Mother Drove Me Crazy and I Returned the Favor, or Notes From A Back Seat Driver

I sat right inside the door, facing the mahogany desk, waiting nervously for the doctor’s arrival. Mother sat beside me with her checkbook, willing to pay any price to make her not so pleasingly plump12-year-old daughter popular. The doctor came into the room with a great flourish, surrounded by a visible cloud of his own importance. Without a glance in my direction, he ran his rough hand over my forehead as he passed by, and inquired in a loud voice, “Do you want to get rid of those?” Caught off guard, I sat speechless. My mind raced and I stumbled out a tiny, “I guess”. Mother had told me I was fat, but I was unaware that the few tiny pimples on my face were problematic. Mother spoke first, explaining the trials and tribulations her ugly ducking was going through. He listened professionally for a few minutes, and then sent me to be weighed and classified by his nurse. I can only imagine the conversation inside the room while I was gone “… hasn’t started her monthly flow…teased by other children…sneaks food…I’ve done everything I can”. They looked at me knowingly when I returned. The doctor gave me a little tri fold paper with a meal plan and lists of food. He had crossed out the 1000 calories a day and written 2000 in a big bold hand. Soon we were out the door and into the car that would take us on the 100-mile trip from Louisville to our home in rural Kentucky, and the start of my first ever weight loss diet.

Mom was very helpful, delighted to be in charge of my progress. She made boiled eggs, dry fat free hamburger patties, and a lot of green peas, plus kept the fridge stocked with canned pineapple, carrot sticks, and cottage cheese, all her favorite diet items. I desperately wanted my Mother to be proud of me, and I ate every morsel, stopped snacking except for sugar free gelatin, and watched while everyone else ate the hot biscuits, dripping with butter, plus cakes, candy, and ice cream. From the beginning of the summer till the time school started I had lost 40 pounds, down to a fairly trim 143 on a 5’6” frame. I started my menstrual periods traumatically on the first day of marching band camp before 8th grade. I was afraid to tell my mom, thinking I had injured myself with my investigations in that area. My older sister let her know, and gradually over the next few days told me what had happened. Mom seemed angry, told me nothing, but gave me a washcloth to clean up, and a hospital size pad. I marched in the August sun for 4 hours that morning still believing I had injured myself and the awful cramps I was having were punishment.

For the first time ever I enjoyed shopping for clothes for the upcoming school year. No more chubby section! I wore my favorite new dress on the first day, light blue with a full skirt and a belt around my much smaller waist. I felt shy walking the gauntlet of prepubescent males that lined the hall out side of the classroom. I had fantasized that moment all summer long, how they would suddenly see that I was a beautiful and desirable girl, perhaps even whistle or gasp at my new look. The boldest of them did notice. He announced in a loud voice, “Here comes the cow!” They all rocked with laughter, and I felt hot tears on my red cheeks. I ignored them and took my seat, reigning in my emotions for the day. At home after school I cried for hours on my bed, something I was to repeat many afternoons that year as I continued to be teased. I was determined that I was just not thin enough so I worked very hard on my diet all through the holidays. It was difficult with all the wonderful cakes, pies, and candy, not to mention the huge meals mother made around Christmas. My brother had married while he was in the Navy and arrived home with his bride before the school year was over. Mom was distracted from my diet, as she considered it a task accomplished and checked me off her list. A year later when the first grandchild arrived, I disappeared from her radar entirely. I continued to lose, but yo-yoed up and down through high school in a pattern that I would repeat for my entire life.

Right before I entered ninth grade the school band had an opportunity to travel to Washington DC, then on to New York City to march in a parade. I had come to terms with my awful eight-grade year, and had even begun to catch the eye of a boy I liked a lot. Mickey was a little plump, in that adolescent way of 13 year olds, but our families were friends, and he was more sensitive to my feelings than anyone else in the class. We shared books with our desks slid next to each other, me waiting patiently for him to catch up. He came by my house that summer on his bicycle several times, not saying much, but acting shy and pawing the ground in a cute puppy way that let me know something was up. I looked forward to our trip together to New York, and we had agreed to sit near each other on the bus. My mother walked into the living room two days before the trip, while I was stretched out reading on the floor. “Mickey Casebier was just killed riding his bike downtown”, she blurted out. The room started to spin and the sun went dark. I screamed “No, No”, and burst into tears. Mom seemed surprised at my reaction. She insisted I see the body. Two days later she pushed me with a hand on my back up the aisle of the funeral home to the casket. I could only glance quickly at the still silent corpse of my friend before I turned and retreated rapidly to the door. Neither I, nor any of his classmates could go to the funeral, because the bus left that next morning for Washington.

