah --- I did that Christian bit for quite a while myself. I walked away from it when I fell in love with that darn boy, and I never went back - but the whole selling my body thing... yeah... not good. Also because of my weight and the domme thing I was very much a novelty. I marketed myself to those who had a fetish for fat - so not only did I become a glorified blow up doll, but the men I was with were either really really fat themselves OR they really liked me being big and talked about how pretty my fat was the whole damn time. Yes they were being nice about it - but fuck... nobody wants to hear that shit. So I went ahead and had me a nervous breakdown. Luckily this happend about a month and a half before school was out so even though I stopped going I still graduated and got the hell out of Canada. I had decided to go stay with my mom in Alaska for a year after this - but my school ended in April - and she was going to be down south all summer so I wasn't going up until August.

So I stayed with my grandparents for a while - this was a very good thing. I got into Sexual Addicts Annomous and stopped being both a whore and a slut. Don't get me wrong - I am still all sorts of screwed in my head... but at least I am not likely to get an STD from it now. (been clean for about a year and a half now - though there was one slip up, and the last few months I started sleeping with the ex because I am back in Nevada... and well... but as we did date for 6 years it isn't exactly picking up a random stranger in a bar) I also semi-restored my relationship with God. (we are still working through it him and me, mostly it's me, but yeah) So after a few months of massive life changes I packed myself up and shipped up to AK.

When I got there I discovered that my mother had been lying to me - just bold faced to direct questioning LYING - to me for .. well still don't know how long - think it was about 8 months... could have been a bit less... could have been as long as a year. Now my mother is many things, many messed up things, but somewhere a long the way I discovered that I only get one and harboring a bunch of blame for my problems on her isn't gonna change anything. After all it isn't like she fucked me up because she was a bitch - all those diets and worrying about my wieght - and the pics... it was because she carries around so much self loathing she just can't contain herself. Yeah - she shouldn't have done the things she did, but at this point I feel sorry for her more than anything else. I should also mention that the women in my Family age really well. Most of their lives, when my mom was out with my brother's people thought they were romantically together. My mom is 55? now - looks late 30's. She really is freakin beautiful and lots and lots of people tell me this all the time - I not being biased - like when she isn't even around. No she isn't thin - but she isn't a fat ass and she is so pretty, but she can't see it even a little. It is sad really.  Also as I said way way up there me and my mom are more friends - so I am not used to her lying to me... about anything... ever. Sometimes we gang up and lie to the rest of the fam together -somethings my grandma doesn't need to know. Sometimes I lie to her  - like about my promescuity... but her lie to me? WTF? I was really really upset.

Oh yeah - and what was she lying about you ask? She had been dating a man... a married man. A married man who after starting to date my mother, moved his wife from Louisianna where he was also from, to Alaksa. (It was his first year teaching there and she had stayed behind until he was sure he liked it) OH yeah and he is a heavy drinker - my mother, who married an alcolohic at 17... not so much about the drinking. Him and his wife drank alot - he also weighs about 300 lbs, because he lives off soda, cheetos, and fried southern food covered in cheese and gravy. The kind of shit my mother would cry over if she ate for most of my life. Not only is she dating this man but (she had moved to a new village when I got up there... he moved there too) he was going to live with us. With me. In our tiny two bedroom, one bath house. Oh yeah and he even had a cat. (we have two dogs) WTF!!!!

oh but wait there is more.... he divorced his wife - yes in one way this is good... but he stranded her in nome... after bringing her from Louisianna just 5 months before. His heavy drinker wife, turned alcoholic over that one - then her and her son - the step son that mom's new man supposedly loved like a son since the kid was 5 - they were homeless... in nome Alaksa. Because my mom was a home wrecker. Yeah - I was fresh on the free of sexual addiction wagon, and my mom is a home wrecker of epic proportions - and I get to live with her. Did I mention the thin walls? oh yeah. Awesome. So I got two jobs and was out of the house as much as humanly possible, inculding eating dinner at work or at other peoples houses. For whatever reason, at least where we lived Native Alaskans ate two things - fried seafood and flat bread or pre-made / packaged food from costco. (we were on an island in a town of less than 1,000 so yeah - no health food section in the one store either) So that's what I ate.... for a year. And thusly we arrive at my HW of 327.

