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Story of a fat woman |
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Behind the Smiles Acknowledgment: I want to acknowledge all those who work in the health field. I am so happy to be attempting to graduate college to become a member of such an important asset to the human race. To my soul mate, mother, late dad, and my children. I want to thank you for you love and support though out the roller coaster ride called life. Dedication: I want to dedicate this to Dr. Ella Varney who was bold and to the point about my condition. To my step-daughters who are fighting this battle much younger than I had to. They are my inspiration to help others as well as myself. Introduction Have you ever noticed a rather large woman from across the room? You guess her weight as 250 plus pounds. She is well dressed and every hair in place. Most commonly she will have a very pretty face, bright eyes, and a charming smile. You cannot help but to over hear her conversation she is having on her cell phone. She seems intelligent. You ponder her condition. Does she realize the health conditions that she is sure to face? What is the food she chooses and how much? Why doesn’t such a woman have more self-control? She seems to have the world in the palm of her chubby little hands. Why would she choose to shorten her life? Waiting in the doctor’s office, you notice a poorly dressed couple, who are both heavy, discussing food banks with another patient while their children play in the floor. Why would such people be needy for food? It certainly appears that they are not starving by any definition of the word. The children were petite and dressed clean. You imagine that these parents are lazy and are just looking for a hand out. Unfortunately, I myself am guilty of this thinking. Our society has caused us to believe that a person has to consume food in large amounts frequently to become over weight. In my own battles, I have found that this is not always true. There are many factors that can contribute to this growing condition in the United States and around the world. Examples are: 1. Family history: Are the parents prone to over weight? 2. Medication: Much of the medicine prescribed in today’s world causes weight gain. 3. Hormonal imbalances in the body: Thyroid plays a big role in weight control. 4. Depression and mental illness: Most people who become severely depressed loose interest in many things. It is not uncommon for a depressed person to beige eat for comfort. Having no energy compels the victim to want to remain inside and motionless. 5. Security: Some people eat because of events in their lives such as physical or sexual abuse. They may have been deprived of food at one point in their lives or subconsciously think that the bigger they get the safer they are from being a sexual object therefore being left alone. 6. Believe it or not, there are others who choose to become heavy. The pounds are either confronting or protective to them. I have explained that I have made the same assumptions that many of you do when noticing an overweight person. However, I left one fact out. I should understand more than most because I have walked in those symbolically uncomfortable shoes. I am fat. There I said the dreaded three letter word that brings to even a 120-pound woman’s eyes. I am not pleasantly plump, fluffy, or even chunky. I am fat. I weigh 240 plus pounds. I once was 297. In the following chapters of mumble jumble, I intend to give account of my life, my choices, and my fat condition. Together we can explore what things can be changed and what things I (and possible you) need to except. I make no promises of perfection in this book. My intent is to inform and learn together what changes that we can make to become healthier. I will share raw emotions, hard living, food memories, and cuddly moments. I will give a warning (a heads-up if you will) that there are things in my life that are more graphic than I would like, and these things both embarrassing and/or painful. Thank you for taking the time to share this road with me. Table of content: https://www.facebook.com/marlania.wright/videos/10152059716805052/ The story of my beginning: Mom was a slim woman. At five foot five inches, her highest weight without being pregnant was ninety-eight pounds. She has a very noticeable hunch back from an accident when she was two. Her back was broken and did not set correctly. However, not sure if this is pertinent, Mom’s birth weight was twelve pounds. My dad’s weight went from one hundred eighty to one hundred ninety-five pounds fluctuating according to what kind of work he was doing. He stood 6 foot 4 inches tall. He was slender tall and handsome. Six years before I was born, Mom gave birth to my brother. He was a still birth due to complications possibly due to his size (nine pounds). The story goes that the hospitals would not take her in due to no insurance at the time, and the mid-wife broke my brother’s neck and shoulder while trying to deliver him. This event (along with two miscarriages) traumatized my mother. By the time she had me, she had all but given up on children. Coming from large families, this was a disappointment to both my parents to say the least. My mom had six siblings, and my dad was one of seven children. The fact