The next week I sat quietly in the dark of Radio City Music Hall watching The Nun’s Story staring Aubrey Hepburn. A man came and sat on right down beside me, although there were plenty of other seats. After a few minutes he started sliding his hand over onto my skirt. I froze in terror, but did nothing. He continued to work his hand ever so slowly up under my skirt to the bare skin of my leg. I made some feeble efforts to stop him, but he continued to move his hands gently and persistently up my leg. I held tightly on the outside of my skirt to protect the target I knew he was headed for. I was confused, frightened, and in a bizarre way, excited. My only point of reference with this strange tingle of stimulation was how I felt around Mickey. I was a total innocent, not even warned by my mother about bad men who might hurt me, and having no idea what men and women did together. He persisted for what seemed like an hour, me pushing him back, and him slowly staring up again. Finally I stopped him decisively by tucking my skirt and double layer of ruffled slip entirely under me and put his hand squarely back in his own lap. He finally gave up and left, moving on through the theater to prey on another girl. Although he touched nothing more than the inside of my thigh, I felt violated, yet desperately confused by my reaction. I could not understand why I did not scream, or tell the management, or stop him immediately.

I could not tell my friends or even my older sister who was on the trip with me. The next day while visiting the United Nations building, I passed out and was taken to the infirmary by a guard. The nurse was kind, and knew something was wrong, but I could not tell the awful truth. I was a bad and wicked girl who had let a strange man put his hand under my dress. I envisioned the shame I would feel if my parents found out, if my friends knew. I kept quiet, just like the sexual predator hoped. For years he was a dark shape in my nightmares. I tried to tell my mother once, 20 years later, after I had some therapy during which I dreamed I literally dug Mickey’s body up out of a flowerbed in my front yard. I started with saying that one of the worst things that ever happened to me was when Mickey died. She began a lecture about there being a lot worst things than death, and I sensed she did not want to hear that some of those worse things had happened to me. I still think that if I had told her the truth about the incident and my conflicted feelings, she would have wished I had died in Mickey’s place.

I acted out my frustration in high school by alternately embracing both God and the Devil, but neither of them hugged me back. My sister headed off for college and Mother and Dad’s new business required increasing amounts of time. I took over the housekeeping for my Mom and made the family meal during the week. Mom was very critical of my attempts, telling me I put too much or too little seasoning on things, or that I should have made different vegetables. I never finished the washing up fast enough or did the other work to suit her. I made good grades in much harder subjects than my brother and sister had taken, but Mother told everyone who would listen that I never applied myself. I was also involved in Girl Scouts, and earned an award similar to Eagle Scout. I was very active in the church and had received honors for a religion organization in which I participated. For my work I earned two weeks at a Baptist camp the summer after 9th grade. Ironically it was there I had my first kiss while walking with a future minister 5 years my elder. When I arrived home I announced that I was going to be a missionary, which got me 15 minutes in the family spotlight.

I was at the fairgrounds at a band competition in the summer of 61 when I met a nice looking boy a year older than myself. He was from a neighboring town and had never seen me fat, and he asked me out. He was a high school drop out, the poor son of a coal miner and my parents were disappointed in my choice. We dated for 10 months and I convinced myself that it was love. He seemed very interested in the parts of my body my Mother told me not to touch, but since it never occurred to her to tell me not to let boys touch them either, I began to let him. I held out for a long time against his increasingly insistent onslaught, while he kept telling me if I loved him, I wouldn’t stop him. I lost my virginity at age 16 in the front seat of his 57 Chevy right after a Christmas band concert. I regretted it almost immediately and got no pleasure out of his speedy back seat performances. Since I was very naive about sex, he soon became bored and began hitting on my friends. He also bragged to his friends about his conquest and I had to lie when my sister heard and confronted me. My periods were never regular, so when a condom broke one night and I didn’t start for over a month, I thought I might be pregnant. When I told him, he broke up with me, joined the army, and left town. I resolved never to have sex again as long as I lived, no matter what any man told me, and I hid yet another guilty secret, one I have kept until this day. I remember when my mother told me that he had been killed in an accident in an army jeep, about 5 years later. My first reaction should have been sorrow, but what came to my mind was that at least he would never tell anyone else.

