Power

Do you have people in your life who just make you feel powerless, like you have no control over anything at all and your life is just a complete mess? These people take away everything, your confidence, strength, self respect and self identity.  I had one of those people in my life and I have worked my ass off to get rid of them and put it all behind me. However while cleaning out some drawers I found something this person gave me when I was in hospital after an operation and everything I had worked so hard to forget all came flooding back. I haven't been able to sleep, I am having flashback nightmares and I can feel myself sliding back to where I was 2 years ago...

Before I continue you have to know there is a lot that I am very open about, my weight loss journey is one of those things. All the people who know me know I am doing this and know that I will succeed because I expect nothing less from myself. But what I am not very open about is how I got here. And if I am going to get it right and keep the weight off I need to start being open about how I got here and why I let myself get here.

I wrote this about 6 months ago but never really shared it with anyone, it was just left in a word document hidden away on my laptop where no one could find it. But here it is for public consumption...




I was always the fat kid, from a very early age people would pick on me because of it. It never really affected me until I was in high school when puberty hit and I all of a sudden went from a B cup to a D in a few very short months. Hormones took over and I ate... a lot... and it was all the things I shouldn't have been eating. I sought comfort from food. My friendships looking back were mostly about what I could do for other people not about a reciprocal fondness and compatible interests. I was a worrier, it made dealing with my emotions difficult and dealing with friendships a daily struggle.

Graduating high school in 2004 was one of the best things to happen to me, I left so much negativity and crap behind. I started a TAFE course the following year as an introduction into uni life and to help boost my chances of getting into a great university. I broke away from all the drama of high school and started to get some confidence in myself. Or so I thought... My family was going through a difficult phase and the future was very uncertain, I tried to talk to my friends about it however they all were too wrapped in themselves to take 10 minutes out of their day to listen.

I started my teaching degree in 2006 at Monash University and made friends instantly, we all became quite close and over the years did a lot of things outside of uni together. It was also during this time that I started dating a person I know through friends I had made in high school. He was my knight in shining armour at the time, I was totally infatuated with him. However, he took advantage of my feelings for him and took things too far. That was when my anxiety started to get really bad and I started having panic attacks. Aaron was the one person whom I could confide in when all of this was happening, he encouraged me to seek help for the panic attacks and anxiety and it was after listening to his advice and seeking help that I was diagnosed with GAD & Panic Disorder in the June of 2007.

Not long after that Aaron and I started dating, everyone warned me that he was unstable and the relationship was unhealthy right from the very beginning. I was determined to make it work, I had failed in all my other relationships and I didn't want to fail again. His ex-girlfriend was a hurdle right from the very beginning; she was always around and always trying to come between us. I did everything I could to not let it bother me, but as with things like that it did in a big way. It created all sorts of problems in our relationship and a lot of trust issues because he could not stay away. I remember having a huge fight with him after she had tried to get in between us at an event and he swore to me that he would not let her get between us. The manipulation and mind games started then... he was convinced that he could get her out of lives for good if he could find a way to set her up and discredit her. I didn't realise it at the time but he was using me as a scapegoat for that to make it look like it was me doing it all while he was the innocent party. It progressed further than that when he started doing it with everyone else too. In the end I looked like the unstable one and was blamed for it all. I had no one to turn to except him & the 3 friends whom he had yet to meet.

In 2008, I injured my knee at work and was unable to do much, I couldn't work, I couldn't study all I could do was sit on my ass and eat and do nothing. Aaron became my entire world. I lost sight of reality and everything else going on around me and I had spiralled into a very unhappy anxiety ridden mess. In 2009 I broke up with Aaron, I was in a massive panic at a party in the city for one of our mutual friends and he just left me there. I had no one left to call and was very lucky that my brother and mum were able to come and get me. But there was a part of me that just couldn't let go, so after a few months of staying away from him I started seeing him again. We soon fell back into the same patterns and I really lost control, I fell into a deep depression and was contemplating suicide. The last straw was about a year after that when I was at his best mates party, he used my phone to do something unthinkable and very dangerous for the other person involved and then convinced everyone I had done it, they had every reason to believe him and not me given the past manipulations... I was done so I walked away leaving almost everything I knew behind.

Since then I have worked really hard to pick myself up and rebuild my life, I have some amazing support from friends and family and have come to a really good place, however if anything happens that reminds me of this part of my life I still automatically turn to food, It is all I know in dealing with the immediate emotions. I am still haunted by the past in so many ways but by putting this out there I am regaining control of my life and saying that it is not ok for anyone to treat me this way. It is not ok for anyone to be treated like this. 

I will get my power back, one day at a time.