My Story - Part 2

Continued from "My Story - Part 1"...

Once I started taking a synthetic thyroid medication in treatment of my hypothyroidism I immediately started to feel better!  I had more energy.  I could move my body more freely and the constant fog that always seemed present started to lift.  I was able to see the world around me and the life I had been living SO much clearer.  And I didn't like what I saw.  What I saw was NOT who I wanted to be.  I realized that the relationship I was in was a toxic one in which the man I was living with didn't WANT me to be healthier or happier.  He liked me fat & miserable because he had a misguided sense of security that I wouldn't leave him if I felt that the world had nothing better than him to offer me.  That said as much about his insecurities as it did about mine, but he was partly right.  It was how I felt. 

But coming out of the fog, I realized that I was young and I had my whole life ahead of me... I realized that I wanted something better.

So, I put myself out there again.  I started caring about what I ate and how I looked.  I was broken, but not destroyed and I started to feel that maybe, just maybe I would be okay.  I met a nice Catholic boy and we started dating.  It was the first healthy relationship I had ever been in with a guy.  He taught me that I had something to offer.  He showed me what real and stable love looked and felt like.  He told me I was beautiful.  Every day.  I regained some of my self-worth.  I rediscovered the morals and values that at some point I had scattered to the wind.  And I knew I was going to marry him.  I wanted him for the rest of my life.

One year to the day that we met, we married.  I was SO happy!  Life was becoming the fairy tale that I had dreamed when I was a little girl.  Food was still an issue... still a struggle.  When I got married at the age of 23 I weighed 350lbs. After all, the years of dependency that I had placed upon my substance of choice were not about to just vanish.  But I found I was not depending on it quite as much in my happy state.  I still dieted.  I tried the Atkins diet, Weight Watchers and several other plans.  My weight fluctuated up and down for the next three years.  Finally I went back to Weight Watchers and lost about 80lbs on their plan.  I was down to 280lbs - the lowest weight I had been since graduating high school.  It was December 2005.  We were headed to Albuquerque NM for a family wedding when I got extremely nauseous on the flight.  Strange.  A week later I understood why:  I was pregnant!!  We couldn't be happier!!  A month later our joy doubled when we found out that we were having twins.  A perfect little baby boy and girl were born in August 2006.

I loved my babies more than life itself, but was overwhelmed with being a brand new mommy and the work that came with having twin infants.  We had very little help the first 7 months of their life.  My husband and I were both working full time and the juggling of babies and jobs and some family pressures was exhausting.  Food became my refuge once more.  It was how I dealt with the exhaustion and the stress.  I felt a lot of insecurity as a new mommy and looking back I can see there were some outside pressures that increased that insecurity.  When the twins were 7 months old my husbands grandmother passed away.  His whole family grieved her loss.  It was a difficult time for everyone.  And it seemed to open the door for my post-partum depression to make a late appearance.  I just remembered I cried a lot.  I hid a lot.  I ATE A LOT.  It wasn't long before I was 350lbs again. 

Time went on... our babies grew and became easier to care for.  After they turned a year old EVERYTHING got easier!! People will tell you that the first year with twins is the hardest - believe them!!  I was the first to tell people - "If you get through that first year with twins, you can do ANYTHING!!"

Little did I know how much that statement would be put to the test.

In May of 2008 we succumbed to the housing market and bought our first house.  We had been consummate renters and everyone said "Now's the time!!  Buy now!! Stop throwing your money away on rent!!"  So, we did.  The excitement of buying your first home was amazing!  We lived in a bubble of extreme contentment for the next 6 months.  In November of 2008 our world came crashing down when our sweet boy was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.  He was only 27 months old.

That diagnosis was a little like being punched in the gut, having the rug pulled out from under you and falling into a deep, deep dark hole.  What can I say?  My old friend food was there to catch me...

(to be continued...)