I flirted with anorexia and was down to a trim 130 when I headed off to a religious orientated college two weeks after high school graduation. I really wasn’t as interested in jump starting my education as I was getting away from my family and the bad memories. Accustomed to being ignored in a small town, I suddenly found myself in a whirl of proposals from eligible young men, some proclaiming to be God’s chosen and some leaning more in the other direction, but all with the same lust in their heart. I quit eating altogether except for ginger ale and oatmeal bars from the snack machine. It gave me little strength for fighting off backseat wrestling matches that I was engaged in almost every night. I began to mature sexually and I would often wake from sleep with the orgasm that I had denied myself during these trysts. The internal struggle I felt was horrible, and the guilt I took on when I finally gave in to one boy was overwhelming. When we broke up, I moved on to a few others. It seems I had found something I liked more than food and had even less control over.

When I went home for break before regular term I was gaunt, but with waist length hair, a beautiful face, and great legs, no one really noticed except my mother. On my visit she cooked up a storm, bought ice cream, and complained that my skirts were too short and my hair too long. I was able to resist her temptations, drunk as I was with the power of anorexia and youth. That September I attracted the eye of a tall, thin, seemingly brilliant young man in my Sociology class. He shyly asked me out and I accepted. Unlike all the other horny boys I had been dating, he told me how smart and talented I was, so different from the other girls. We spent the evening talking, and he gave me a brotherly kiss as he deposited me at my dorm. He was a poor boy from the big city and I was a little country lamb walking willingly to the slaughter. He was everything I was not, glib, argumentative, worldly, egotistical, agnostic, and disrespectful. I started smoking to fit in with his crowd and defy the school ban on women using tobacco. I became politically aware, and intellectually awakened, joining my generation in the movement for a more open society. When Kennedy was killed I called my parents and told them that I was going to go to DC for the funeral and stay with my new friend’s parents. It must have been a shock to them, their daughter and a boy they didn’t know, plus me wanting to go to the funeral of a Catholic president they had hated. They told me to come home immediately, so I brought John along for Thanksgiving holiday. The explosion when I introduced him to my parents as my fiancée was earth shaking. I finally had their attention.

Mother asked me if I was pregnant, but I wasn’t even having sex with him at the time. Mother threatened that I would not get a penny from her if I married him. We tried for a year to get their permission, but new conditions kept being put in our way. When they tried to get me committed to an asylum, we went to DC and got married in his church. I wrote Mom and Dad a letter to tell them they had a son in law. I was only 19, but I quit school and went to work, supporting us while he attended college and then graduate school. I began to gain weight on a diet of the cheap starchy food we could afford. After two years I had figured out that the reason he had not been aggressive when we met is that he had very little interest in sex, or at least with me. Our sex life, never stellar, became non-existent.

I first noticed he was flirting with other women when he started his teaching job at a university in Richmond. Sometimes I flirted too, right in front of him, trying to make him jealous, but it never had the effect I was going for. At the end of every school year he told me he was unhappy, and we moved to a new job and a new city. I packed without complaining, but even with my newly discovered bulimia, my weight gradually crept up till I was at about 160. On a vacation to California he started actively trying to sow the wild oats he said his early marriage had denied him. Shortly after we arrived in New York City for another new start, I began to have symptoms of some type of illness. When I went to the doctor he told me I was a perfectly normal healthy pregnant woman, about 4 months along. When I told my husband he asked me if it was too late for an abortion. We had been married 4 years and abortion was illegal all across the US. From the moment those words came out of his mouth, our marriage was finished. I focused in on the baby, ate exactly what the doctor told me to, and only gained 5 pounds during the entire pregnancy. After the c-section, and a 10-pound baby, my first walk was to the scales at the end of the hall in the hospital. I weighted 142 pounds.