that the doctor’s name for me as an embryo was “Lazy Baby”. I didn’t do much moving, and she was so happy when the doctor reported “Nothing to worry about. The heart beat is good. You just have yourself a Lazy Baby. July 7, 1968 I began my journey into the world. My mother began having back pain around 10 p.m. I was born July 9, 1968 at 8:13. I weighed eight pounds and thirteen ounces. Mom says that I was born hungry and the doctor said that her breast milk was not sufficient for my appetite. By the next day, Mom’s weight went down to one hundred and eight pounds, and I had gained to nine pounds. I was drinking eight ounces of formula every two or three hours. Before I was a month old, I weighed eleven pounds. At six months old, I would still be hungry after a feeding of formula, so baby food was introduced, and Mom was dressing me with size six t-shirts. I weighed thirty-two pounds at one-year-old. I wasn’t quite 4 when the doctor gets worried about my weight gain. They decide to take away all bread. Mom did keep a lot of sweets in the house, but my grandmother did. When Mom’s mother would spend time with me she would feed me very well. Her baby food for me was mashed potatoes or pudding, and as much as I could eat. There is a story often told by Mom about a chocolate bar, a store, and blue dress. My grandmother and mother loved to go to the grocery store together. One day (I was about two), my grandmother was pushing me through the store in the cart. I saw a Hershey bar. Of course, I wanted it and she gave it to me. I suppose that I realized that I had an empty hand and kept reaching for the candy. She put one in the other hand as well. All chocolate covered sitting in the cart, I appeared to all around a well behaved child. My grandmother turned to get a gallon of milk, and when she turned back to push the cart. There in front of us was a woman wearing a sky-blue dress. This woman’s dress was, unknown to her, decorated with two tiny hand prints that slid from midway to the hem. My grandmother didn’t say a word, but we quickly moved on down the aisle. I didn’t gain any more until I was six. At that time, I was a slender child of forty-eight pounds. I began first grade already knowing how to count to one hundred, my alphabet, and how to write my name. I loved the attention from my mother teaching me. I attended school as the skinniest child in class without any memory of the struggles that I had with my weight as an infant and toddler. I do remember that my favorite place to sit was my grandmother’s lap. She was so warm. Her skin was so soft, and the few extra pounds (she weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds) felt as though I was laying in the clouds. To this day I remember hurting my mom’s feelings when I said that I wanted to be fat so that children would love to sit on my lap. I was only five, but those words cut into my mother’s heart because she felt that I had bonded more with her mother. We have talked about the issue many times as adults. It was just my childish carelessness to not realize that my mother took pride in the time we had together that created the feeling that I was getting a nurturing need met by someone else that she could never do. My favorite memories of my childhood is about food. The way my grandmother’s house smelled every Sunday. My mom and all the women would go into the kitchen and cook. There would be six women at least cooking puddings, chicken or roasts, green beans, corn cobs, and always chicken and dumplings. For desert, there were three or four different pies, three layered cake, and cookies and candy everywhere. The food felt like a celebration of being together. The house was small, but it was filled with no less than fifty relatives. Women in the kitchen, the men scattered from the living room to the front porch, and me with the other children playing in the garden. There were no cross words (couple “whoppens” when one of us misbehaved), and everyone was laughing and having fun. Every Sunday was Christmas to us as kids. The only difference between the weekend and Christmas was a tree and turkey. Grade School High School The House, The Neighbor, Church Married Faith and Charity Mother-in-law, Nurse, and Christian Noah, Then and Now Divorce, Sex, Drugs, and Rape After the sixteen years of marriage, divorce was to be another turning point in my life. I did not know what to do when the love of my life began leaving me after eleven years. Confused and dazed, he would leave for another woman, and I would allow him to come back home. He left four times for different women. I knew he loved me. Something had to be wrong with me. I had to not be good enough looking, small enough, or just not good enough in bed. I hated myself, and looked for love from others. I found a job at a gas station the night that I drove him to his mother. I needed to be needed. My first encounter was a guy that stopped in the store to get cigarettes. He did not have enough money to buy them so I bought them for him. I hated to see anyone do without anything, and I needed to do for someone as I had my husband. Later that night, the guy came back with his friends and asked to hang out. Of course he did not have a car, so we drove around from 11:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. When I pulled into my drive way with the