June 9, 1985

The day I was born. My mom likes to tell me about how the doctor and my father were watching the Chicago Cubs game during breaks in her pushing to get me out. I can imagine both my father and the doctor encouraging her and telling her she was doing great and then both of them turning their heads to see the next play or keep an eye on the score. My dad likes to tease me and say it is my fault that they lost that game and then went on a horrible losing streak after a marvelous winning streak. I don't believe that to be true at all. The Chicago Cubs know how to choke all on their own. Me being born had nothing to do with it.

My first memories that I have are very vague, very shadowed. I remember tidbits, images, smells, sounds. I remember being a happy girl, I remember mom always wanting me to sit still while she did my hair in curls or long french braids. I remember Andy and I mostly getting along and playing together. I remember our first house and how big it seemed to me when in reality it was tiny. It was a happy house though filled with happy times. I always remember my mom telling me that on my fourth birthday I pushed my birthday cake away and stated "I don't want to get fat." If only that mindset and determination would have stuck with me my entire life.

There wasn't much in my life that was sad. My parents were happy and they were great parents. They played with us, they took us places, they blessed us with toys and showed their love for us in ways that only they could. I really did have a happy family life.

It is important to note that in my family, passing down from generation to generation, food equals love. When someone cooks for you, they are telling you they love you. When they bake a treat, or buy your favorite cookies, they love you. When they go out of their way to make your favorite dinner, they love you. Turning down food was like a slap in the face, especially to my dad who managed restaurants for years. Cooking was and is still a passion for that man and he is exceptionally good at it. To this day I hate saying "no thank you" to my dad after he has made something.

My earliest memories of food involve my dad working at Icee. How cool, right? He would sometimes have broken Icee machines in the warehouse that still produced Icees and we would get to eat them. Not to mention the stacks upon stacks of free Icee coupons he would bring home to us so we could run up to the Kwik Mart and get a free Icee whenever we wanted. There were also giant bags of popcorn. If they didn't go to feed the ducks, we ate them.

I don't remember ever getting fat. I just remember BEING fat. By the time I started kindergarten I was already taller than everyone too. I remember two boys standing behind me saying "Why are you so big?" That was my first day of school. I didn't think too much of it really. I just thought I was taller and stocky. The boys would catch up eventually, right? No one ever really picked on me very much those first few years of school, but I did remain bigger than everyone. Not only in my height, but in my girth. I was a chubby girl. There was no lack of friends, no lack of fun, no lack of sleepovers, but I was definitely different in the way I looked and the way my brain worked. While most of my girlfriends were tiny little things, I was the big girl. Sometimes I did feel like a tag-a-long that didn't quite fit in.

Having an older brother who I was actually close to stopped the older kids from being mean to me. Andy would have never let someone pick on me, at least not to my face. In fact, he sometimes even let me hang out with his friends because there were no girls my age in my neighborhood. Andy and I may have fought, because that's what siblings do, but for the most part we got along wonderfully. He never called me fat, he never mentioned my weight, he was just my brother, my friend, someone I had when no one else was around.

Because of that, school was mostly tolerable. I rarely remember being picked on by kids a lot. Sometimes the words "fat girl" or "big girl" came out of a bully's mouth but not to the point that I severely hated my childhood. Around third grade is when I really started in with the secretive eating. I think it was my way of coping with being different, with not having anyone in the neighborhood to play with. It was my way of filling some kind of void and comforting myself. Mom and dad both worked, even after Seth was born, Grandma was our full time babysitter after school and in the summer months when we were out of school.

To Be Continued....

Inspired: The Start of Something New

I love books. I love to read. Anyone who truly knows me knows that. I used to carry around a book all of the time when I was in high school. The thicker the better. A book wasn't worth reading unless is was super thick with tiny print. In fact, I remember quite a few of my friends giving me a hard time about reading such large books for "fun". Study hall was my favorite class: I got to read uninterrupted for almost an hour. It was heaven. Well, it actually would have been better if I would have been home, listening to music, and been all snuggled up in bed with a dog keeping my legs warm.... but it was uninterrupted reading time and that was always a good thing.

I remember loving to read. Some of my first memories are of being able to read before anyone else my age could. I was the only one in my kindergarten class that could read a book. I used to love going to the library and checking out books, the smell of the library was a comfort to me. I also remember going to the Book-Mobile every Monday night. For those of you that don't know what that is, it is basically a traveling library. It was this huge camper/van type vehicle that had shelves jam packed full of books. I loved it. When the weather was nice we could ride our bikes or walk to it. I got really into chapter books and books in a series. I always fell in love with characters and never wanted the stories to end. I'm like that to this day. I am disappointed when a good book or series ends. I have this fear of dread that I will never pick up another book that will make me feel the way the last one did. This is why I have re-read many books and many different series of books.

I've gone off on a bit of a ramble there. What I am getting at is that when you love to read, you are always looking for book recommendations from people. I have friends that have told me about the best books I have ever laid my eyes on and for that I'm incredibly thankful! I am a fan of memoirs and recently a friend of mine recommended I read "It Was Me All Along" by Andie Mitchell.

It is a memoir of a young woman who struggled with her weight her entire life and ended up losing over 130 pounds in her twenties. You can see why this book called to me. I mean, she was even born in 1985 like me. She's my age! I broke down and finally bought it on audio book through Audible. I have been very in to audio books at the moment because they are easier when you have a baby.

Now, I am only up to Chapter 4 since I just got this the other day, but listening to this woman talk about her life and her relationship with food makes me want to cry. Not cry because it's sad (well, it kind of is) but cry because I feel like I could have written the exact words myself.  Like she dug deep into my brain and my heart and knew exactly how to put it into words. It's almost frightening. However, I am sure a lot of women could relate. Now, I did not have the same childhood and past like she did, but I have the same issues with food as she did. I am so looking forward to hearing about the change in her life and what finally snapped.

This book spurred an interest for me. I decided I want to go through and write about my childhood, my memories, my issues with body image and food, what is was like to grow up like I did. I feel that maybe someone out there can relate and possibly learn something from my experiences and maybe figure something out about themselves.

So, if you're not interested in this journey then you won't be reading my blog for awhile. I am going to try and be honest but there might be some things I do not share. There are some things only people close to me need to know.

It begins......