Blog 17th to 22nd November. 'When someone tells you that you're a walking disaster area, it's inevitable that you eventually become one'.'

Blog 17th of November to the 22nd of November I had a very strange experience on Sunday. It showed how distorted my own body image is. I think that I am gargantuan, enormous, I see myself as a hulking clumsy giant of a woman. We were talking in work about buying clothes for one of the patients who is fast running out of them. I informed the staff that I would go out and buy the clothes then stated “She’s about my size” The staff stared at me as though my head had fallen off. One of them finally responded “How big do you think you are? She’s twice the size of you” I laughed and said “No she’s not, she’s about my dap” I didn't say this in the way that some females do fishing for compliments waiting for someone to say “Don’t be ridiculous you’re teeny tiny” I said it because I truly believed it. The poor staff were baffled “She’s about a size 26 Ju’ll your nowhere near that” I was baffled “Is she? She looks the same size as me” There was more laughter, then real curiosity “Do you really think you’re that big?” I’m sad to say that I do, I really do. It made me think about how I see myself and how others see me. When I watch Miranda Hart on television I feel her pain, she’s awkward, freakishly tall and big and has learned to laugh through her pain. I recognize this in myself. Get the laughs in first before someone makes them at your expense. I learnt how to do that from early in life, it deflected from the hurt and the embarrassment of feeling different. Different, because I was taller and bigger than all the other girls and most of the boys as well. I was told that there was nothing graceful about me, that I was clumsy and accident prone. As a child I would run in to my Nan and Grandpa’s house where my Grandfather would shout “Jesus Christ Dolly, nail everything down here she comes”. When you are told that you’re a walking disaster area I suppose it’s inevitable that you eventually become one. My school nickname was Julie Jumbo. Looking at the photos today I would not even class myself as fat, big yes, tall yes, but no fatter than anyone else. Yet due to that cruel nickname and my mother’s obsession with my weight and dieting I grew up thinking I was the size of a small bungalow. School nicknames hurt, I hated that nickname, I dreaded going to secondary school with the thought that it would follow me there when I wanted to make a fresh start, and it did. So you learn to cope the best way you know how, so you want me to be the fat girl, do you? Then I’ll develop the big loud brash jokey personality to go with it. You want gobby? You got it. Yu want the cheeky class joker? Here she comes large as life and twice as brazen. And I do it myself, how often have I referred to a woman as “Big…….” Compared myself “At least I’m not as big as ………..” - Sneering, passing comment, sitting in judgment, forgetting the hurt, scared person underneath the mask. Defining people by their size. When you are an overeater you can’t hide it. You can hide being an alcoholic a drug addict and a gambler up to a certain point, but you can’t hide being an overeater. The world can clearly see it; overeaters are fat and the outside world can see that and point it out with gay abandon. Fat people are considered greedy gluttonous weak-willed and useless, they are ridiculed by society. They are not considered, useful, beautiful or given much credit. If they are lucky enough to achieve success in their chosen field, their weight is still mentioned. In the case of Dawn French: “Oh! She’s so pretty, if only she wasn’t so fat”. The media does not like fat people as a rule, they scare “normal” folk. My friend Julia and I used to joke that we were anorexic as we had read that anorexic people look in the mirror and see fat people staring back at them. Another favorite joke was to tell people that we walked over drains with our arms out stretched to stop us from falling in. To hide that shame and the pain we laughed it away. Fat folk are jolly. We allowed people to make fun of us and we mocked ourselves right along with them. We once went to see a drag act that pointed at us and said, “Oh, would you look at that pair, they’ve been to weight watchers, to watch.” The audience howled and we laughed along with them shrugging it off, cat-calling back, pretending it didn’t matter. But it did. Would the drag have pointed at someone in a wheelchair and made jokes about not being able to walk or told a racist joke? Probably not. But fat people are fair game and we learn to live with it. I never thought there was a way out of this - God knows! I’d tried everything or so I thought: diets, excessive exercise, diet pills, laxatives, fat binders, tea, vomiting and, dramatically, surgery. None of them worked. They were never going to work. As Wyn says, “The way out is in.” I need to go inwards to solve my problems not outwards. The key to changing my thoughts and feelings about my size and my body lies in learning to love myself. I repeat the mantra everyday “I am the right weight for me today”. This coupled with my food plan, my 12 step programme, my meetings, the group and my one-to-ones are helping me become the person I was always meant to be. It’s a process. It’s a journey. And I’m well on the road….. Part Two: Blog Nov 23rd 2014 "Private Hell" Closer than close - you see yourself - A mirrored image - of what you wanted to be. As each day goes by - a little more - You can't remember - what it was you wanted anyway. The fingers feel the lines - they prod the space - Your ageing face - the face that once was so beautiful, is still there but unrecognizable - Private Hell. The man who you once loved - is bald and fat - And seldom in - working late as usual. Your interest has waned - you feel the strain - The bed springs snap - on the occasions he lies upon you - close your eyes and think of nothing but - Private Hell. Think of Emma - wonder what she's doing - Her husband Terry - and your grandchildren. Think of Edward - who's still at college - You send him letters - which he doesn't acknowledge. 'Cause he don't care, They don't care. 'Cause they're all going through their own - Private Hell. The morning slips away - in a valium haze, And catalogues - and numerous cups of coffee. In the afternoon - the weekly food, Is put in bags - as you float off down the high street The shop windows reflect - play a nameless host, To a closet ghost - a picture of your fantasy - A victim of your misery - and Private Hell Alone at 6 o'clock - you drop a cup - You see it smash - inside you crack - You can't go on - but you sweep it up - Safe at last inside your Private Hell. Sanity at last inside your Private Hell. Paul Weller from Setting Sons I went to a concert on Thursday and was instantly catapulted back in time. The song above transported me to my teenage bedroom with its posters of the Mod Father Paul Weller. Lying there in the dark listening to my teenage fantasy spit the bitter lyrics of a woman who was deeply dissatisfied and dead inside. At the age of thirteen I thought the song was a predication of what my life would turn in to, perhaps that’s what all women were destined for? I looked at my mother, was she going through her own “Private Hell”? I could see the effects of my mother’s generation, married for duty, trapped in domestic drudgery, whitening door steps , stuffing mushrooms, buying hostess trolleys, feeling as though they had missed out. I certainly didn’t want to end up like that. Eventually of course I did enter my own Private hell but it was one of addiction. Similar to the Valium haze of the woman in the song, to take the edge off life, to soften the edges, to run from reality. I wondered what made the eighteen year old Paul Weller write a song like that? How could he possibly know what goes on in the head of a forty something woman? Was he looking at his own mother? Did he have such a jaded view of women and marriage that he imagined that this was our fate? Did he fear that that would be his lot trapped in the suburb’s peeping out from behind the nets? Arrogance or clairvoyance? Who knows? Perhaps I should write and ask him? I am now a forty six year old woman whose kids have left home and has a bald (a bit chunky) but not fat man who I still love and he never works late. It could be someone’s idea of a private hell but I’m quite content with it today thank you very much. Addiction is private and sometimes very public hell. It saps you, it takes everything, it is a living breathing parasite draining the life blood out of you. All consuming, preoccupying, repetitive and revolving. Unsafe and insane. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Existing. Like the woman in the song. Julie