Food Battles

 I didn't have the best childhood growing up. Many, many have had it worse, and I'm not trying to place blame...but a lot of my food issues can be directly traced to my parents, specifically my mother.

My mother was obsessed with control. She had to control every situation, whether it be social, business, child-rearing, whatever it was she felt that it had to be her way or the highway. She wanted to both control what I ate and what I didn't. 

Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if she were not such a horrible, terrible cook. Her idea of a healthy veg with dinner was either a salad consisting of iceberg lettuce, a little onion and some hothouse tomatoes, or taking a cauliflower and boiling it and putting it on a plate so it looked like our side dish was a human brain, or a can of asparagus boiled so much that it was a pile of green, nasty-tasting mush. She absolutely did not know how to season a meal. 

The control issues would emerge when I would refuse to eat the nasty veg. It became a battle of will between us. She would make me sit at the dinner table until I finished every last bit of my meal. A few times until midnight, in fact, when she'd finally give up and send me to bed. She would get so angry that I would dare defy her that it was sometimes downright scary. The older I got, the more I was able to defy her because I developed a thicker skin and her attempts at emotional manipulation became more obvious and easier to ignore. 

On the flip side, she'd use the food, or the denial of it, as punishment for misbehavior. I'm sure almost every parent has done the "no dessert for you" routine, but she would take it a step further. She'd take my dessert away and give it to my little brother who would eat it with gusto in front of me, smacking his lips and smiling smugly at me. 

When I went through puberty, I gained a little weight. That became the next battleground. Looking back, I realize her obsession with my weight had exactly zero to do with my health and more to do with her worry of what the neighbors would think of a woman who had a "chubby" son. I know this to be true because of the comments she made about my older sister's weight behind my sister's back. My mother was obsessed with what other people thought of her, obsessed with her perceived "social position." 

She grew up somewhat affluent. Either upper middle class, or lower upper class depending on your economic definitions. She always felt she married "down" because my father was unable to provide her the lifestyle she grew up with. This was a constant point of friction between them, by the way. 

So food and body shame became entwined in my mind. Somehow I'd begun to think that since my mother didn't love me very much (or, even, like me at all) that it was connected to how I looked. It compounded over the years until I was sure no woman would ever want me. In my deepest, darkest soul I was convinced that I wasn't worthy of love and that I'd spend my life alone.(There were other issues contributing to my feeling like that that I shan't get into in this blog.) 

I'd sneak food. I'd sneak candy. I'd find a way to get the things she denied me because I was so convinced that her treatment of me was monumentally unfair. I convinced myself that every time I ate something she had prohibited I was winning some sort of moral victory. 

The battle of wills continued apace: I was prohibited from going to the kitchen after 7:00pm because they didn't want me to raid the fridge.They would buy sweets and junk food for my siblings and literally lock it up. They would put it in a dedicated cabinet and then put a chain through the handles and padlock it. 

Little did they know that it would give me a life-long fascination with picking locks, something I can still do to this day! Every time they upped the ante, I'd find a way around or through it. At times it was more about the battle, more about winning than what I was putting in my mouth. 

"Getting away with it" became the goal. 

Years later, that emotional programming hadn't been erased. I knew I should be eating the way I was. I figured out a while ago that I'd had hundreds of what I call "10,000 Calorie Days" in my life. Donuts for breakfast, McD's for lunch, and whatever the fuck I wanted for dinner along with a dessert or three. If I was training for the Olympics that might be one thing. But most of my jobs have been desk jobs, and we all know how that turned out. I kept putting on more and more and more weight. 

The end result emotionally is that I tend to "eat my feelings" and it created a vicious cycle. I would feel bad about myself, so I'd eat fast food. That would make me feel worse about myself and so...I'd eat fast food. 

Only lately have I been able to break that cycle. More next time!