"You are wearing the wrong type of green!"
The blond girl standing near her teacher's desk hadn't expected the comment. She looked down at her clothing trying to make sense of why she was being mocked. Then she looked at the tall, slender girl in her first grade class who had made the comment. Her hair was perfectly done, without a single strand out of place. Her clothing had been perfectly coordinated to celebrate the holiday without receiving a pinch. She was more well liked than the blond girl with the crooked smile and was considerably more beautiful.
"Teacher, ShaRee is wearing the wrong color of green," the popular girl exclaimed to the teacher with a laugh.
The blond girl examined her own clothing again. In preparation for the day she had been dressed in the only green clothes she owned, a pair of hunter green sweats with a mismatched green shirt. She looked around the room and, in that moment, realized that she wasn't like the other girls. There was something different about her. She hung her head to look at the floor. The humiliation over her embarrassing clothing choice had been hurtful, but the pain of what she had realized about herself as she tried to grasp the situation had made her wish she could disappear. She bit back tears as she began to understand why she was different from the other girls: she was bigger than all of them and she was ugly.
My hand flew to the alarm clock the second it began it's relentless beeping. I had always been a light sleeper as well as an early riser, but I had noticed that it was becoming increasingly more difficult to get out of bed. Second semester had started to be more stressful than I had anticipated. In addition to my five music classes, I was also taking english and history. We were only a few weeks into the new semester and I had already started questioning whether I was going to survive or not.
I had enjoyed my choir class during the fall, but this new semester had changed my feelings. The professor who usually conducted the choir had gone on sabbatical and we were now having to get used to a new conductors style. Not many of us were loving the new change. I was glad that I had auditioned for Choralaires, the LDS institute choir. It gave me a fun musical atmosphere to break up the monotony of college classes and the disappointment from concert choir. I had initially felt intimidated to be in a choir where so many people had already spent a semester singing together, if not longer. I came into the choir in the middle of the year and only knew one other person. Chris had excitedly introduced me to all of his friends during our first rehearsal, but I had felt so uncomfortable and worried that I wouldn't ever fit in with their group. He was still really good to try and include me and had started spending more time at my apartment than he had before.
"I wonder how much weight you've lost."
We spent a lot of our time together discussing my weight and what foods I could or couldn't eat. My new pants had started to become baggy and my excitement continued to grow.
"I don't know how much I've lost, but look at this!" I said as I walked out of my room wearing my old pants. They were super big on me. I started to laugh as I pulled the waste of the jeans away from my stomach like they do in the weight loss commercials.
"Holy buckets! That's awesome!" he laughed. "You should buy a scale so that you can actually see how much you're losing."
I hadn't really considered buying a scale. I had never weighed myself before, because I already knew that I was huge. I didn't need a scale to tell me that. I also didn't want to admit to other people that I was trying to lose weight. I was simply seeing how long I could go on my challenge that had gone from "no junk food" to "don't eat anything with more than five grams of fat and three grams of sugar." The challenge was turning out to be successful and I had to admit that losing the weight felt good. Later that day I came home with my new scale and a full length mirror, both to help motivate me on my challenge, that had now officially turned into a diet.
As January came to a close, I began to notice small changes not only in myself, but also with my friendships. I became enthusiastic about cooking for other people. I had mostly only ever cooked out of necessity, but for some reason I had a new found fascination for recipes and cooking for others. I had planned a birthday dinner, complete with cake, for my sweet roommate Jill. When I couldn't get the frosting just right I became infuriated, threw the whole cake in the sink, and stormed out of the apartment. I don't know why I was so angry.
Tori also started treating me differently since I started the challenge.
"You need to get more girly looking clothes. You're such a tomboy."
I had decided she was right, but not until after feeling extremely embarrassed and hurt over having been ridiculed over my wardrobe. I didn't have a ton of selection for clothes because of my size, but once I started to lose weight, I made sure to start buying tops that were brighter and more feminine in style.
"Look at your eyebrows! You need to go get them waxed!"
