realizing when it begins, or began

I've just lost 23 lbs.  I fact I'm very proud of- too proud of.  It's all I think about.  I only want to lose 5 more- really.   I'm 41 years old and this is a very familiar feeling.  I had been healthy for many years, but I think it's back- or maybe it never left.

I'm writing this blog mostly selfishly- because I'm depressed and I want to be happy, I want to live longer! I'm hoping that telling my story will help me examine the problem and possibly help me heal.   But, I also hope that someone else out there that might be thinking a) I'm too smart to have an eating disorder or b) I'm to old to have an eating disorder or worst of all c) I don't have an eating disorder- will perhaps see this blog themselves or be shown it and seek help or help themselves.  It's a hard way to live.

I'll start at where I think the beginning is- but for all I know it could be wrong. Oh, before I get going, mom if you happen to be reading this even if I talk about you, I don't blame you at all, it's not what you said or did but how I chose to react to it.

I was about 10, maybe a little bit older, maybe a little bit younger but I was young, and I was a very difficult child (turns out).  I decided to become a vegetarian.  This was unheard of in Buffalo NY, and for sure in my family.   I just stopped eating meat.  No one could make me, and I wasn't going to.  In retrospect I can see (and have been told) that I was seeking to control something, anything in my life.  I didn't know that then, then I just didn't want ANYTHING my mother was feeding me. Least of all did I want to become fat like other people in my family. I didn't know the two were related, but now I see (and maybe you will in subsequent posts) that possibly they were.

Fat was a dirty word at my house, it's pretty much all my mother and I had in common then, and almost all we talk about to this day.  Back then she would say "don't eat that- you'll look like____"  or "you've gained a little tummy".  But mostly she would talk about how much SHE ate and how fat she was.  She wasn't.  She was beautiful and slim, even skinny.  All I could think when she said that was if SHE is fat, what am I?  Even today we joke about how when we went out to eat, she wouldn't order anything (a fact that embarrassed me to no end) because I never finished anything I ordered.

On the other hand, somewhere deep down (and this is the confusing part to this day) I knew I wasn't fat, I knew I was wearing a size zero, I saw others that were much larger than I was but i still felt wrong.  I didn't and don't see myself as thin, and maybe never will.

I'm going to stop for today and try not to go weigh myself, but I can't promise.  Talk to you tomorrow.