Fertilehealthy

I could never have “enough”. In fact, I lived in constant fear of not having “enough”.

Enough what?

Enough food.

I used to study a menu in a restaurant and choose the most generous portioned dish(es). Often I would finish a meal at one restaurant and go to another restaurant for another meal. I could never buy just one sandwich or portion at the supermarket deli counter. I used to come home with a sandwich, a portion of lasagna, a portion of paella and maybe a chicken piece or two.

This goes back a long, long time. I remember at boarding school and at university that I used to finish the meals of everyone at my table. How dignified. Thank goodness I’m not famous! Imagine all these people crawling out of the woodwork and telling the tabloids how I used to eat their leftovers!

Before you think that I grew up poor and starving (this is Africa, after all), let me assure you that I had a comfortable middleclass upbringing. We ate three squares a day, were adequately clothed, had two cars in the garage and managed to go on vacation once a year.

So was my appetite just totally out of control? I use the word “was” here, because somehow I’m not doing that anymore. I got such a kick this morning when I bought just one sandwich and was fully satisfied. And I realized that it was never about the food. It was about that feeling of anxiety in the store, that feeling of “not enough”.

Enough what?

Enough love.

I was desperately craving loving nurture.

I never knew that my mother loved me and cared about me. Even before my sister came along when I was about three, I think my mother was too overwhelmed and stressed to realize that my needs went beyond feeding, clothing and amusing. My mother is very highly strung with a hair-trigger temper. The soundtrack of my childhood is being yelled at. When my sister arrived, I probably felt that I had to fight for any scrap of love and affection. After all, a baby is so much cuter than a 3-year old. I remember so well in later years how I schemed and plotted at every turn to get “more” than my sister. Most often that just translated into more food, bigger portions.

In my teens I rebelled. Of course. I’ll never forget my father telling me that they would never trust me again.

So, now I was not only unlovable, I was also untrustworthy.

If I couldn’t get love, I’d have to go for the next best thing. Food. (And booze and sex, but why depress you now?) I was a Plus-size-waiting-to-happen. Somehow I made it to my mid-twenties with only about 20 extra pounds, but the day I said “I do” to my loser absolutely-the-wrong-guy first husband and realized how far I’d deviated from my potential and the “plan” for my life, the last scraps of restraint disintegrated and I started stuffing myself with a vengeance. (”Vengeance” is quite an interesting choice of word here…)

I ballooned. I gained over 100 pounds in one year. And every subsequent year would find me another 10 pounds heavier.

I got divorced in 2000. Oh how much fun it was to be thirty, single and obese. I was so in demand! Yeah right. But of course this empty hole, where the love should be, needed to be filled. If the fat didn’t scare them away, the manic desperation did the trick.

Then, just over three years ago I met Craig. And he started really loving me. It’s quite strange, because to outsiders (people who are not me), he’s a very closed person. But boy, does he love me. Not only that, he’s given me the freedom to acquire the tools to learn to love myself.

Nothing happens overnight. But over these last three years, that huge empty cavern inside me that I used to have to fill with food so that the echoes wouldn’t drive me to a breakdown and/or suicide has been filling up with love. And more and more I find that food is just food now. Something to nourish me and something to enjoy. I don’t need it to nurture and comfort me anymore.

Sure, I still eat too much sometimes. But not every time. And that’s just because the food is so good! 

For me love was the answer. You don’t have to wait until the right person comes into your life. As Doctor Phil says:

Sometimes you just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.

Let’s all work towards finally having enough.