CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Diary of a Sad, Lonely, Fat, Love-Sick Teen
Late last year, I posted a few relatively comical pages out of my diary to Facebook. They were stories of a witty, love-sick teen with a strong sense of self worth and determination to win the boy of her dreams with her glowing personality. Some of the entries were so funny - my self talk SO strong and riddled with sarcasm and irony that I contacted the hosts of a comedy outfit called “Get Mortified” to see if I would be able to share them on stage. It was going well at first - I even contacted an old friend and told him about a friendly entry I had written about him and asked if I may post it. He excitedly replied, “YESSSS - it will make her so happy - maybe I will get laid.” That was until it was misinterpreted as inappropriate and I was accused of having an affair with him based on something I wrote over 30 years ago while I was living 3000 miles away. When she had this melt down on me, I felt so terrible, as it was supposed to be a compliment to her and my intent was 100% positive. I realized in that moment that perception is reality and deleted the posts. However, I wrote the following message, but I never published it out of fear for how it would be interpreted in my current state.
The Reason behind the diary posts...
“To my friends and family who have been enjoying, relating to, and commenting on my teenage diary... thank you very very much for sharing your reactions.... Now, it's time to explain why I had the diary out in the first place and the real reason why I am posting these publicly without a pseudonym. It's no coincidence that I found the diary the week that suicide was on everyone's mind after losing two celebrities and most likely thousands of people across the globe. Now, people are posting all sorts of awareness campaigns about suicide, but what we are failing to do is look on the inside. Do we ask ourselves, have I ever been suicidal? If so, how did I get through it? Would anyone think I am suicidal? Do I hide my pain and sadness well enough that it would be a shock if I just took a few pills and ended it?This post isn’t about Anthony Bourdain or Kate Spade.... it’s about me, and it’s about you. It’s about why we are seeing so much sadness and depression in the world today, and why we are surprised when we lose a loved one to suicide. It’s because we don’t seem to know it’s ok to be sad and ask for help. It’s ok to tell someone you love them and not hear it back. It’s ok to cry in the movie theater or on the street in front of a total stranger and be afraid. It’s ok to not have the perfect life.... to be off balance here or there, knowing that everyone is flawed. It’s OK to be ill and seek medical help for something you cannot control.
I have terrible days. I have insecurities. I have major flaws and days when I wonder how I am going to make it down the stairs. Last week, I cried at least 17 times over old things, new things, happy moments, and sad memories. I have doubted myself at least once a day and did whatever it was anyway, because the only failure in life is failing to try. I wonder why we don’t remember, simply, that we are all human, none of us with a user manual, all trying to simply figure this out. But today, I am asking you, if you follow me for some reason to stop today and think about it for one minute. Who needs you? Who do you need? Who do you love? Do they know you’re there? Do they know they are important to you? Do they have risks or signs of depression that they just can’t seem to get under “control?”
Don’t wait to lose someone wondering if you had just been kind, or vulnerable or generous or funny or sweet in the perfect moment what you’re capable of changing with that energy. If you don’t know how someone feels about you, don’t ask. Just tell them how you feel and know that it’s ok to not hear it back. When it comes to love, much like gifts, sometimes it is better to give than to receive and simply know you may have impacted them in a way they just can’t share.
The pieces of my diary I am sharing are the humorous ones that got me through all the other pages (and there are many) where I was a sad sad girl who was starved for love, attention, acceptance, and kindness. Despite many things to be thankful for, I had a very tough time. I was fat. I was a nerd. I was a terrible athlete. I had a unibrow. I had extreme embarrassing moments that I barely survived. I was bullied, teased, betrayed by people I trusted, abused, and subjected to things you should not witness as a child. I had a broken family. I hated my relationship with both my fathers. We were poor. I had all the same challenges many of you have and many of your kids or parents or friends are having now.
But, there is one thing I have that maybe not everyone else does. I have this diary that proves I could have ended my life at 12 or 14 because of how I felt then and I would have missed out on all of the amazing things I have experienced in the last 30 years and hopefully 50+ to come. There is no single moment or string of bad moments in our lives that are worth ending it all. But those who can't see that for themselves need each of us to be kind and not assume everything is OK because we are the class clown or the stand up comic or the world traveler or the successful business man/woman.
We are all still human and we all still crave love and acceptance and kindness and can fall victim to mental health struggles that maybe we cannot handle on our own. So, tell someone you love them today. Tell them you can't imagine life without them and make sure you don't assume a happy person isn't struggling just as much as you are. Tell them how to get help if you cannot help them.”
Memories resurfaced from the diary....
I am really disappointed in myself for not posting that somewhere when I wrote it. It was genuine and timely and something I needed to share as I was about to move to London on my own. Everyone kept telling me how brave I was, how great my life is, how inspiring I am… It was very flattering to hear people use the word “brave” but then I started spiraling mentally like, BRAVE? Brave? Brave means that I am willingly facing something to be afraid of - what am I going in to that I should be afraid of? I saw the move to London as a possibility for a new beginning, because in reality, I was in a somewhat sad place personally, very lonely, stagnant in my job, and thought maybe making a move would help me find a new purpose and set me up for what I really wanted to do with my career when I can retire - be a traveling photographer and blogger. I will tell that whole story in a future blog!
I recall today as I am writing this that reading the diary reminded me of some really disturbing memories. Many, I had some what pushed to the back of my mind consciously, but one truly clicked for me when I read about it why I am so self conscious about my body and my weight no matter how fit I get in my crazy up and down cycle. I was probably about 10 years old when this happened, but as I recall the moment with my eyes closed, I can picture it like it was yesterday. My father - who had remarried a woman named Penny - often left my two older brothers and me with her when he had to work during our every other weekend or summer visits. By this time in my childhood, for reasons/root causes I will explain in a future blog, I was pretty much officially “THE FAT KID.”
