Katy's Saga

I was a normal sized kid when I was 7. I was small and shy and cried easily. I was the youngest kid on the block, and the neighbor kids would try to blockade the way when I would get hurt playing on the tire swing or baseball, as they knew I would cannon ball out of the game and run screaming to my mom, and then the fun would be done, as the adults would get involved. My Mom was overweight and had one of the first gastric Bypass surgeries in about 1970, and had gotten down to a size 14, before she started to over-ride her surgery, by eating more and more and more. One of my memories from my childhood was the day that I downed 3 bowls of Cheerios in succession. I remember thinking, "Won't Mom be so proud of me." Eating that volume seemed an accomplishment. I could be like Mom. It could be something she and I could do together. Maybe, then, my sister wouldn't seem so important, and Mom would like me.

When I was 8, my ballet teacher, Nelda Honey, told me in class one day, "You are fat. Lose some weight." Apparently I ruined the aesthetic line of the serious ballet girls. My parents invested in a case of Shasta diet soda, and Aides diet candy... I was supposed to eat one of the chocolate candies with a drink of warm water prior to eating a meal. They told me that I could have a diet Shasta soda whenever I was hungry between meals. I liked the soda which had been a luxury previously, so I lost 30 pounds in just a few months, and got to some desired appropriate weight that might please my ballet teacher. The morning I achieved my goal, I smiled, knowing I could go to ballet and show Nelda all my success. When I got to class, Nelda was busy, and she had her stick in her hand that she used to keep time by pounding it on the floor during our exercises. When I got her attention, I blurted out, "Nelda, I lost the weight." She looked distractedly at me, and said with annoyance, "What?" I tried again... "Nelda, you told me to lose weight, and I lost weight." "Fine. Get back in line." She said, and as the music started she started pounding with her stick against the floor.

Mom and Dad held me as I sobbed after the lesson. They decided to honor my success, even if Nelda didn't care, so my father took me to JCPenney, to the upstairs children's department, and I found the most amazing polyester green print pant suit, and all agreed it was perfect for my coloring. I was excited to put my outfit on the sales counter, and when I did, I saw a very pretty light blue dress there, also. I got excited thinking maybe I would get two outfits. As Dad paid, he explained that the blue dress was on sale for $4.00, and it was just the right size for my sister, Laurel. Laurel hadn't gone hungry. Laurel hadn't been humiliated in ballet class. Laurel never had to worry about eating a chocolate candy and warm glass of water before a meal. It didn't seem fair.

I dieted again seriously when I was in 8th grade. There was an opportunity to get to know new people once I hit high school, and they didn't know me as the fat dufusy bookworm who had no friends. I could change my hair, change my body, and then hit the high school with my spunk and personality, and let people get to know the real me. So, I dieted with Weight Watchers along with my mom, and again lost the 40 or so pounds that I needed to get to an acceptable weight. I made my graduation deadline, but the kids who I had spent kindergarten through 8th grade with either didn't notice or weren't impressed, as my social standing in the group of 30 or so kids never upgraded. In fact, only one person agreed to come to my graduation party, as one of the other gals in my class planned her party for the same night and time, even though I had put my invitations out weeks before her.

When I went to Junior College, I was heavy again. I hadn't really planned to go to College, as that seemed my sister's plan, and I had long before decided to live my life in the exact opposition to my sister. That way, I could stand out, by being different. I never measured up to her successes as her younger sibling, so I just decided to do what she did not, and to find what I excelled at by looking at what she failed at. It wasn't a perfect system, but she had the being thin thing down, so I had to take the polar opposite route.

At any rate, as I helped friend one, two and three head off to exotic college locations, I started to regret my decision to be apathetic about education, and I enrolled at Sierra College. About half way through the year, as my sister was going through a downward spiral with her Bipolar disorder (which hadn't been diagnosed yet), my friends were inviting me to visit them at the cool dorms where they were having fun pizza gatherings, and spontaneous popcorn movie watching, and I was very much in love with the fun Kellie was having in Chico, so I started to set a goal to go to College there, for my Sophomore year, and again embraced the idea that my social life would improve if I were skinnier and people were meeting me for the first time. So Back to Weight Watchers with my Mom.