I hadn't weighed my self in a very long time when I saw that.... and if thought breaking 200 was bad.  - nothing compared to 300. In fact I kind of went into this shocked panic and I think I somewhat repressed it there for a couple weeks. My mom had left town - moved to yet another village and went down south for the summer. I stayed in our village because frankly I was really far away from that horrible man - my neice also came and spent the summer with me. I got back down south mid Aug. I think I had lost some because I had started being a bit careful with my food - but nothing concrete - nothing like an actual "diet." Late September I went to see the ex - like I do. And of course we messed around... like we do (hey I went from sex several times a week to nothin for a year... and it had been almost two years for him) afterwards... in his ever so tactful and sweet way he asked me if I had gained weight. Gee hon - I missed you these last couple years too - the phone just isn't the same as this great pillow talk. So I went home and weighed myself.

291. okay. well not okay... but I could you know... fit that in my head. I could deal with that. Not like that 327 bullshit. On top of this I had randomly picked up "Wasted" in the library the winter before. That led me to write a paper on eating disorders for my Ab. Psyc. class last summer. Part of the paper involved the web culture of eating disorders. That was all I needed.

I am manic by nature. Stubborn. Terribly OCD - an over achiver and a loner in many ways. I was raised to be fearful and obessed with food all at the same time, and I possesed not only a negative body image, but had cultivated myself some just phenominal self loating through my sexual acting out. I knew where to find people who knew how to not eat. Everything one needs to turn into a superstar restricter. I wouldn't say overnight - so much of my life has contributed to my abiltiy to do this now - but I stepped off the scale that night and for the most part haven't eaten over 1,000 calories in one day since. (there have been a handful of bad days, but even then --- I think I capped out at just over 2,000, and that was because I had to eat with people for one reason or another and it just got away from me.)

So is it an eating disorder? Is it just crash dieting? Is it just another way I am trying to passively kill myself? I don't know.

I do know I am not more unhappy than I was before. Somedays - like the days the scale drops dramtically - I am much happier. I also know I am 65 lbs lighter than my high weight. 29 lbs lighter than I was the day I sat down at the computer and researched heavy restriction on ed sites and pinned down my goal of 800- 1000 cals a day or less.

I also know I am on the evening of my 4th day of fasting, and not even breakin a sweat. See I am actually hungry today - first day since I started the fast really, but today the scale also stayed the same. Didn't go up, but somehow didn't drop either - so there is no way in hell food is passing my lips. If I feel hunger the scale will drop tomorrow right?

For so many years I suppressed any inkling of unhappiness about my weight or physical apperance - stuffed it down deep and swallowed it... but it doesn't digest or dissapear. It waited, until I was ready to stop this shit. Until my life culminated in this fixated desire.... Now, like 4th grade I am hungry, every day. Not every min. and not in a consuming way. Today I am very hungry. Many days I am only a titch hungry - like I would eat, if I wasn't purposefully not eating, but it's not a big thing. It will go back and forth like this for many months - or maybe it will escalate and I will be able to be very hungry ALL the time. We shall see. All that loathing though- both of body and of self, it sure does come in handy at 4:45am when the alarm goes off and I think, if only for a moment that it is too cold to go run.... or on days like today, when my stomach growls when I hear the microwave ding, signalling my neice that her Kasha Varniska is ready. The Kasha Variska that is actually reasonably healthy and on my top ten favorite foods lately... the kasha Varniska that I had to make yesterday to hide my fast - that I clenched my jaw against.

Yes then self loathing is very useful... as is distractions like LJ. And re-reading, altering the cal intakes for everday for November. Carefully planned out.... recalculating charts for weight loss goals.... and crunches. you can always do a few more crunches.

Crazy is not new to me - just got a new hat one today. Hopefully it will stick, and maybe, just maybe I won't have a heart attack or have to take insulin shots in ten years. At least this crazy is productive because less face it, 327... there is no excuse for that.