When Getting Healthy Means Getting Fat - Part 2: Wasting Away

In my last post, I challenged Shine readers to look at unhealthy habits of the past.  I gave a candid look into my own childhood.  Having a timultuous upbringing bred a powerful addiction to food.  I'm sure the genetics of addictive personality granted by my alcoholic father didn't help either.  By my teens, I had lost faith in family, love, and any hope of ever being thin.  At barely 5' tall when I started high school, I weighed 165 lbs.  In many high schools, this was a social death sentence.  But I discovered that being thin and doing whatever I wanted still didn't make me happy.

At 15, I was already a seasoned yo-yo dieter.  By this time, I was engaging in an exercise routine of 400 crunches per day and aerobic dancing.  However, my eating habits sabatoged all of my efforts.  I wasn't able to realize this, mainly because I was not under a doctor's care.  I was also not really under much parental care, either, as my mom entered a deep depression followed by a mid-life crisis in the ensuing years.  My dad was long gone, having chased some skirt hundreds of miles away. 

The poison from a bad marriage does something to a woman.  Something unhealthy.  The venom my mother spewed not only was aimed at my father, but had an area of affect to all men in general.  They are all dogs.  They will all hurt you.  They all leave.  She was trying to lash out because she was hurt and angry.  I've heard people put quotes around one parent "turning the children against" the other.  For me there were no quotes.  That's the way it was.  My sister and I hated my dad.  By the time he got sober and got his life straight, we refused to take him back.  (Note: We have since reconciled and I should mention he's going on 12 years of sobriety)

I had not much of anything to lose by the time the first boy started paying attention to me.  He wasn't that attractive, but he was older and very kind.  He bought me gifts.  He loved his family - and they were stable.  He loved me.  I was fat.  And he loved me.  That was all that mattered.  I set my mind on marrying that boy.  And if I'm going to marry him anyway then I'm free to have sex with him.  Somehow the rationalizations made sense.  If I'm going to marry him it's ok to smoke like he does.  I should get used to hanging around his friends, and they all smoke pot.  Honestly my first cigarette I ever smoked was one of my mom's menthols that I had stolen for the purpose practicing for the day when I would finally be asked by the cool kids to get high by the bleachers.

Yeah, I started smoking so I wouldn't pull a Bill Clinton.  This was in the wake of "I didn't inhale."  I thought that sounded so dumb.  How could you not know how to inhale?  I wanted to transform myself from fat girl geek to one of the cool kids.  It was an ambition that began with dating a senior.  But I think it was more than that.  The kids I saw as cool had families like mine - broken.  The popular preppy kids, on the other hand, all seemed to come from stable homes, military families, well-to-do backgrounds.  While that used to be me, it couldn't be anymore, and my single mother could not afford any of the status symbols that kids killed over. 

So began my brief love affair with marijuana.  It was a love-hate thing from the start.  I loved the feeling of being high.  I loved the escape.  I loved how everyone just got along and there was no stress.  Then I came down with a terrible headache.  They were so bad my mom took me in to get migraine medication.  That helped, sometimes.  Then there was the sudden overwhealming compulsion to eat.  And eat I did.  I didn't know it then, but it was the nicotine that was keeping me from gaining weight. 

In fact, the less I did pot, the more I smoked.  And a strange thing began to happen.  Whether through a teen growth spurt, a surge of hormones, the nicotine itself, or all three, I began to lose weight.  It started to melt off.  I kept pot use to a relative minimum.  I had a new addiction now - sex.  The problem?  Well, that first ever relationship?  It was going downhill fast.  And it wasn't long before curves replaced lumps & bumps - and other boys noticed.  That was a rush.  The idea that I attracted someone, that somebody wanted me.  My first boyfriend and I broke up.

I was serially monogomous - volatile dramafests punctuated with promiscuity.  I delved deeper into the counterculture - alcohol of course, but also acid, pills, powders, fungi and teas.  Finally I was introduced to crystal meth.  It is unadulterated evil in the sense that it is seductive, makes you think you are in control, and then takes you for all you're worth and then some.  It strips you of emotion, money, relationships, and health.  It can drive you insane at times.  It can drag you so far from the person you once were you'd do things you never thought you were capable of.

The weight dropped off.  My life spiraled out of control.  At 17, I weighed 120 lbs.  I was the smallest I'd ever be.  I was miserable.  I had everything I thought I ever wanted, but I still wasn't happy.  I was thin, essentially emaciated, but I wasn't happy.  My mom was so proud of me for losing the weight.  And occasionally she'd do drugs with me.  .

My house was the safe one.  "They're going to do it anyway, so they might as well do it at home where they're safe."  DEA used to stake us out - or so we all assumed when a strange black Crown Victoria sat down the street.

By 18, I had spent all of my college fund on drugs.  I had had a few near misses with the law but thank goodness no arrests.  I had trouble recalling not only the names of sex partners, but also how many there had been.  To this day I cannot donate blood through United Blood Services because I have traded sex for drugs.  I had no idea there was anything beyond that lifestyle.  I didn't know I was slowly killing myself.  My daily diet of food now consisted of two flour tortillas, sometimes with butter, a glass of orange juice, and maybe some coffee.  A day.  That's it.  I existed this way for a little over a year.  But I didn't mind, because I hadn't had a period in about as long.

And then one day I woke up.  That day I laid on an exam table.  The doctor told me to relax.  I felt a cold jelly substance on my abdomen, followed by the pressure of her hand and the transducer just above my pelvic bone.  As afraid as I was, I opened my eyes.  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the information coming from the snowy grey images on the screen.  All at once I could clearly make out a distinct form.  It had defined features - a nose, a mouth, a body, bent legs and feet.  It kicked.  At that moment, I believe, I felt the presence of God descend upon me and very clearly heard the words whispered, "This is my gift to you."  I hadn't done any drugs in weeks, so maybe one might say this was a hallucination brought on by withdrawal.  To me, it was a spiritual experience.

I couldn't go through with the abortion.  I decided to keep my baby.  I decided to live for something for once.  I decided to quit all drugs, quit drinking, and quit smoking.  I decided to eat.  I decided, eventually, to get rid of the boyfriend turned deadbeat dad that was so bad for me.  I decided I had wasted away enough and wasted enough of my time being unhealthy. 

The challenge, Shine readers, became finding out how to be healthy, and what it means to be healthy, when I had never known it before.  So I pose two questions to you today.

1. What defines health to you? 
2. What was your defining moment that made you realize you wanted it?

For me, it was ending a life of addiction and hedonism.  For others, it's the monumental struggle to quit smoking.  For many, it's trying to control overeating.  For some, it's recovering from anorexia or bulemia.  And for a lot of us, it's simply choosing an apple over Cheetos. What is it for you and what was your turning point?

Stay tuned for the final chapter...