My step mom, who was a cocaine addict and body obsessed psychopath was watching us for the afternoon. At around midday, we all sat down in the living room to watch TV. She left the room for a moment and when she came back, brought Matt and Mike each a Twix bar and Cokes. She had nothing for me until pressed - to which she scoffed, left the room, and came back with a Crystal Light lemonade and declared that I’m too fat. Mike tried to sneak me his sugary snacks but I refused. From that day on, I had such a weird relationship with food where I internalized a jealousy of what other people were eating if I were in a state of restricting myself from what they had knowing I could not have it. I covet french fries hoping I can grab one or two from whomever I am eating with and hope they don’t react like Joey on Friends. #JOEYDOESNOTSHAREFOOD
"Clearly they didn't work on YOUR body..."
This issue only continued to be validated by kids in my school and my step family who literally greeted me at family events with this comment: “Oh look, there she is… ole Fat Kate.” I am NOT kidding, that was my daily grind. This is where I need to insert a bit about "showing my work" and what I said to myself mentally in this moment:
*These people were incredibly fat themselves and they were very lacking in the intelligence department. I am not saying that to be completely mean (and most of them are dead now so I hope I am not offending too many people), they were uneducated, legitimately not smart people. In these moments, I would literally shake my head and say to myself, “If I had the approval of these people, I would actually think less of myself.” It was a time of beginning to discern that caring what other people thought about me was pointless and that also, mostly other people are projecting onto me how they feel about themselves. In other words, focusing on outward approval for my self worth and body image, though a tough battle, can only be won when you realize that nearly everyone is fighting it - it’s like a contest to make sure someone else in the room is a little fatter or has a bit lower of self esteem than they do. I hated the way that made me feel, so I took the opposing lesson and found things to compliment them on such as their shirt or hair, as long as I really meant it. Authenticity is key here.*
So, back to the story - at this time, I was super active, played in every sport, barely over ate, but my weight issue carried on through adulthood. I remember when I started playing softball in the fifth grade, we had T Shirts from our sponsor, a car repair business called Rusk Brothers’ Body Shop. Mine was too tight of course, and as I walked past a boy in the cafeteria, he exclaimed in front of the whole school, “Clearly they didn’t work on your body.”
Now, as an adult with a sense of humor, that’s a pretty fucking amazing joke for a kid. Like, I honestly can’t stop laughing about it now, but at the time, that one stung. I most likely dealt with that one a bit more sheepishly, but my fat issues in school never stopped me from being “popular”. I was just confused by it logically - I was a kid who only ate what was given to me. I wasn’t making my own food choices, could not have been eating much differently than my two thin brothers at home and nothing much differently than what the other kids ate at school. So, I don’t know how to explain it. I wasn’t lazy - I was a farm kid with chores, I rode bikes for miles with the other kids, I ran, I swam… I was just FAT. My weight issues didn’t get any better into high school and I was just the funny fat girl that was everyone’s best friend. Every boy I liked came up with an excuse to not go out with me excluding the honest ones who would either say they were not attracted to me or bluntly tell my friends that I was too fat. I couldn’t blame them - I only had crushes on the cute boys so I was being as superficial as they were… So, I still played basketball and was the last one running laps and in softball placed at catcher so my “fat ass” (yes a coach referred to it as such) could block those crazy pitches and I didn’t need to move too fast.
I found a bit of a home as a shot and discus thrower where I got into weight training and could bench and squat more than some of the boys, because, let’s be honest, I weighed about 20-40 more pounds than they did. Despite these challenges, I remained SO BOY crazy. I was “in love” with a different, completely unattainable boy every so many chapters in my diary. And every single one broke my heart. I pretty much wanted to die, in fact, I hoped for it. Luckily for me now, I always thought suicide was selfish and couldn’t imagine hurting my family that way, so I stuck it out until I finally escaped to college and shut down that diary of misery for a whole new set of challenges. For that, you will have to come back to a future blog on my days in University.
For now, let me just say this - I will probably never feel 100% confident with my body. Those voices about being too fat will creep out with every stretch mark I look at and every time I gain a few pounds overnight from just having a slice of pizza or a dish of ice cream. But I will tell you this…. All of those boys who “weren’t attracted to me” sure pop up in my private messages on Facebook commenting on how hot I am “now.” I kind of wish I had that Rusk Brothers T Shirt just to see if it fits me.
Self Talk Highlights:
1. Most of my super painful childhood memories are of things that were obviously temporary and inflicted by other people, not by myself. We cannot control what other people say to us, but we can control how we react to it. Nothing has been more satisfying to me when I turn someone's anger off by being kind in return and changing the way the whole situation feels. Pause and say this to yourself: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou
2. I am always going to fall for the "captain of the football team." He's smart, driven, ambitious, athletic, motivated, cool, and a leader. I am a Captain of All Kinds of Shit, so it's not like I am not worthy; we might as well be Captains together, right?
3. I have had the most fun in life in situations where I behaved as though nobody else was watching, truly not caring what anyone else was thinking about me, how I looked, what I was doing. This takes some true tests of your self talk - if you want to eat alone on a business trip but don't because someone may think it's "funny" you are alone, I can assure you, I have met THE COOLEST people when I was out by myself. I dance in public and take goofy ass selfies and set up super awkward photo shoots on purpose - and the belly laughing is worth it. Here are a few of my all time favorite photos where I just gave up worrying what other people think and just did what made me happy.
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