"Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Come, oh blessed of my Father! For I was hungry, and you gave me food."
"I am the Bread of Life...He who eats of this bread shall not hunger."
"Let the little children come to me, the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."
"By His wounds we are healed."
It occurs to me that in the Scriptures, and in particular, the New Testament, God the Son frequently refers to us as desperately in need of Him. He calls us "weary", "burdened" and "hungry" and tells us that He can give us rest, refresh us, comfort us, strengthen us or feed us.
To somebody like me...to all people who are like me...and there are many, many, more than I wish that there were...this is a source of acute confusion and profound consolation.
To those who read this, who are like me, you know who we are.
We are children.
We are weary.
We are burdened.
We are wounded.
We are hungry.
In this society, in this country, in this century...these are not welcome things to be. In the land of independence, we seem to have forgotten what to do with children. We alternate between wanting to prolong their adolescence and wanting them to "grow up" prematurely. That is, when they are allowed to live at all. And they not always are. Health has become a bit of an obsession in our age, like most things we have found that are natural goods. It has reached the point where the sick man is nearly as intolerable as the disease.
In an age where there is such a fixation with violence, there is a contradictory fear of human passion and human suffering or of having to truly enter into that mystery with a person. And in the United States especially, "the land of plenty", who would have thought that one could be so hungry? There is food everywhere! Yet there is hunger. I know.
I do not remember at what point in my childhood it all began. I was so young when that blinding, breaking, unnatural hunger started knawing at me. My mother used to jokingly say, "The first time I held you after you were born, you looked me right in the eye with this look that said, 'I know who you are, and it's time to eat!"
I was born fat.
I was long overdue, after all. The umbilical cord nearly strangled me.
I had to be cut out of my mother's body, weighing at nearly ten pounds.
My aunts looked at me and warned my mother, "Christina! She is such a HUGE baby! I can barely lift her up, and she is an infant! So dense! She weighs even heavier than she looks! You will have to be careful of her! So she will be more normal looking when she grows!"
My mother would nod nervously or sniff defensively depending upon how confident she felt each particular family reunion of her ability to dutifully cure me of my "density".
Maybe it started when she started cutting down my portion sizes. She would dutifully give me a portion each meal, half the size of those being given my younger siblings and informed me that it needed to be done because "I had a slower metabolism". I was perhaps the only four year old on my block who could say "slow metabolism." When that did not seem to give her the results she desired she started givin me smaller portions of desserts, and less frequent sweets. Not my younger siblings. They could eat as much as they wanted. One by one, ten children came after me. And no matter what age I was, it never had to be explained why Maria had to eat less or why Maria could not have a cookie. Maybe that was one of the reasons why it happened, maybe seeing my siblings eat so much of all the foods that I craved that were denied me, and having them leave the table satisfied, while I still felt hungry, made me even hungrier. Or maybe it was how she kept telling me that I needed to lose weight and be thinner and kept telling me to eat less so I would be "slender and graceful". "Don't you want to grow up to be beautiful? You will be so unhappy if you grow up to be ugly and fat!"
But I don't think that that was it by itself. It made me hungrier, but I think it all started the day I first saw my father scream at and hit my Mom and call her a bitch.
That might have been how it started.
Then it all got worse. Everything got worse.
"Don't grow up to be a stupid bitch like your mother. Grow up to be a smart, obedient woman!"
"Don't ever marry a man like your father! I will disown you! You are not my daughter if you marry a bum like him!"
"Don't eat that cookie, Maria, it will make you fat! No man will love you if you are fat!"
"You will grow up to be beautiful, so long as you work hard to maintain your beauty."
"Your mother is a fat, stupid, ugly bitch! She is not loveable. You have to be loveable for people to love you. Do not be like her."
"Is that a double chin! Oh no! It is not beautiful!"
"I guess God gave you that nose to keep you humble."
"You inherited your mother's ugly chin. But the rest of you is beautiful, even if you are a little overweight."
