Mother's Day Confessions

I love my mom. My mom has been a pretty decent parent, regarding she kept me fed, under a roof, and made me feel loved. My parents were smart; kept me and my sister active, and we ate whole grains, white meat, and veggies. Eating out happened once a year.

I love her still, and see her every week, but my mom made some mistakes. I know I can't blame her truly for the woman I am, but she takes credit for everything good about me.

My parents were kind of... different. She did a few basic things completely fucking wrong. But I do have some confessions about her that I have never spoken about.

First, my mom was afraid to talk about puberty with my sister and I. I didn't know what the fuck was going on. She refused to talk about it with me. Not for religious reasons, no. Just because she didn't want to face that her daughters were growing up. I didn't know what a period was, or how sex worked, or what my body was doing. All that shit I had to learn from my stupid middle school friends.

That's not even one of the bad things she managed to accomplish. When I hit puberty, my mom began to feel THREATENED by me. I was thin, curvy for my age, and pretty. And I had a great body, like, when I look back and see those pictures, I'm kind of baffled and confused by what my mom had been feeding me... literally. I was healthy, athletic, and my body was perfect...

So, you see, when I was in high school, she began this charade of force feeding me. Telling me I was skin and bones, when I actually wasn't. I began to believe her, and I began to think being as thin as I was that I was ugly, because my mom was supposed to look out for me. I thought she was right; she had good intentions...? Right?

So I began stuffing my face, overeating, and she began dismissing me from our daily walks as a family. She said I wasn't strong enough to do it. And being an Arby's employee, I began to get a taste for junk food. I had a good metabolism at the time, so my mom's plan wasn't exactly working.

I think it's important to say I don't think she was in the right mind when she was doing this. My parents have a bad habit of convincing themselves doing a "small, minor bad thing" is actually good. I think she genuinely thought she was actually helping me at the end of it.

As you can imagine, I'm not thin anymore. I'm not athletic. I'm overweight and I hate myself for it. My parents also tease me for it, which is ironic. But I began to realize recently that it was my mom who all started it, and I furiously blame her for making me like this.

Now it's up to me to fix myself, as a grown woman four years out of high school, and it's hard. It's really hard. I had this illusion... I guess. My mom did go through a frantic phase in about 2015 or so, where she quit her job as a dietician helping people lose weight because she thought it was fat-phobic. I guess she began to think that having a thin daughter was fat-phobic too, especially when my sister naturally struggled with her weight, and expressed repeatedly to my parents that she was jealous of my body, and I would call her fat when she made me mad.

I will say she did get the much prettier face, so we compromised at that; I wouldn't call her fat and she wouldn't call me ugly. But that wasn't good enough for my mom.

She encouraged me to drink milk with creamer, eat out when I worked, and to go out to eat with friends all the time, or she would take home junk food too. Her plan didn't begin to fuck me over until I was about 20 years old, at a new job, and I damaged my legs.

Both of my knees. I had torn my menisci within my knee caps through cart pushing after being taught incorrectly how many carts we were allowed to push. I should have sued that company but I work there as of now as a cashier so I won't mention it. But anyway--

I was out of commission for months. I couldn't walk well, couldn't move much, and it all fucking hurt. I definitely couldn't work out. I can't remember exactly, but I remember when I started this new job, I was still thin-- wearing certain clothes I can't as of now. I was confident when I started that job.

But my bad eating habits my mom had taught me for years caught up to me when I was bed-ridden, walking at the pace of an elderly person, and doing everything in my power to avoid moving.

And before I knew it, I was no longer a 130 pound girl, I was 170 pounds. I am 170 pounds. I know people say all the time, "oh, that's not fat, you're not fat. You can see your toes? You aren't fat."

It's not about how I look, or how nice you are. I feel like shit. I can't run anymore. My knees barely healed thanks to my ever gaining weight. I had to start to consciously look at myself, my rolls, my belly, my arms, and my neck to realize, "holy shit, who is this?"

I didn't even recognize myself.

I am working towards losing weight now, with the hatred in my heart whenever my mom offers us dinner, or restaurant coupons, constantly, or sugary desserts or "Oh, you're no fun" when I refuse certain food.

As I said, I'm not sure she ever intentionally wanted me to become overweight, and she expresses her concern for my weight anyway, but seems to be hooked on that bullshit "healthy at every size," yet contradicting herself when she asks me to lose weight.

She feels bad, I think. We haven't talked about it. She doesn't want me to feel ugly, or end up like my obese aunt or grandparents. She loves me, and like I said, she's a really great mom. I was lucky to have the childhood that I had, honestly. It pushed me to become an intelligent person and hard-working, but... I can't shake blaming my mom for my weight gain.

She literally force-fed me, wouldn't let me leave the dinner table 'til it was all gone or I had seconds. She would scare me, saying that I wouldn't ever be loved by anyone if I looked as scrawny as a skeleton.

And the thing is, all of that was manipulation. A lie. It makes me upset, to the point where if I really think about it, I begin to cry. I trusted her and in a matter of weeks she had destroyed my passion for hiking and eating healthy. All I cared about was greasy foods and sugar.

But this body is mine, and if I want to do something about it, it's up to me. I've been trying to lose weight, walking when I can, etc... but it's hard to see results when you keep looking. So I'm trying to fix what my mom did to me, and I hope I can forgive her.

I didn't think she thought I would get so far, like after I damaged my knees, and now she is constantly asking me to the gym, asking me to walk with her, etc, I think because maybe she feels bad, and it is her responsibility as my mother to help me. She has to undo what she did. And I'm glad that she's stepping up to it, and like I said, she was a great mother anyway.

I just wonder if I'll ever confess to her how I feel. It's such a hard conversation. Many people, like my father who doesn't believe in mental illness or consequences to actions, would say, "You can't blame your mother or anyone else for anything wrong with you," and I honestly don't think it's a battle worth having, though I wish I could tell her everything. I would hurt her feelings, and surely it wouldn't benefit anyone but me. Suppose that's why I'm letting it out right here.

She's trying to help me now, and... I think that's good enough. Sorry about this rant and I'm sure someone's going to get upset about my mentions of fat-phobia and weight-loss and wanting to better myself because I hate how I look.

This story, this rant, is about me, and not you. If you enjoy being 200 pounds, I don't mind, if you hate it, I don't mind, I know we are all humans and I sympathize. Your body is your choice. If you're 100 pounds, still, it's none of my business. Your health isn't my concern.

But my health is, and my mom who caused me to go down this path, abandoning everything I had learned in my childhood, is what I'm here about. I hope this rant makes others who may have gone through something similar feel like they aren't alone.

I know it happens a lot with people; parents, significant others, etc, telling people they are too overweight, too skinny, too dramatic, too feminine/masculine, too this, too that, and people fall down a rabbit hole based off these small but effective comments.

Before you listen to them, PLEASE look at yourself, physically, emotionally, and mentally. What they say means nothing until you can validate it for yourself, because you need to be the one who determines how far it can go.

I wish I could have stood up to my mother, when she would point out in front of other people, "Oh, don't you think (m/n) needs to gain weight?" and tell her that I was healthy the way I was. I was raised to be healthy! I loved fruits and racing my friends and chasing my dogs. I can't do any of that shit right now.

People manipulate people, sometimes without even thinking. I know my mom will never see this, but if a mother reads this and knows she's doing something similar... please. Calm your shit down.

Don't tell your child they need to be anything to fit your agenda.