I'm afraid to be honest about what food I want and don't want, what food I like and dislike, saying so or going to the kitchen and getting something to eat when I'm hungry. I get paranoid that I eat too much of Jack's food, that I ask for too much so I never ask for anything and we get into arguments where I'm trying to explain to him why I'm so shy about eating but inside I'm just dying for stuff, I'm craving stuff I've hardly had in years and the kind of fruit I crave is the most expensive and most people are poor and can't afford it so they eat s**t that they often don't crave. I can't get a job down here; I'm not a citizen and don't have any fancy papers for anything. I'm even afraid to be alone in a room with a light on because what if Jack starts to complain about the electric bill?
Once when I was 13 I made a few comments about my weight and my dad went on all day, upon hearing that I weighed 160 pounds, about how huge I was, how all I ate was sugar and fat and salt, about how yeah, lots if not most of the girls at my school got food at the cafeteria but they all weighed 80 or 90 pounds (I think he finds that sexy-- years later he talked about these chicks he worked with who weighed 80 or 90 pounds), not 160 (not true, though lots were underweight lots were also overweight), how he would never, ever forget that when we went to get my school uniform my uniform was the biggest size they had in the store. I said that wasn't true. There were lots of humungous girls at my school. My dad said that their uniforms were custom made, then railing that he wasn't paying for a custom made uniform (like I was just going to get fatter and fatter and bust out of my current uniform), etc. Most of my friends were the same size as me and they all said that they weighed 130 pounds and that I must weigh the same. My dad said they were lying to make me feel better, but I didn't tell him they were the same size as me, but he would just have said they were lying to make themselves nad me feel better.
Then a few days later I joked or said something about how I was fat because I weighed 160 pounds and my father said "A healthy 160" and said it was healthy, that there was nothing wrong with my weight, I was a growing girl and needed nourishment. So I didn't know whether to believe him in his angry state or in his doting state.
When I was 14, after being in sailing camp for weeks, my dad said he was proud of me for losing so much weight and that now I looked like a teenage girl. He said I was HUGE before (with emphasis on the word huge), that it even effected the way I walked, that I rather than walked, waddled. I asked if it exaggerated my features making them ugly and he said no, it masked them. Which was true. But I really did not waddle more than most people do (and lots are overweight). I mentioned before that he had mentioned many times not to worry about my weight, that it was normal and healthy, and he said he had been lying those times so as not to hurt my feelings.
My dad always prided himself on his physical fitness. He told me once in third grade (I was 9 when I started caring about my weight and finding myself fat) that the other girls may be dieting because they were short and fat but I was tall and skinny and never to go on "stupid diets" like my mother went on, that exercise was the key and really the only thing that worked.
Once like 2 years ago, two or three times, my dad said that me and my mother could do with starving for two weeks because it would make us lean and mean like him, and that made us feel guilty because he still got us food when we asked for it (or rather, when my mother asked for it and I hinted I was hungry-- I was already extremely self-conscious around him then). He made my mother out to be a b***h for saying she needed food. So I was always afraid to ask for food. And I didn't, until one day I broke down and whined/cried that I was dying for fruit and milk and that there was such a thing as a craving and we had cravings for a reason and overdosing on certain kinds of food and some stupid out of order stuff like that I would be totally at peace with myself if only I had the right food and stuff. My dad got mad and disgusted at my childishness and whininess and said that I had no idea of the s**t he'd been through. He prides himself on not eating for days and seemingly not caring. But mostly he eats what he wants. He just does the not eating thing either when he's drinking and not hungry, or to impress us or intimidate us. But later he gave me $20 and told me to get milk and fruit ad whatever I needed. The one other time something similar happened (and, not because I believed this was the thing everyone or anyone did, but to make a point, I said I'd pay him back with interest if he lent me some money to get some food I was dying for) he came home with milk and fruit and asked me after if I felt better now that I had milk and fruit and s**t.
There are times when my mother couldn't get a job because her teeth were rotting and coming out and all the jobs she was qualified for required talking and being with people. My father kept telling her to get a job but other times totally understood why she couldn't, and whenever he cursed her and swore at her and insulted her for using up his resources and screwing him over, I felt like he was also cursing me and swearing at me and insulting me, because I was doing the same thing. Several times while drinking beer he would sit at the computer listening to music and making gunshot noises, and he claimed to never remember doing that. Once he said "f*****g b***h, get out of my life." He had told my mother to get out of his life several times. I totally couldn't blame him; he had two leeches sucking him dry. He worked hard at the factory and was paid almost nothing. I've felt murderous before at people who weren't murderers so I felt sorry for him. But (no, I'm not good with family solidarity, just WP solidarity) I was relieved he said "b***h" and not "b*****s". Whenever my mother would say/ask/complain for food or that she wanted food or needed that or I needed this or that she had to have dental work done, he would yell and be all disappointed that he was to be drained some more. I never asked him for anything. I didn't want to put him through what my mother was putting him through.
One time when I was gaining weight he was losing it and I got paranoid that he was losing weight to guilt me into losing weight too.
Once when my mom would tel him of something I needed he would get mad (if I told him he usually wouldn't but a lot of the time she wasn't even being bitchy and he would still get mad) and for a f*****g school project I needed a big board of corrugated plastic and he made me feel guilty for needing THAT "How am I supposed to get this when this piece of s**t sucked up every cent I had left?", so how was I supposed to ask him for FOOD, which is the last thing he thought I needed, when years ago when I was a minor too young to work and in high school he even got mad at either my mom or me or just at the world for me needing something for a school project (mind you, he was broke and working hard in the factory). And my mother expecting him to pull rabbits out of hats, expecting him to FIND a way to cave to all her demands, when he LITERALLY had NOTHING.
When he had money he has been very generous, and often when he had just an average poor man's amount of money he took us to restaurants and ordered food for us and that. I felt guilty but I was also hungry so I ate it. I wondered if he was doing it to make us feel guilty or jsut tell him once how great he is because the poor man never heard it, but for some stupid reason I never told him that because I never felt like it, I don't know how to explain why.
And yes, he probably has a mood disorder, and yes, I probably got it from him... another reason to be mad at him for f*****g me up, not just with his talk and action but also with his DNA.
09 Mar 2008, 10:00 am
*pouts and stomps from the thread*