My husband was as miserable as I was delighted with the new baby. He told me the world was overpopulated, that I should be working so we could afford a better life style, and that I was ignoring our dog. As soon as was possible, we moved back to Richmond for another new school assignment, this time with community colleges. He became increasingly distant. He told me he had married too young, he wasn’t ready to settle down, he had never had the opportunity to meet other girls, that the baby was cramping his style, and he had never really been attracted to me sexually. He began to hang out in a local pub, known for easy hook ups in those days. Things moved from bad to worse as he became abusive, brought home drunken men and women to our house at all hours, and told me to keep the now crawling baby out of his things. I began to binge and purge more frequently, desperate to get control of some part of my life. As I became thinner and more desperate, his friends began to come on to me. I swallowed all my pride and called my mother. I told her she had been right and begged her for help. After a journey home, she was satisfied that I was contrite, and she allowed me to stay in Richmond with an allowance she would supply for a few years. I found an apartment, a roommate, and eventually went back to college. Support from my ex dried up within a few months, but his parents continued to give me a few dollars from time to time. I vacillated between bulimia and anorexia for several years, dated a lot of men, and finally almost by accident, found a kind, loving, personable, man whom I eventually married.

We hit it off right away, but were both terrified of commitment. His mother had died of cancer when he was 19, and his brother had committed suicide the next year. His father, a minister, did not look well to his own household, so my man-child had turned to a beloved uncle for support. That uncle, a functional alcoholic, drank himself to death a few years later. The girl he turned to in his lost desperation turned out to be a lesbian, and their marriage lasted only six months. My love had beautiful, soulful, brown eyes, looked good in his clothes, had a steady professional job, and was kind to my baby boy. Coming from a teetotaling family I had no experience with liquor and overlooked the fact that he was also a functional alcoholic. We married in March of 74, two years after we met, this time with the approval of my parents. I soon found that the preacher’s son came with his own set of problems, some of which seemed familiar. We were both passive aggressive and had diametrically opposed positions on how to handle money. We each went to our own corners after disagreements, him with a bottle of rum and me with a gallon of ice cream. We gradually arrived at a silent contract. He would not say anything about my eating and I would likewise enable his drinking.

We both had agreed that we wanted children before the marriage so I was surprised that my new husband was also commitment phobic about babies. I was 28 and he was 31 and I felt the tick of my biological clock, but he was worried about financial security. I had finished college right before we married and had a good paying job. I worked the first year, banking all of my paycheck, and spending nothing on myself. We were able to buy a house in the suburbs with the profit from the sale of his house, the savings, and a check from my parents. In a year’s time we had paid off the small mortgage and owned the house free and clear. He halfheartedly said we could start trying. We fell into a pattern. After a full day’s work outside the home, I made dinner, washed up, made sure everyone was ready for the next day, and fell gratefully into bed, eager for marital intimacy. No matter how persistent I was, he usually had an excuse. Sex became a monthly chore, something he had to do when I was ovulating. I began to think there was something wrong with me; that I had some sort of sexual dysfunction like my first husband had told me. I do know our appetites were definitely not matched. I jealously listened to other women complain about their overly amorous husbands. I decided I could deal with it, redoubled my efforts to seduce him, but still, gradually began gaining more weight.

When I did finally get pregnant, the baby was lodged in my right fallopian tube. The day after Thanksgiving in 1976 the tube ruptured and I was rushed to the hospital. The doctor removed the tube and told me I would have little chance of a successful pregnancy, as these thing tended to repeat. Two years later I had a healthy baby boy. Even though I only gained 12 pounds with the pregnancy, I weighed 203 on the day before I delivered. My husband was delighted with the baby, and jumped enthusiastically into fatherhood. He insisted we try for another as soon as possible, so 28 months later we had a baby girl. I adored the children, but I was a bit besieged. My baby boy cried most of the day and night, and seemed comfortless till his father came home. I had quit my job just weeks before he was born. It was the dark of winter and I had few resources in the neighborhood. I did have my old friend, food, but since I was nursing, did not gain too much. Busy with the children I became less demanding about sex and found that my husband could go 6 months or more without approaching me. While I ate away my disappointment, frustration, and exhaustion, my husband drank steadily night after night. Even though he was so happy about the baby, the responsibility seemed to overwhelm him. He stopped going out with friends to drink when he had been arrested for a DUI on New Year’s night in 1980. Instead of coming to terms with the problem, I continued to enable him and cover up the fact that he was passed out drunk 7 nights a week, often urinating on the furniture in his stupor. I avoided close relationships with other couples and girl friends to keep anyone from seeing through the juggling act I was doing.

