Part 2: The Set-Up

All my life I think I have always cared more for other people than for myself. I don't know what made me different from most children, but I know that I was. I always felt much more comfortable around adults than classmates, and seemed more at ease by myself than with friends. That's not to say I had no friends, because I always had plenty of them, it merely states that I was always more secure alone. With friends, like everything else in my life, I always felt like I had to "measure up." To what standard I had to measure, I am not quite sure. Even now, that beguiles me.

I don't believe that anyone ever told me outright that my place was to be a caretaker of the world. Nor did they ever tell me that I had to be perfect. However, I know that is how I saw things. When I was little and sick, I was the "defective" one, the "less than perfect" one. My job, to stay alive, was to become perfect. I'm sure in my child's mind it made logical sense. By the time I was old enough for it NOT to make sense, it was too late to change it. The patterns and behaviors were already well in place.

 My mother, who is a talented and wonderful poet, published "Coffee Cup Poetry" years ago. In this book there is a poem about me as a young child. Here, she questions the doubts and fears that rest behind my dark brown eyes. When others read that poem, they assumed it was jealousy over my niece taking my place in the family. They could not know the depths of the assumptions I had grown to place in my own two hands.

I already talked about being defective and the great fear I had that unless I was "fixed" I would die. You know I don't think there was ever a night that I wasn't afraid to go to sleep. But there were so many other beliefs as well.

Being the last of seven children presents its own unique challenges, but in my case, believing I had to be perfect to be "fixed" and thus stay alive, it became a nightmare. You see, I am very proud of my brothers and sisters and I always have been. True there are those whom to my sadness I barely know as people, but I have always seen in them great abilities and strengths. Growing up, I was well aware of their intelligence. They were all smart, straight-A students, who each excelled somewhere. I believed that I had to be just like them, and still achieve in my own right. This was next to impossible. I could get the grades, and I could paint, and draw, sing, cheer lead, etc... but all of those things had been done. I always felt that there was nothing special that *I* could do. Nothing that made me different from them, nothing that made me, *me*. So very early I took to the one thing that made me different.

That difference was my weight. Whereas my three older sisters were struggling with weight, I was scrawny and thin. I could watch them and listen. I could hear how it affected them at school and with their own self-esteem. People always told me I would grow up to be heavy as well. I swore that would never happen. Here was my difference, here was what I could do. So I grabbed onto my weight, my control, and I ran. I had no way of knowing then that I was setting myself up for the greatest battle of my life.

This Page Last Updated On 02/22/98