"Turn around and let me look at you! Hold still and let me see!...Yes...you will need to work on that. If you were just a little thinner...you would be beautiful."
Looking back at old photos of my childhood I am always surprised to see how slender I actually was. I was not skinny, but I was certainly not a chubby child between the ages of 4-14. I thought that I was though. I was informed nearly daily that I was. Children believe about themselves what you say. It is part of the responsibility of parenting. In time, I learned to stop complaining about how hungry I felt all the time.
Emotional eating is one of the most common symptoms of child abuse. The other most common symptom is bed-wetting. My mother saw that most of my ten younger siblings wet the bed. But I never did. I guess she mistakenly thought that it was because I was not afraid, like the rest of the children. Because she never "had to spank me, such a good girl" and my father "did not hit me very often".
He did not as often as he did the others. It was true. He did not beat me mercilessly with that huge handmade plywood paddle or whip me until I got welts on my back with belts and rubber sticks. He did that to his sons mostly, after they turned six or seven. Instead he made me watch. I can still hear their pleas. I can still hear the howls or pain. I can hear my father's screams of rage as clearly as though it were yesterday and I don't think anyone in that neighborhood was ever able to forget that sound. But he did not beat me that way. Because I was "the good child". I used to wish that he would. So it would take away the guilt of not having shared the pain.
But I still had to be "the good child". Nobody loves what is not loveable. Both of my parents told me, at separate instances, between the time that I was seven and ten, that they had nearly left. That they had almost left that good for nothing forever. But that they had stayed because they 'remembered my sweet little face."
It was a very big responsibility for a child of seven or a child of ten. I took my burden very seriously, for you see, I loved my parents.
I loved them so much. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to obey them because I wanted to please them. I wanted to make them happy. They were so unhappy.Poor Dada! Poor Mama! So angry. Had I done something wrong? Was it my fault? Hadn't I done a good job?
Yes, it was my fault. That was made clear to me too.
If she had screamed at me and called me names, it was because I had deserved them.
If he screamed at me and slapped my little face it was because I had not been paying close enough attention for the sound of his voice.
The babies kept coming. We got poorer.
I got busier and busier.
Around the age of nine is when I remember the weariness coming upon me.
The fatigue, the constant ceasless work and the exhaustion. My quest for sanctity became inexorably tied to my struggle for absolute perfection in everything.
Washing, drying, folding laundry. So much, so much laundry.
Endless dishwashing. Cooking, scrubbing floors, changing diapers, wiping noses and bottoms. Dusting, moving furniture, teaching children, studying. There was so much food to cook, so many mouths to feed. Except mine. I was still so hungry! When I reached the age of fifteen I encountered a few more problems.
"Maria, you have really hit a growth spurt!" My mother said, "I need to put you on a stricter diet. We will take long walks every day...and here are some weights to lift. Try to do at least a hundred sit-ups every day! Don't you want to be beautiful?"
My father started appraising me and saying, "You are growing into quite a voluptuous young woman. You have such soft arms and such big,beautiful breasts...What is wrong with you? Can't you take a compliment? Come sit on my lap for a minute! Haha! Silly girl!Fine, you don't want to sit on my lap, go be a recluse up in your room as usual! You are turning into such a rebellious teenager!"
My mother was afraid of the traits that my father made me ashamed of, thus confirming that I should be ashamed of it. "Have you ever considered breast reduction surgery?"
"Where a bulkier sweater! Your chest is too big!"
"Wear skirts, you do not want to draw any more attention to your butt!"
"That dress is indecent, you immodest girl! Have you no sense!? Wear dresses that hide your shape. You are disproportionate anyway!"
"I should have beaten you more when you were a kid! Then you would not give me that silent face! That look you give me! You don't say anything! But I know what you are thinking, you evil, proud, rebellious girl! Go ahead and keep smearing that paint on your face! All the makeup in the world will not cover up your ugly soul!"