My youngest son started kindergarten in the fall of 82 and a neighbor watched my daughter, so I could go back to college part time. I finished a second degree in information systems and went to work as a COBOL programmer in 1984. Keeping up with family and classes, my life was stressful, but nothing compared to my first computer job after I finished the degree. I had been very successful in my courses and had been hired by a top company. Things went well till I was asked to transfer to another department. In my new position I was expected to work 10-hour days, be on call nights and weekends, and hobnob after hours with my coworkers. None of them had children, and they favored late nights in bars plus the car races on the weekends. I sensed the office politics were not working for me, but I was just too busy to pay attention. One morning I got out of bed unable to walk without extreme pain. I had also developed a few red swellings on my knuckles that I thought were mosquito bites. A doctor diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis and started me on a course of treatment that caused me to lose half my hair, but did nothing for the pain and joint problems. Unable to keep up with my job, I turned in my resignation and crawled home in defeat.

I moped about the house eating for a while, till my daughter asked me to be room mother for her kindergarten class. I began a new phase of my life, volunteering. I was a Cub Scout, Webelo, and Brownie and Girl Scout leader. I taught Sunday School and bible school, and cooked for all the church suppers, school events, and bake sales. I was chaperone for band and orchestra competitions, class trips, and field days. I made a little money placing students for a foreign exchange program. I was asked to coach Odyssey of the Mind and I threw myself into it with my whole heart. When my oldest started college, I started substitute teaching to have a bit of extra cash. This eventually led to a full time job as a teacher’s aide for special needs students. Meanwhile, unhappy with the course of treatment I was on for the arthritis, I consulted another doctor. He told me I had fibromyalgia and put me on anti-depressants when I admitted I felt suicidal at times. I took Prozac for several years till I came to terms with the reasons for my depression, a combination of my life situation and the beginnings of menopause. When my middle son began to have some problems of his own, I sought help for him, which led to family counseling. Because of some words from the counselor, my husband quit drinking altogether for several years, but before I had time to adjust to his sober state, he had gradually started having “just a few” from time to time. I’m not sure how long he drank in secret before I began to really notice.

All though these years we continued to spend every family vacation traveling to my parent’s house in Kentucky. Mom expressed her concern about my weight, but kept up her old patterns, trying to be the one in control of my eating. She offered to pay for any program I would enroll in to lose, and she took me shopping for new clothes when I came home having lost a few pounds. She insisted, however, that I get them several sizes too large, on the presumption that I would grow into them. When we went out to eat she would try to get me to order dessert. If I would not, she ordered some for herself, took one bite, and then pushed it across the table for me. I did go for counseling and hypnosis, plus group programs like TOPS and Weight Watchers, and I tried a new woman’s gym in my area. Each experience seemed flawed in some way. The counselor told me he could not help me anymore unless I was willing to confront my mother. I awoke from the hypnosis and left the room when the tape playing in my ear told me some foods were poison and I would die if I ate them. The TOPS group disbanded, and overeaters anonymous turned out to be a group of extremely judgmental people that belonged to my church. The woman at the gym insisted on me keeping a food diary and pronounced my 600 calories a day intake, “eating like a pig”. I did lose (and gain) a lot of weight during that time, mostly by starving, then binging and purging. I finally sought help for the bulimia and found a great program that was very successful. I lost weight at first, but after the program ended, I could not keep on tract. I did stop the purging, but that meant I had no working diet plan and continued to yo-yo, each swing going wider and higher. .

