50 Years of Photos

 I went searching for something and, as usual, came out without what I was searching for but possibly found something more valuable – insight. 

In my guest bedroom there is a shelf and chest of drawers all filled to the brim with photo albums and old memories.  Although I have attempted organization several times, including once at the beginning of the pandemic, it never seems to be enough for my manic brain.  This time I decided it would be a great idea to remove the old photos from the albums and put them into boxes to organize and save space. 

I raced off to Michaels where they had a sale on photo boxes.  They are now scattered around my livingroom with thousands of old photos chronicling my life from birth.  50 years.  50 years of snapshots of my life.  As I sort through and try to organize them, I am not certain what is more disturbing to me, the photos where I was at my heaviest, those where I was thin but thought I was fat or the photos and life moments I erased myself out of completely because of my weight.

There are distinct portions of my life where it appears I didn’t even exist.  I think I got sick of seeing myself in photos and feeling like I looked even worse in those photos than I did in my mirror, if that was even possible.  I was so disgusted with myself that I made certain to stay behind the camera and never in front of the lens. 

You would think that looking at the photos where I was almost 300 pounds would make me at least feel some sort of accomplishment to have lost 100 of them at one point.  But all I see is the failure of not reaching my goal and then backsliding what progress I did have back into the abyss.  I know what I need to do and how to do it.  There are no excuses yet all I have are excuses. 

I hate myself.  I hate what food has made me. I hate what I have allowed. I hate the self-doubt and the fear. I hate that I am never enough yet always too much.  I hate that I feel so hurt and damaged by life that I feel my only salve is to hide behind a thick wall of fat. Oh, I don’t do that consciously.  For me, eating is pleasure, comfort, indulgence.  But I know that it is more than that.  It is protection.  And every single bite I take, I know I am building that wall.  That gives me pleasure.  That gives me comfort.  That gives me control. It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud.  It would seem the ultimate control would be controlling what I put in my mouth. But apparently my brain does not translate it that way.

As I page through the older photos of my childhood, I notice something remarkable.  Although I thought I was fat then, I was not.  I was a very normal size child. I was 160 pounds in high school and although bigger than the thin perfect girls, I was not fat.  I guess I was just fat-ter than the other girls.  Not all the girls.  Just the popular ones.  I had body image issues. I hated gym class and undressing in front of others. I felt every one of those extra pounds even though these photos don’t show them. But the smallest imperfections in my body groomed me for a lifetime of self-loathing.  They distorted what I saw in the mirror.

I text a few of the high school photos to a friend of mine who also struggles with her weight and someone I am blessed to still have in my life after all these long years.  “What were we thinking?! We were NOT fat!”, “Goals, sister”.  It is sad that my goals are to be the weight I was when I thought I was fat, when my gym teacher told me I was obese. I would be thrilled to be 160 again. 

Society told me that 160 wasn’t good enough.  It wasn’t even close.  The charts said I should be 120 and there was no way that was happening. But all of those voices over and over told me I was 40 pounds more than I should have been at 5’5”.  Unacceptable, disgusting.  I learned to hate myself at that age when my brain was developing a sense of self, or not as the case may be.

I begin to search the pile for where my weight actually started to pack on, trying to locate that moment where I ballooned quickly to twice my weight.  Although there wasn’t that specific moment, I can see that with each major setback in my life I would gain.  Maybe just 10 pounds but it was noticeable over time in those photos.  Like each terrible moment was immortalized on my body as solid bricks of fat. Each one building that wall higher and thicker to keep people out.

The first noticeable gain was in college after I was raped. I don’t know what my thought process was.  It certainly wasn’t conscious. There are photos here from that night. Before I was raped of course, not after.  Like still images of the moments before you fall of a cliff into the darkness.  After that, I wanted to hide, to not be seen, to stop the pain or at least to stop people from hurting me again.  But even at my biggest weight things still hurt.  Both mentally and physically.  I guess it is a trick of the mind to think we can really heal ourselves by walling ourselves off from the world.

I think what kept me from eating myself into oblivion at that point was the support of a college professor who helped me become an advocate, to speak out about rape in a public forum. It gave me an outlet for my pain, a release other than food. So, for a while I maintained holding on tightly to the 15 extra pounds I gained in the beginning of the trauma.

But that put me into a category at 175 where I was told I was “morbidly obese”.  I will not soon forget that day.  I hid in the back most of the time to not embarrass myself in the sea of skinny college girls. I was only taking that fitness class to check a box on a graduation requirement.  My professor who was weighing in himself at a good 500 pounds claimed HIS issue was “glandular” but took every chance to make sure any women in his class in any way over that recommended chart number would know it, that the whole room would know it.  I hated him.  I hated his stupid charts and his hypocrisy.  I hated that what I learned there was that men could be as fat as they wanted to be, but a woman needed to kill herself to be thin and attractive.  I hate that society reinforced that especially in my chosen field of television. 

I had a television professor who became a good friend and mentor, point out that I was gravitating toward the technical jobs and wanted me to explore the on-camera rolls more.  I remember saying, “Look at me. Do you ever see a news anchor that looks like me? No one will hire a fat woman as on-air talent.” Ironically, he was the one man who dissuaded me from believing that, despite it being true.  He pushed me to aim for whatever I wanted.  But sadly, I never paused to want the things I knew I couldn’t have.  The things my weight precluded me from having. My professor felt I had a voice that the world could benefit from hearing, but for me that would have to be one that came from behind the camera and not ever in front of it.