boys, I saw that my sister-in-law was sitting on my porch talking to someone. (My ex-husband’s sister needed a place to stay so she, her boyfriend, and daughter was living with me.) The someone was the girl that shared my husband’s bed. She was there, at my house! “What are you doing here?” I asked shocked to see her there talking to Lisa. “Where is Robert?” She asked. “I don’t know. Are you kidding me?” I said pointing toward the gravel driveway down the hill. “He is your problem now!” She still stood there. I could feel my anger raise. I wanted to beat this girl, but I tried to remember that she was not the first woman that he had an affair with. I also wanted to see this crazy girl as a child in a woman’s body. However, there was a part of me that wanted to take out all the pain I felt on this girl. She stood there for a moment. I kept getting madder. “Why are you at my house? Check his mother’s. You know that he will always love me, and he just slept with you because you opened your legs for him just like the others.” I wanted her to feel what I was feeling. “You are no more to him that the other women were, and where does he keep coming home to.” “Shut up!” She screamed at me. I sat on the steps. I could not shut up. I kept up. “I have three children with him. I have cared for him for years.” “Shut up!” she cried. One of the people that had been riding with me handed her a board. “I am warning you. Shut up or else….” I laughed hoping that she had good aim. It had been a long time since I cared what happened to me. “Go ahead and make it a good swing. If you do it hard enough, I will not be able to get up from these steps. You know that I am telling you the truth. Why isn’t he at your house tonight? Why did you think that he was here?” She lightly swung the bored and hit my leg. There it was. The excuse I needed to justify directing my anger toward her. I do not remember a lot about that night. I remember thinking about grabbing her by the collar and pants and throwing her off my property. I punched her in the face, grabbed her hair to bang her head against my car, and indeed threw her off my hill per the witnesses. The next morning, after I sent my little children to school, I heard a knock at my door. When I opened it, I was surprised to see the target of my anger standing on my porch again. She had a large swollen bruise on her forehead and band aids covering her knees. She was still covered in dried blood. “What are you doing here?” I did not know what to say. I felt bad for what I had done. “I just wanted to talk to you.” “I don’t have anything to say.” I did not want to show that I felt anything. “I love him.” Damn, I could relate to loving that man. “I just want to talk.” “Come in.” I still cannot believe that I asked her inside my house. “What do you want?” “I want to apologize to you about last night.” I did not want hate this girl, but she knew that he was married with a family. “Get in the car.” I demanded her, and was shocked that she climbed into the car of a woman that could very well kill her. I drove her to my mother-in-law’s house, and left her in my car so that I could speak with my husband. There he was sleeping on the couch. Everyone else was still sleeping at 7:00 in the moring. “Robert, guess who is in the car?” I asked angrily. He slowly opens his eyes, “I’ll bite, who?” “Marry!” “What do you want me to do about it?” I told him about what I had done, about her wounds, and that he caused the entire event. “Come to the car, and talk to this girl before she gets hurt bad.” “No! She knew better than to bother you. I told her that you were crazy when it comes to relationships.” He closes his eyes. “What do you want me to do with her?” “I don’t care.” “You are heartless.” I said to him as I left though I felt a little relief. “I will try to check with you later today.” He replied as he turned to face the back of the couch. “Don’t bother,” I called back while slamming the door hoping to wake his mother. She would be so mad to be a waken up that early, and I was counting on it. I go back to the car. “He does not care what happened. You have to realize that he doesn’t know how to love anyone, and that is a lesson that you deserve because you knew about me and his children.” “I love him.” “Look, I cannot deal with you. I am his wife, and I know that I am a dangerous person. He has been my everything for so long. We have children together, and I cannot control my feelings. I cannot promise what I do to protect what is mind. I don’t want to hurt you again.” “I will leave you alone.” I drove the girl to one of her mother’s house about thirty minutes away. Every minute she talked about my husband. How she loved him, how she knew that he loved her, and how she could not live her live without him. I just wanted to push her out of the car while driving sixty-five miles per hour. Instead I nodded and turned up the volume of the radio. When we arrived, her mother comes to the car to see who was in her driveway. I had to tell her the story. I begged the woman to keep the girl away from me and my family. She seemed to understand, but that was not to be the last time I had to deal with this love stricken girl. Florida New Family and Wheel Chair Emptying House and Broken Hearts The Doctor, Job, School |
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