Now the burden of guilt was greater than ever, growing like cancers in my psyche like my hunger, my desire for love, my terror of abandonment and my weariness. By the time I was fifteen I began to pray regularly for death. At the age of sixteen I tried to run away from home to join a convent. (Needless to say, the sisters made me come back.) At the age of seventeen my growing strengths and mind were noticing more than ever the inconsistencies and untruths that infested my life and the lives my parents lived. I had always known that they were not always right, and told myself to depend upon God more than them. But at the age of seventeen, it reached a pitch. My parents did not know who I was, and I was determined to leave it that way. I left for college.
College is too much to sum up, but I will try.
College is where I learned the full meaning of the terms "divorce", "annullment", "assualt and battery", "child abuse", "truama" and "emotional binge eating". The college years were very eventful and my parents were very active in trying to exert control over my life. Only now it was Dad trying to buy my love and not me trying to earn his. My mother also taught me the full meaning of the words "delusional" "nuerotic" and "verbal cruelty".
Most Freshmen gain fifteen pounds. I gained at least twenty. And I did not lose it. Most victims of abuse, no matter how bright, suffer academically through loss of sleep, inability to concentrate and emotional baggage. Many do not survive college. I failed out of one college. Had to live some months with my mother. She brought my self esteem low enough to ensure that when by the time a transferred as a sophmore to another college, I gained a sophmore fifteen. In college, I learned that I was strange. I learned that I was afraid. The hunger and weariness were my constant companions whatever friends or admirers came and went. I learned new levels of loneliness. It is a miracle I graduated. Also, several undiagnosed food allergies help speed up my weight gain even after my binge eating desisted.
I did.
I was lucky.
And I was ill. I had still not been properly treated. I had recieved some brief counseling from a series of well-meaing, but clueless, damaging people.
I was hesitant to reveal my burdens to healers even though discovery was inevitable. In some places I was met with a kind of morbid fascination, like one has when one meets a very exotic, ugly new animal. In others I was met with horror and accused of hatred and unnatural, prideful attitudes. Which is very strange, because I have never hated anybody in my life. The pain would be less if I could. In still other places I was met with a kind of piteous contempt. In most places the response was well-meaning, useless, clueless "sympathy". And, miraculously, in one place or two, I did meet people who seemed to understand and empathize.
This is why I must write this. Because of the paucity and the value of those genuinely kindly people who cared about me when my own parents did not.
I must raise awareness so that you who read do not duplicate those cold looks I have recieved or say those cutting words to one who already prays for death.
I have graduated from college and have attempted with limited success to heal and go on working a fighting for life. I have cut off ties from both parents, who are still blindly intent upon hurting me and others. I have lived to see some of my abused siblings become abusive and have had to escape them too.
But I have made friends along the way. Though in my moments of darkness, I forget. They do not live near me now. I was always privately afraid of becoming a burden to them. I have, after all, been a burdensome thing if my parents are to be believed.
I am still tired.
I am still hungry.
I am still wounded.
I am still afraid.
In the years following college, my eating habits became healthier. I did not binge eat anymore, but damage to my body image had been done.
I was now a "larger woman".
In this society, that is code for "a person that you can be rude toward because they are too stupid and lazy to do anything about it. Because if they are fat, they MUST be stupid or lazy, obviously."
In this society "fat" is synonymous with "unloveable".
"Nobody will love you if you are fat".
Nobody
Nobody
Nobody will love you
From the ages of eight to seventeen I had dieted constantly. Between the ages of eighteen and 21 I was an emotional binge eater. Thus at age 22, size 16, my old enemy, hunger, took on a new form. I began to willfully starve myself.
You see, I had it in my head that I did not deserve to eat. I was too ugly and fat to eat too much. I ate normally and heartily around my friends of course. One meal a day. One good sized meal. They did not even suspect. I was too fat. Besides, maybe even some of my close friends had gotten a little too used to seeing me unwell. At times I fought this self-destruction, told myself I was not that fat, that I should not want to be thin just because a misogynist society said that I was supposed to look a certain way. That it was not going to make me happy, that I should not buy into a false notion of self-worth based upon "beauty", "productivity" and "sucess". That I should not desire to be seen as a good toy as opposed to a bad toy, when I was not a toy at all.
