How does it affect me now? Well, that's a very tough one for me, because about the only "treatment" I've had for this so far has been anti-depressant medications -- I also suffer depression -- and those caused so much weight gain that the people around me were complaining I was too fat. Now, though, those same people are yelling at me that I"m too thin. (One actually had the gall to yell -- not say, but yell -- that I must be anorexic! Um, hello? Like for 27 years now? Except when I'm on medications and you tell me I'm too fat?)
It upsets me a lot, actually, because when I was younger, and I really did think that I was OK and everyone was just jealous because I didn't have a weight problem -- you know, when I really *needed* some sort of intervention -- no one said a word. No one saw any problems. Now, though, when I'm an adult, when I'm married and my husband can take on the responsibility for telling me he thinks there's a problem, NOW my family tries to step in. The same family member who used to compliment me on my slim figure, and tell other close relatives to look at me to find out how to maintain a nice figure now complains that I need to eat more. The other family member, who told me that I couldn't have an eating disorder -- back in my mid teens when maybe it could have been nipped in the bud -- because there was nothing wrong with me, she asked timidly recently if I was anorexic -- I didn't answer.
I guess I'm pretty angry about it, really, because I don't feel able to say, "Do you think that teasing me about how I looked throughout my childhood and adolescence could have had anything to do with this? And that maybe you're not the ones to be jumping in now?" Sure, you tell me I'm too fat, then I'm too thin, and when I needed help you were silent!
Sorry. Today is a very bad day. Anger is way up, because of something that happened today, totally unrelated.
I'm glad I'm not alone, though.
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There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
Thomas Carlyle in essay on Sir Walter Scott
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