Fatal
Impact
Parents don't
exactly realise the damage and impact that the occasional slight remarks
they make can have. To be honest, it's not really their fault. It just
that sometimes the filter between their brain and mouth doesn't work.
On the rare occasions that they realise they shouldn't have said something,
they make the huge mistake of just assuming that the young one's won't remember.
That the words they uttered are meaningless and won't leave an impression on
their children.
The small comments on their own aren't that affective, but when you hear
small comments like that throughout your life, the weight of them starts to
become a heavy burden. Especially to impressionable young children and
teenagers.
I was seven years old when my mother first made this mistake. We were playing
around together, like we usually do, just having some typical girly fun. Out of
nowhere she decided to give my stomach a gentle and loving poke. "You're getting
chubby there, missy," she had said.
It didn't really bother me at that age, but once I started my high school
career and the bullies would make similar comments, the memories of the playful,
yet hurtful comments, came flooding back. That is when they implanted themselves
into my mind and started eating away at my self confidence.
By the time I was well into my first year of high school, I would stand in
front of my bedroom mirror and poke that same stomach. Instead of gentle and
loving, it was rough and hate filled. "You're getting fat," I had started saying
to my reflection.
I hated myself, I hated my body, and I hated looking in the mirror. All I saw
were the bits of fat hanging off of me, and my reflection repeating the words my
mother had spoken to me when I was just seven years old. "You're getting chubby
there, missy."
When I was nine years old, my parents were having a discussion about me,
while I was in the same room. "We need to get her into some kind of sport. She
getting lazy, and she's becoming bigger than most children her age," my father
had said.
When I was fourteen, I had joined every sports club that I found. "You're
getting lazy!" I would tell myself whenever I felt too exhausted to play.
It got so bad at one point, that I didn't have a minute of free time. It
really took a toll on my social life. Which only gave my parents another thing
to lecture me about.
After every game or training session, I would run up to my room as soon as I
got home, and look in my bedroom mirror to see if I could notice any physical
changes with my weight. I often didn't, which led to me starving myself to help
it along.
The only thing that satisfied me, were the number displayed on my scaled
slowly dropping. Kilogram by kilogram disappearing from my body.
Even then I was never fully satisfied. It seemed like no matter how much
weight I lost, I wasn't getting any thinner. It was the same old image in the
mirror. The same fat body, the same reflection repeating the same words to me.
"You're getting chubby there, missy."
On the night of my sixteenth birthday party, my self esteem was destroyed
forever. I had come down from my bedroom, in a red dress that I had absolutely
adored. I did my best to make my hair and make-up look perfect, and I thought I
looked amazing in the dress. All the sports and years of near starvation had
made me look extra thin, which made my grin larger than should be possible.
For once I thought that I was in the same league as my friends. I would
finally be like them, and I would finally be confident for the first time in a
long time.
That all started crashing down when my mother saw me. "Are you sure you
should be wearing that dress?" She had asked. When I just looked at her in
confusion, all she said was, "well, I mean, it's not exactly flattering for your
body type is it? I think a floor length dress would look better."
I tried my best to ignore her comment. Maybe she hadn't meant it the way I
took it. It still hurt, though, and it was hard to forget that she had said it.
All of my friends complimented me, saying that I looked amazing, but the words
my mother had spoken, outweighed theirs by a mile. Her words were the ones that
affected me the most.
When dinner was ready and I was serving myself my second plate of food, my
father came up to me with a smile on his face. "How many plates is that now,
sweetie? You'd wanna be careful. What is it you girls say? It'll go straight to
your thighs? Besides, all of your friends are finished eating." That second
plate of food ended up in the bin, and I didn't eat anything else for a week. A
birthday dinner might not seem all that significant, but when you starve
yourself, planning every single bit of food that you eat, weeks and months
ahead, a small plate of food becomes a promise that you make to yourself.
It's an accomplishment, and sometimes it's even a step towards recovery. It's
something to be proud of. That birthday dinner was my planned meal. It was
supposed to be my accomplishment.
It was the one night that I promised myself that I would eat more than a piece
of cheese, and my father shut that idea down. He made me break the promise I had
made to myself, and he had never once apologised.