By this time, Mom was disenchanted with my sister, the bipolar teenage years made the two of them rather contentious. I was working all the time, and had a different schedule than my parents, as I worked at the Movie theater, and I started getting my meals at Burger King... the home of the pita salad. I would eat there twice a day, and have as much diet soda as I could drink, and by the time I headed off to Chico, I was 50 lbs. lighter, and ready to meet and impress Kellie's friends and make some new friends, and maybe get a boyfriend. Around this time I started to run. I found freedom in the running, and really saw results with it, so I had become a runner.

Chico was great, and I loved my independence. I ate salad bars and diet soda, from the dorm cafeteria, I ran on the track behind Kellie's dorms, and I started to be sweet on a boy or two who weren't completely adverse to my attention. I met my husband Brian in May, just right before he graduated. So, I kept my "in-shape" lifestyle, never getting too much lower than a size 14, but I was healthy and strong. When I completed my degree at Chico, I had started to drink water, instead of so much diet soda, and people asked me how I had lost the weight, but I didn't have a scale, so I just shrugged, and kept on a trucking. I was running 1/2 marathons and 10k races, and aside from a few sprained ankles and a broken foot, I was running strong.

I got married to Brian the summer after graduating from Chico, right before starting my student teaching at Sac State. Brian traveled a lot for work, and I ate those Healthy Choice meals, and it was all good and I felt strong and was still running. I got a job within weeks of finishing my student teaching, and started teaching 6th grade the following fall. That first year was hard and I just was pretty overwhelmed with how much work it was. I started eating the snack food in the teacher's room and work long hours to try to keep it up. It was very stressful, and with my husband changing jobs, I threw my energy towards that first hard year, and gained weight and stopped running very much.

I got pregnant and ballooned a bit. After having Sam, my first child, I worked hard to lose the weight in a year, as my Mom told me that I had 9 months to gain it and 9 months to lose it. So back to Weight Watchers and I lost the 60 or so pounds again. My mom started to have heart issues at this point... she weighed about 350, and after divorcing my dad, she had found love again, but her heart was just clogged, and I remember taking baby Sam to the hospital in the Bay Area in order to be with Mom while she had angioplasty and other heart re-habilitation treatments. I got pregnant with Molly, and 4 months into the pregnancy, the technician found a cyst on my ovary during a sonogram. Surgery for me, with all sorts of fear about the surgery being a life saving activity for me, and or the baby. While I was recovering from the surgery, my husband got hit by a semi truck while riding his bike. He injured his back and became somewhat useless in the care of our one year old, while I had an incision that was healing up on my belly, so I had to kind of get right back into the parenting swing while trying to take care of my family and not take care of my own healing so much. Mom had a triple bypass when Molly was just a newborn, so, each life event was compounded with lots of stress and eating comforted me.

I was a size 26 after Molly was born and Mom's operation. Work was hard, and I got a bad review from my principal. She wanted to control my burkinstock wearing and casual clothing choices. She chose to tell me a parent had written a letter anonymously to complain about some very personal choices and kind of attacked me as a human being, so I became overwhelmed by work. A new job opened up, and I grabbed it... I would be the PE teacher for a different school. I ran around with kids for 5 hours a day, believing that if I asked them to do it, I should do it as well. I dropped 70 or so pounds, and I loved my job of running around with kindergardeners through 6th graders.

One day, I remember that my Mom called me. She and my sister hadn't spoken for 7 years, so she liked me just fine now, but she was upset about a bump in her groin. The cancer was found, and diagnosed as terminal within a short time, and I decided that Brian and I would buy a house with my Mom and we could make quilts and cookies, and she would do child care for me, while I helped her go to Doctor appointments. Plans went awry, and as I started to get into this care giving mode, and I took a leave of absence from my teaching job, and became my mother's full time care giver, as well as a stay home mom. Mom was just a mess, depressed and hard to work with. I had to have my gall bladder out a few months after we moved into our house in Auburn, and after that, I started to have more weight gain. I was weighing about 190 when Mom died, and the year after her death, I took time off to try to regroup after her death.