I waddled along through life for a while, starting a new diet every Monday morning and sometimes making it till Tuesday or even Wednesday before falling off wagon. I was up to about 240 when my mother died of cancer in April of 1994. My grief was complete and genuine, but right after the funeral I began to realize that Mom’s power over me did not extend beyond the grave. I lost 35 pounds without really trying in the next few months. On a visit to Kentucky, I tried to talk to my father about the confusing weight problem, but came to the realization during our talk that he was the one who was pestering my mother to make me lose weight. He told me I had been a beautiful girl, but I had sure gotten over that. He made it very clear that my value to him was tied up in my appearance. I was startled, because this was the man from whom I had learned tolerance for all people, regardless of race, creed, or religion. I went back to my old comfort, my drug of choice, for solace. I gained at a steady pace up to past 300 pounds. I’m not certain, because I avoided the scales. My daughter wanted to be vegetarian, and since I had been one when I met her Dad, I decided to try that path again, but it had no effect on my weight. Christmas of 1999 a friend of my daughters took some pictures of me and ran off copies within a week’s time. The reality of what I looked like hit me with the force of a sledgehammer when I saw those prints.

I read Oprah’s book called Making the Connection, and unlike other things that went in one ear and out the other, I got the message. I started walking, and later joined a gym and began to lose the pounds. I started on the fat flush diet my daughter had heard about from a doctor at Johns Hopkins. It was rigid, but sound nutritionally, and I soon found I was able to stay on it. I lost 100 pounds, down to 200, and was able to be in my beautiful daughter’s wedding in 2004, without being embarrassed. After the amazing build up to the wedding, the let down of her leaving for her new home in England left me feeling abandoned. I had been exercising a lot with her, doing step and strong classes. One day, after an hour on the elliptical machine, my knee just went out on me entirely. A trip to the doctor confirmed that I had arthritis in my knee joints. I got a knee brace and tried to continue the exercise program, but even with the strong medication he recommended, it was just too painful. I tried the pool and a water aerobics program, but soon got disgusted by the slow pace and the annoying teacher. The price of the gym was excessive considering how little of the equipment I could use, so I dropped the membership.

I realized at Christmas of 2005 that I was on a runaway train again, with my weight climbing to about 230. I know what I am suppose to do to lose, but have come to the realization that as soon as I go off of any diet, the fat cells in my body beg for their fix again. I have stayed a vegetarian, but added fish to my diet. I am fond of saying that I have healthy organic fat, because I have never been addicted to junk food, don’t like fried things, and make fruits and vegetables the bulk of my diet. I normally eat in moderation, but tend to binge when I am emotionally distraught. I do not eat because of stress, because I actually enjoy having a lot going on around me. The grinding routine of days is what gets me down. I worry about my husband’s health, since he has become diabetic. He is still drinking steadily, and is often just emotionally unavailable, even though he is in the house. He had been unable to have sex for over 10 years, I’ve lost tract of how long, and it makes me very sad to think that part of my life is over. I am not looking for a magic solution and feel very disappointed with myself for not being able to solve this problem alone. I know a lot of my issues are self-inflicted, and I see the obvious solutions, but do not have the courage or the cruelty to do what is required for the fix. Like a cancer that has grown intertwined about my vital organs, it seems the removal of the unhealthy parts of my life would cut too deeply into what keeps me alive.

I am not ready to give up the struggle. My children want me to come and visit and I want to be able to sit comfortably in an airline seat. When I get to my destination, I want to be smartly dressed and be able to walk, climb steps, steep hills with out getting out of breath. Although I have a high pain threshold, I want to reduce the pain in my joints so I can sleep more comfortably at night and have no trouble getting in and out of chairs. I want my children to be as proud of my appearance as I am of theirs. If I am lucky enough to have grandchildren someday, I want to be first, alive, and second, able to play and have fun with them. In short, I’m too young to sit on the sidelines watching other people live. I want to join in the parade. My husband seems content to kill himself drinking, but after 32 years of marriage, I know I cannot fix his problems. On the plane to Seattle last year, with the seat belt cutting deeply into my stomach and thighs, I listened to the flight attendant tell everyone about safety features. In case of an emergency she said, first put on your own oxygen mask, and only then, try to help others around you. I realized then that I have been frantically fumbling to save everyone else as we plunge downward, ignoring my own desperate need. I am tired of feeling like I don’t deserve to live life fully. I am ready to do what ever it takes to survive.