From as far back as I can remember, the slight remarks that my parents would
make, made me had myself. I was never once happy with the way I looked. My
parents never noticed. I tried my best to make my parents happy, to make them
proud of me. No matter what I did, and no matter how hard I tried, they never
did seem proud of me.
With the comments they would make about it, it seemed that they were never happy
with the way I looked. They never gave me any compliments when I attempted to
dress up and make myself look nice.
They were always comparing me to my younger sister. Comparing our grades, our
social lives, and our eating habits. They didn't realise how much it hurt to be
compared to someone who they viewed as perfect.
Although starving myself was good for my weight, it wasn't at all good for my
energy and my body. I became too exhausted to play any sports. My body was too
weak, and it only disappointed my parents when I ended up having to quit. I
didn't have any energy left to stay up at night and study or finish homework,
and I was falling asleep at school. My grades were dropping as well, which only
disappointed my parents more.
They never gave me any encouragement or praise for trying my best in my sports,
or trying my best to pass an exam or assignment. All I received were lectures
and comments about how disappointed they were, how they expected so much more of
me, how I wasn't doing my best and that I could do so much better.
I started to realise that because they saw me everyday, the changes in my body
weren't all that significant to them until it became painfully obvious. It was
only a few months after my sixteenth birthday that they actually started
noticing that something was wrong. I refused to look in any mirror, I never ate
any full meals, if any, and when I look at photo's of myself back then, I'm
baffled as to how they didn't notice the awful changes my body went through.
Of course they blamed me, though. It was my fault for being self conscious. "You
shouldn't listen to those other girls, and you shouldn't pay attention to the
models in those fashion magazines," they had said.
Maybe it was partly my fault. Maybe I just wasn't a strong enough person to
prove them wrong in the correct, healthy ways. However, it was wrong of them to
assume that their comments and, at times, their judgemental behaviour, weren't a
contributing factor to my eating disorder.
After numerous failed attempts at helping me get better, they were reaching the
end of their rope, much like I was. They decided that it was best for me and my
health that I get checked into the hospital.
I was in and out of the hospital for two years. My parents couldn't afford the
specialist rehab clinics, so I was just sent to a community hospital, where I
also had to see a shrink. I hated it in there. They were so overstaffed for a
majority of the time, and so busy with all the patients, that they barely had
enough time to properly nurse everyone back to health and give us the help and
attention that we desperately needed.
Due to this, I quickly realised that if I pretended I was fine for just a little
while, and told the shrink some of my problems, they would think I was better
and let me go home. Then I would go back to living my life how I wanted, without
any pressure from nurses and doctors telling me that if I didn't fix it, I would
end up killing myself.
One of the only things I've ever wanted from my parents, was an apology. Maybe
some encouragement and praise to go along with it. I never got any of them,
though. I was reaching the end of my rope, and I needed to do something about
it.
Dear self,
I know you can't take this anymore, and by 'this', I mean your life. The way you
have been living for the past eleven years was just too horrible, and it's way
too hard to continue living like this. You need to fix it. You have faced all of
your fears. You may not have overcome them, but you faced them. Maybe one day,
you will be able to overcome them.
No matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't do anything right in their eyes.
It seemed that they only wanted to add more problems to a never ending list of
problems that you already had. They never really tried to help you find a
solution to your problems.
You thought that this world was supposed to be kind and beautiful. In your eyes,
it is neither of those things. Not your world anyway. As your parents, they were
supposed to make it beautiful for you, but they never did. Forgive them for it,
and do not blame them. Forgive them, but don't forget it. Let it give you
strength and inspiration to make your own world beautiful.
I know it's getting hard to find the strength to live anymore. Every time you
try, you just get knocked back down again. Just know, that despite their lack of
showing it, your family and friends love you.
Maybe an apology from both of your parents would have helped you, but you need
to be strong. You need to prove to them that they were wrong for all those
years. Show them just how much strength you have. You can fix this, and you will
face all of your fears.
You have a choice of whether to live or die. Ensure that you make the right one.
Remember that you are a beautiful person. Love yourself, so you can see why
others love you too.
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