I started my own business, a children's art school, and I worked long and hard to make the whole thing work... Again, snack food in the time of stress and long hours were a problem for me. I gained about 50 lbs. while running the art school, and was sitting at about 230 for the bulk of my time running the business. After 5 years, I kinda fell apart. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndome, and I had to kinda abandon my business, as I could not even get out of bed to take a shower on a regular basis. All I could do was get my kids to and from school, and cook dinner. I did that for about a year, and it was the kind of thing where I kept trying to eat something that would give me energy, but digesting was exhausting, so I would fall right asleep, and then when I woke up, I would try to eat something for the energy again. I became a 260 person. Then 270. I started to lose weight a bit after I started back to work about 5 years later, and I got down to 250 when I was working 50% at the high school across the street.

About that time, my father needed some support. He was getting new knees. I started flying out to Montana where he had gone to raise his new family. When I got to his cabin in the woods, I found a very dirty space. His wife wasn't so much into housekeeping, for like 12 years, so you might imagine the levels of filth that my father was living in. I dove in and cleaned to make his living space easier for him to maneuver in, and to kind of crack the whip on his kids and wife to get the clutter out of the way as he was going to live downstairs, and there wasn't a clear path to the bathroom. So, I busted chops with them, and since I didn't trust the well water that tasted funny, I started to drink soda again, so I could soldier through the challenge of trying to be there for my dad and stay friendly with the half brother and sister and the step mom.

After his second knee surgery, Dad developed a swallowing issue. The esophageal cancer took swift action on him, and he became rather debilitated quickly. When I got my full time job teaching functional skills, special education, which was a strong learning curve for me, Dad's wife called me on the third day of school. It was time. Dad was on a ventilator. I needed to come. Now. Dad's wife got all territorial, and not only did I lose my dad, I left Montana feeling utterly orphaned.

So, during this past year, my daughter developed anxiety, and my husband shared that he had some similar issues, and my son went off to college. Eating became again a comfort for me. Exercise was not a priority. So, as I topped the scales at 295 one day, with swollen ankles, and acid relex and lethargy setting in, I decided it was time. I always thought that my weight served a purpose... to keep me safe, to balance my life in some way, and so changing it, would require the unbalanced bit to be taken care of. My sister seemed to allude that her troubles were my troubles, and that I had blocked memories of abuse and molestation. Maybe I was fat for that reason.... But when my husband's anxiety came to our attention, many of the "problems" of low self esteem and co-dependance that I have struggled with in my life have been exacerbated by my husband's anxiety condition. That seemed to be the thing that I might have been balancing. With some of my own brain damage thrown in there.

I created this body. I can create something healthier. I can love myself enough to live well and eat healthy. I can look at how the food comforts me, and how my body responds to food, and I am trying to add little 20 minute power naps to my day so that I can rest when I am over taxed. I have encouraged Husband and daughter to take ownership of their anxiety, and they are supported with classes and medication for the last few weeks now. So, there is less stress in my home. Heck, my sister even got back in touch with me last week. She had set me down about 6 years ago. When she decided I was not healthy for her to be around. We are facebooking, and tentatively saying hello to each other.

Diana has been my friend since the children's art school days... and our kids were in pre-school together. She loves to entertain, so I am frequently the recipient of her cooking labors, and she is the kind of charitable human who sees when I am overwhelmed and will just bring over nurturing food for my whole family. She loves to talk and has kind of an evil and obscure humor. She gets me. She loves me. She has been kind to me. When she had health issues, I supported her. She loves my art and my jewelry, and my sense of humor. I love her red hair and her bawdy humor and her zest for life. She has a different mojo than myself, but she grows and learns and has a good sense of humor. I think that we can support each other as we strive to make these changes in our lives and our bodies.