I told myself all those things, and tried to crawl out of the grave I had dug for myself.
Some days were high and others were low.
Some days I would know that I was good and valued and beautiful and loved.
Then other days, one of my friends would invite to give one more person a ride, and tell me to move to the front seat. "So that there would be more room. We can fit four in the back seat that way, if you are in the front".
I would not eat for days after one good comment like that.
My combination of depression, the inactivity that usually accompanies it, lask of enough employment, and my mistreatment of myself resulted in me going up to a size 20.
Now at the age of 26, events were happening to bring about a renewed desire to die, deeper depression, and heavier weariness.
Now the weariness reached a head. I found work and worked physically very hard again. And now I ate less than ever. But now I had found a counselor and was seeking help.
"Maria, have you ever heard of Borderline Personality Disorder? It is characterized by an unstable sense of self, usually an unstable sense of self worth, and self-image. The usual symptoms include...
Desparate attempts to avoid real or imagined abandonment...
Sometimes binge eating...sometimes eating disorders and starvation...
Depression and extreme anxiety are also two common symptoms...You say you always suffer guilt and you don't know what it is that you have done. That you see yourself as a bad person even though all your friends say that you are good. That you hate yourself when your friends love you. That you would rather die than be "fat" again. That you do not like to be looked at because you are afraid of scrutiny and judgement. "
"Are you saying that I have a mental illness?"
"I am saying that you have been hurt. You have been terribly, horribly hurt and you did not do anything to deserve it. You need to see yourself as loveable and worth while and good. I think you have been fighting for that truth all of your life, but you have been hurt, never healed, and now your wounds are starting to cripple you. Maria, you ate nothing but one banana, two slices of lunchmeat and a handful of spinach today. This is how you have been eating for a while now. This month alone, you lost ten pounds. The month before that, you went down two sizes. When you first moved to this town eight months ago, you were a size 20, now you are a size 10." my counselor says!
"People tell me that I look better now. They treat me like I am a better person. Like I am smarter, healthier, faster, stronger and more beautiful."
"But you were healthier before, when you were eating better!" My boyfriend exclaims, "You were always ALWAYS beautiful! You were always strong, always smart! If some people did not always see that, that was their loss! You are NOT more beautiful now! You can't make yourself more beautiful than you already are! You are the most beautiful woman in the world! You need to eat. You deserve to eat. Please eat!"
All of my short and long life has been a battle, and I am starting to see that the battle for my life is just begun. Some days I win it, and some days I lose it. Some days I know that God is fighting with me and loves me and created me for a purpose. Other days the darkness closes in upon me and I cry out to God begging him to let me die and asking Him why He ever created such a worthless person.
This is not an easy story to share. But I had an idea that maybe it would be cathartic to a degree and that maybe it could help somebody to understand what this kind of struggle is like. Or if they already know it by experience (God forbid) to be encouraged to seek help for themselves. To not give up the battle for their lives. There is a loving God in heaven. Nobdoy had to tell me that demons existed. That I knew. The single most difficult thing for me to accept in Christianity is that God loves us. Or more to the point, that God loves me. Not only that, that God would become MAN for US. For ME.
First, he let himself become a vulnerable little child, just like us.
Then he grew up, and made friends who did not understand Him and enemies that He did not deserve.
Then He let Himself get beaten, crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross and peirced in the heart with a lance. He gave His life to save us. And He said, "Father, Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
"Maria, you MUST forgive!"
"But I did forgive me parents! I have forgiven them! It hurts me that I cannot be with them because they will try to hurt me again!"
"No, no. I meant yourself. You have to forgive yourself. You blame yourself for wrongs that you never did. And you need to let go of that guilt. God does not blame you. He does not look at you and say, "Evil girl!" He sees you and knows you, and loves you. Forgive yourself."
"I will try. I will. I must."
"You must believe!" cries another friend.
Today I choose to believe.
