Food, Glorious Food

Or not, as the case may be.

I realised something the other day. I overeat as a way of self-harming. When I hate myself, I eat. When someone/something pisses me off, I eat. I'll continue stuffing my face even when I feel sick because I DESERVE EVERY EXTRA INCH OF FAT I GAIN for being such a waste of space. I want to eat normally; but I can't, and wonder if I ever will. Because normal people can have the odd bit of chocolate or a takeaway and it's fine. I can't do that. I can't 'do' moderation, it's all or nothing. If only I hated myself enough to just stop eating altogether. No, I don't quite hate myself enough to punish myself with hunger. Which is a good thing I suppose. Under-eating is just as harmful as over-eating, only the Daily Mail don't wet themselves quite so much over the anorexics who are taking up valuable NHS resources (that could be spent on nice middle class people instead), preferring instead to concentrate on 'Look at this fat poor person! WE pay for their lardiness, leave 'em to rot in their own filth!' type stories instead. We don't get outraged by skinny people; I defy anyone to see someone painfully thin and not feel concern for them; yet someone as severely OVERweight would, by many, be met with revulsion. Some would even see fit to call them names. Total strangers. Going about their business. Because I'm sure if you're 25 stone and struggling to walk down the road, what you really need is some cunt calling you a fat bastard as you do so. I'm not that fat, by the way, and no stranger has ever remarked on my size. Not to my face, anyway.

Anyway, I digress. I wish my realisation was some kind of epiphany - a new dawn, the key to finally vanquishing my food demons once and for all - but no. I don't feel liberated by it, I just feel depressed by it. I thought my self-harming days were long behind me; truth is, they never ended. When I'm slim, I cut myself. When I'm not, I eat. One way or another, I find a way of taking out my anxiety on myself, and always have. I remember one incident, when I was about 13 or 14, where I had playfully prodded my Dad on the arm, during a conversation about something utterly banal and light-heartedly told him not to be such a misery for some sarky comment he'd made. In return, he punched me hard on my upper arm, and leaned right into my face and aggressively snarled at me to 'NEVER do that again'. If my husband ever did that to my daughter, I would be calling the police and throwing his belongings out of the door. My Mum just tutted something about him over-reacting and carried on staring at the TV. Naturally, I retreated to my room and scratched and stabbed myself repeatedly with a compass. The more I thought of his horrible fat, ugly, face thrust into mine, the harder I stabbed and the deeper I scratched. As a kid, the time between coming home from school, and my Mum getting in from work at 5.10pm was the worst part of my day. It would be just me, my Dad and my brother, both of whom I hated. I would long for her return, checking my bedroom window from 5pm onwards, to see if she was coming down the street yet. So I would fill this part of the day with food. I would buy as much chocolate/cake as I could with whatever money I had, and stuff my face with it in my bedroom. Every day. And then eat my tea, even though my stomach would usually be aching from all the crap I'd consumed previously. For the record, my Mum was never as pleased to see me as I was her. I was generally an annoyance to her most of the time. But hey ho. I'm cool with that; therapy is a wonderful thing.

Maybe this will be the start of a new, healthier me. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and think 'fuck this, I refuse to be a prisoner to my own insecurities and fucked up mind'. Who knows. Who knows.

All that she wants...

I'm feeling broody. Really, really broody. I see pictures of newborn babies and I start to well up. When I see a baby out and about, I feel a mixture of sadness and warm fuzziness remembering the birth of my amazing little girl.

It was perfect. Exactly the birth I wanted. Everyone thinks this means I would be MORE likely to want another child; the opposite is in fact true. It could never be as amazing second time around. Something would go wrong, some complication would arise, and the memory of my incredible, perfect birthing experience would be tarnished forever.

Anyway, I digress. Today I am feeling particularly sad about the fact that I will never be pregnant again. We can't afford another child, financially or emotionally. We want to be able to give the child we already have every opportunity we can; these opportunities will be less if we have to be in a position to offer a sibling the same deal. Yes, if I found myself pregnant tomorrow, we would cope. But we don't want to just 'cope'. Our business wouldn't survive 'losing' me for another 6 weeks, let alone 6 months, and given that it looks as though Flo is going to be exceptionally gifted, it seems almost unfair to bring a sibling into the equation.

But I'm good at making babies. My parenting is about the only thing in my life I've ever felt confident about. I loved my body when I was pregnant too, for the first and only time in my whole life, adult or otherwise. I feel made for motherhood. I should've met my husband 10 years earlier, then maybe we'd have a whole tribe of kids by now. But circumstances dictate that we are destined to be a family of three. Most days I love this. We're a tight little team, and the rare days we get to spend all together are fantastic and I feel sure that our 'no more babies' decision is the right thing to do. Then every now and then, days like this come along and I just ache for another baby. I tell myself it's just biology, it'll pass, and it will. But so too will the days that I am able to make babies (probably sooner rather than later, if family history and recent goings-on are anything to go by, but I'll save the gory details of my cycle here I think) and then it will hit me hard. Very hard. Biology sucks.