That very day I went to get my eyebrows waxed. I tried to not make a big deal out of it, but she made a point to laugh about it and point it out to everyone who came to visit. We weren't talking with each other as much as we used to and as I became closer friends with Chris, she also started finding her own group of friends. I was so hurt by the comments and looks she kept giving me. That hurt eventually turned into anger. Every time I noticed her eating a meal, I began to feel very prideful knowing that I had more will power than her. We were growing farther apart by the minute.
"I am just concerned about what I'm supposed to do at Eric's blessing. It's easy up here to follow the rules, but I don't think I'll be able to keep the rules when I'm in Fillmore. What should I do?"
I had actually considered missing my nephew's baby blessing. The stress I was having over what to eat when I was in Fillmore was so consuming that it was easier for me to miss such a huge family occasion. I was terrified that I was going to gain back all the weight I had just lost.
"I think we should maybe change some things so that you can have more variety of food. What if we made the rules more about calories than about fat and sugar?" Chris was more knowledgable about nutrition than I was. I felt lucky to have him helping me.
"Ok, that sounds good. Will I still be able to lose weight if we change the rules? I really want to keep losing weight." I said, almost in desperation.
"Yes, of course. We'll come up with something that'll work. What if we just limit your caloric intake to 100 calories a day? We can just print off a list of foods you can eat and the quantities you can have. You should still lose weight fairly quickly that way."
So we found a list of foods and how much I could eat. I studied the list and memorized as much as I could. When I went to Fillmore for the weekend, everyone was so surprised at how great I was looking. I received so much praise for how much weight I had been losing and people began to ask what I had been doing. It was so foreign to me. I had never been given positive attention for my looks. I didn't quite know how to respond.
The weekend didn't go as well as I had hoped. My mom began to be concerned that I was being too strict, but I assured her that everything was fine. I wasn't able to stay within my caloric limit, which caused me to panic. I started feeling restless as the thoughts in my head went out of control. By Sunday, I was such a nervous wreck that I decided there was no way that I was going to the family dinner after church. My mom wanted me to at least eat something before I left. I began eating the slice of ham my mother placed in front of me, making my eyes blink away the tears before she could notice. I packed up my bags and raced back to Ogden as fast as I could.
February 23, 2004
This weekend my Nephew got blessed. He is so cute. I love him so much. The bad thing is that I gained a little weight while I was home, but I hope I can be back to where I was by the end of this week. Chris is helping me out so much. He even gave me an exercise program.
That night I cried as I climbed on the scale and saw that I had gained weight. I paced back and forth trying to figure out what I could do to lose the weight faster. I was thankful that Chris had given me his Power 90 DVD, but that wasn't going to help me as quickly as I needed. The weight needed to be gone.
I went to my room and stood in front of the mirror I had purchased. I examined how my clothes fit and worried that they looked tighter on me. The thoughts began. I undressed and proceeded to inspect my body, criticizing myself every step of the way. The thoughts were louder. I grabbed fat rolls to measure how much bigger they had gotten. Thoughts racing. I stepped away from the mirror and allowed the tears to roll down my cheek as I put on my pajamas. I walked back over to the mirror and sat in front of it. The tears turned into sobs as the thoughts that began when I was so young continued to scream at me.
You are so ugly and fat! Why are you so ugly? Why can't you fix it? Do you see how ugly you are? Look at how fat you are. You are so ugly and fat. Everyone thinks that you are the ugliest person. No one likes you because you are so ugly. You are gross. No one should have to look at you. How can you live like that? There is so much fat everywhere! You are ugly.Over and over in my head for hours. Each time I looked in the mirror I hoped that the reflection would somehow have changed since the last time I had stopped crying long enough to look in the mirror. How could I have eaten so much food? I had gained weight and made myself so fat. I was so ugly.
That night I prayed for only one thing.
"Heavenly Father, please help me to lose weight. I need to lose more weight. Please help me. Please."
No comments:
Post a Comment