Narrative Essay - Week 2
Narrative Essay – Assignment 2
English 1A – Reading and Composition
Narrative Essay
I was born 5lbs 6oz’s on May 26th 1971. I grew up an active and healthy child, always curious and forever playing games with the neighborhood kids, tag, baseball, riding bikes, skating up our huge hill, swimming; you name it we were doing it, as we were always on the go. At the age of 10 my world came to a screeching halt as an uncle decided that a child was fair game in the pursuit of his sexual fulfillment. From that point forward food became my confident, best friend, comforter, refuge and mortal enemy.
I can recall vividly the first time I "overate" and felt pleasure and freedom in it. My Mom and I went out to eat at a little Mexican restaurant in San Bernardino. After ordering two bean burritos for myself, we took our bags home. It was there, before our television, that I quickly and quietly consumed both burritos in one sitting.
Like any good binge, it wasn’t until minutes afterwards that my body made the effects of what I had just done clearly known to me. I was filled with a full stretching pain in my abdomen, causing a discomfort the likes of which I can only describe as oddly pleasurable. Sitting up straight and taking sallow breaths, I couldn’t move and was left feeling sluggish and tired. But, the pain caused in my body by the food far overshadowed, for those brief moments, the hurt that was so raging in my heart caused by my uncle’s actions.
I discovered in that setting, on that fateful night, that I could take one pain, a manageable one, and trade it for a short time for the pain that I could not control. And thus, I started my descent into food-addiction, obesity and self-hatred.
At 10 when this eating/pain epiphany occurred I weighed approximately 100lbs and was athletic by today’s standards, by 13 I weighed 200lbs, at 16, 320lbs, and finally at 30, I topped the scale at 400lbs.
You see, my comforter, my torturer, she was twofold. At once making me forget the pain of hurt inflicted by another’s hand, and then hiding me, the real me, from all, everyone and everything (including myself). She covered my body with layer upon layer, pound upon pound of flesh. Veiling me from reality, protecting me from the advances of men and their sexual desires towards me. She tempered my personality with quietness, complacency and the greed for food, causing me to become one whom people could easily look past; the invisible girl, the one undeserving of real love.
She who promised relief to me, a way out of the pain, a door of hope, and a shielding from further advances, lied. And in the end she became, for me, more painful, controlling and hurtful than anything my uncle or any other had caused me. Rather than a friend, I found a jailer. Her promises of protection became the walls that I was trapped inside, hurting, hating, loathing, crying and slowly, dying. She became the trap and my journey from her grip and into freedom that has taken me 20+ years, and still continues to this day.
English 1A – Reading and Composition
Narrative Essay
I was born 5lbs 6oz’s on May 26th 1971. I grew up an active and healthy child, always curious and forever playing games with the neighborhood kids, tag, baseball, riding bikes, skating up our huge hill, swimming; you name it we were doing it, as we were always on the go. At the age of 10 my world came to a screeching halt as an uncle decided that a child was fair game in the pursuit of his sexual fulfillment. From that point forward food became my confident, best friend, comforter, refuge and mortal enemy.
I can recall vividly the first time I "overate" and felt pleasure and freedom in it. My Mom and I went out to eat at a little Mexican restaurant in San Bernardino. After ordering two bean burritos for myself, we took our bags home. It was there, before our television, that I quickly and quietly consumed both burritos in one sitting.
Like any good binge, it wasn’t until minutes afterwards that my body made the effects of what I had just done clearly known to me. I was filled with a full stretching pain in my abdomen, causing a discomfort the likes of which I can only describe as oddly pleasurable. Sitting up straight and taking sallow breaths, I couldn’t move and was left feeling sluggish and tired. But, the pain caused in my body by the food far overshadowed, for those brief moments, the hurt that was so raging in my heart caused by my uncle’s actions.
I discovered in that setting, on that fateful night, that I could take one pain, a manageable one, and trade it for a short time for the pain that I could not control. And thus, I started my descent into food-addiction, obesity and self-hatred.
At 10 when this eating/pain epiphany occurred I weighed approximately 100lbs and was athletic by today’s standards, by 13 I weighed 200lbs, at 16, 320lbs, and finally at 30, I topped the scale at 400lbs.
You see, my comforter, my torturer, she was twofold. At once making me forget the pain of hurt inflicted by another’s hand, and then hiding me, the real me, from all, everyone and everything (including myself). She covered my body with layer upon layer, pound upon pound of flesh. Veiling me from reality, protecting me from the advances of men and their sexual desires towards me. She tempered my personality with quietness, complacency and the greed for food, causing me to become one whom people could easily look past; the invisible girl, the one undeserving of real love.
She who promised relief to me, a way out of the pain, a door of hope, and a shielding from further advances, lied. And in the end she became, for me, more painful, controlling and hurtful than anything my uncle or any other had caused me. Rather than a friend, I found a jailer. Her promises of protection became the walls that I was trapped inside, hurting, hating, loathing, crying and slowly, dying. She became the trap and my journey from her grip and into freedom that has taken me 20+ years, and still continues to this day.
posted by The Melting Jar at 9:20 PM
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