He eventually forced me, as part of the requisite for completing his class, to do an on-camera interview.  Afterward he told me how great I did.  He made me watch the tape back with him and told me I had talent. “I don’t know how you don’t see how good you are at this.  You are a natural.” I replied, “I don’t know how YOU don’t see how FAT I am.” In my eyes he was paid to say nice things to students and put them on a path, to encourage. 

I knew I did not have the self-esteem to be in front of a camera where the world would judge me. I was already obviously sick with food addiction and its mental fallout even at 160 pounds.  My issues with food were an illness at 160 as much as they were at 300.  There would just be more shit to wade through at the higher numbers and it would be harder to reverse course the more dug into the mud I got.

I continued to pursue my career from the backside of the lens. But as the photographic evidence would show, trying to follow my dreams outside my small-town TV station would prove disastrous.

At the time the weight really started to pack on, I had moved from my small town in PA to Los Angeles like a crazy person with nothing but my car and a luggage in the back seat. My career was floundering. Jym’s family and friends had rejected me. I miscarried a baby.  Eventually I did the only thing my soul could bare.   I ran home to what I thought would be the welcoming arms of my own family and friends.  On the drive there, in a final insult, the brakes failed on my car outside of Las Vegas totaling it.  I finished the drive in a rental car the rest of the way to PA but when I arrived, I was far from welcomed.

In an argument with my brother at one point he summed up what everyone else was thinking, “I hate you and I wish you had never come home.” Ironically, I felt the same way. I hated myself and I wished daily I had died in that wreck outside of Vegas.

Sometimes I guess you have to go home to realize that you can never go home again.  I had burned through my savings, had no job, no car. Abandoned by my so-called friends, merely tolerated by my family I was lost, an absolute failure. My life was in ruin. I was living in my mother’s basement. If there was a of photo representation of failure it would be me at that moment in my life.  But there is not one photo of me that even exists during that time.  I was apparently not wasting film on my misery. So it is a stark contrast to view the photos before my move home and those that came much later after the damage was done.

I had taken a part-time seasonal minimum wage job as Santa’s elf at the mall photo booth at the generosity and pity of one of the few friends I had left.  I sat outside one night after my shift.  A small child saw me and said, “Look mommy.  Its Santa’s Elf! I wonder if she’s waiting for the sleigh.” I am not sure there was a lower point for me than that day. I sat there sobbing on a bench in the darkness of night waiting for my mom in her robe and rollers to pull up in her station wagon and pick me up like I was 13. 

That year was one absolute failure after another. Eventually I would accept a job in FL and move again to seek a better life out of sheer and absolute desperation, but the damage was already done and would continue even past my move.  CA had broken me and when shattered on the ground PA kicked me and finished the job.  

I internalized so much of what happened to me that year and I fed it.  I started ballooning up at a rapid pace even when I was still in PA and it continued with my move.  I put food on the anxiety and the fear of failing again. I sustained myself on junk foods and sugar.  I had no stability in my life, no purpose other than daily survival.    

As the roller coaster of life would have it, there was a gradual upswing that eventually occurred as I found a perfect job to replace the horrible one I had moved here for.  I had a brief reprieve and felt like things were going to get on track. I knew my weight was an issue then, but I never really had time to gain much stability and focus on it.  I would lose my job to total company shutdowns twice in 5 years.

Again, my life was in chaos without so much as a solid breather. I look to my career as a marker of how well I am doing in my life and for me those dark years of constant lay offs and moves left me feeling afraid and without purpose. 

In addition, during the time I spent between jobs, I contracted a viral bronchitis that almost killed me.  I was in and out of hospitals for months, my lungs never fully recovering.  Having no insurance my medical bills mounted and I ended up filing bankruptcy.  My life was in upheaval for the 2^nd time in 5 years and I was collapsing emotionally and physically. 

Although I did get a job eventually in my career field again, it lacked, for me, the comradery of my previous employer. I felt very alone there.  But it paid my bills.  My hours were super early morning and as a result I fell into the habit of eating fast food.  Glorious cheap, fast and easy food.

On top of my poor eating habits, as a super-sized curvy girl I did not fit in at all in the sports television world.  It took a lot of years of adapting and learning how to find myself.  I spent over 20 years there.  It is where I eventually began my weight loss journey that resulted in an eventual 100-pound weight loss.  The photo comparisons are remarkable.  I was finally on track to reach my self-imposed goal of 165 after over 20 years of yoyo diets and desperation. I know that goal was still considered obese, but I wanted to get to that point and then go from there.  I knew I would be happy if I could at least get back to the weight I was when I met my husband.

But my weight loss hit a plateau that I could not seem to break. I languished for years stuck and shy of my goal. Then in 2017 my father died.  I put on 10 pounds almost immediately and the horrible backslide began.  But just like CA started my downfall and PA finished it, so too had my father’s death started what the pandemic would finish.  I lost my job of 21 years in December of 2020 and my march to another 20-pound weight gain would be steady and harsh. My life for the last year, as a result has been a constant battle with my food addiction and depression.  Hand in hand they walk me to my demise. I feel it.  I do nothing about it.  I have given all of it control over me.   

But sitting here amongst these photos I see the pattern now.  Every time I gained significant weight in my past it has been when I have lost everything.  In times of trial and test I always allow myself to retreat to the safety of the one thing that has never let me down, the one thing that has never abandoned me.  Food.  But I do recognize that food has a false allure. It is my drug. It comforts while secretly stealing my future. It wraps me in its warm blanket of tentacles and it works with its best friend depression side by side to double its efforts to keep me trapped.  

I am back to the place where I dread any photos with me in them.  I don’t want to even look in the mirror. I need to draw my line in the sand before I erase myself from my own future.