LIFE SUCKS

Sordid Life Story

I was born early and dangerous underweight. I refused to feed and the doctor decided to starve me for a week would be a great way to fix this. I became very unhealthy and my immune system was shot - this has haunted me to this day. A nurse took pity and gave me soy milk. I drank. Years later we find out I'm allergic to milk. This is after many ear operations in my young life to treat infections now known linked to it(lactose intolerance gives you these).

My parents, in the meanwhile, both had jobs full-time, trying to support a sick little girl. My father went into denial, and turned to drink after his boss robbed the company of all its money and fled with his retirement plan after 15 years loyal service. Square one, financial hard times. And lots of physical abuse. My mother fled for her safety, thinking he wouldn't touch a little girl. He did. I suffered everything from having a heavy oak wood chair cracked over my back, hair torn out, my head bashed into a door, being beaten with a telephone (not just the receiver, full thing), forced to kiss him, etc. I tried to run away a number of times, he jumped on me and held me down in the gravel. Cuts and scrapes ensued. He weighed over 200 pounds. I wasn't even 6.

Dealing with abuse (and the threat of being drowned in the bathtub if I ever tried to report the incidence), abandonment issues given my mother just ran off all the time and I had to be stuck entertaining drunk daddy, made me depressed. I started eating. McDonalds and Burger King were cheap, easier to prepare than cooking, so they indulged me. I ballooned. I was over 100 pounds by 2nd grade. I weighed nearly 300 in high school.

So, no friends, no boyfriends, socially awkward, only child. Then my father dies abruptly. Undiagnosed colon cancer. Great survival rate for the operation, though - ended up going due to an infection contracted during the operation that rose his temperature to a degree that fried his brain. My mother was dependent on him. She's disabled and unhealthy too and had to quit her secretarial job due to arthritis making her unable to grip anything. (Not to mention the lupus, lyme, fiber mialgia, cystic fibrosis..) She went suicidal. Now I was an obese, angry (due to loneliness and bullying), conflicted, girl who had to push aside whatever confusion she was feeling to try and keep the black curtains off the windows and her mom from abandoning her in the greatest of ways.

A year later, I give up. I develop an unhealthy fear of death. The stress in turn gives me crippling stomach pains. I go to hospital often. They think it's my gallblader. It's not. I chicken out before the operation - thank god I did. However, my digestive track is shot. I am now on pills for life so I can digest food.

This coincides with a push at that time to loose weight. The pain and suffering and ability to only eat rice crackers helps, as well as my own self-loathing. I loose 200 pounds over a year. A great achievement, but left me with hanging skin flaps. My self-image did not improve. The flaps got infected. They had to be surgically removed. Post-surgery, my brain goes into spasms. I undergo numerous tests to figure out why my field of vision is now constantly sparkling and patterns seem to move. After having spinal fluid removed from my back, a number of MRIs and MRAs, I'm told I have visual snow. My vision will never be the same again.

Needless to say, I took two years out before going to university because of this. The guys I did have during my transition were all horrible and depreciating. My first experience with sex led to rape threats and a forced blow-job in a parking lot as well as a whole gamut of sexual abuse. The years of being an ugly blob of a girl now turned into a relatively attractive one took their tole in that I could not see how pretty I was. I hated myself. My life revolved around attracting men and trying to lose more weight. I always thought I was still a fat pig. At 5'4, I eventually hit 100 pounds. My health was not happy about this.

Miraculously, however, university life was good to me. I made great friends first year, traveled Europe with them, and found a good man who made me believe love existed after prostituting myself and maintaining a no-more-than-one-date, love'm-and-leave'm policy (my revenge for my lifetime experience with men - now that they wanted me, they could have me, but on my terms, and to make me feel pretty). More sexual assault occured before this, and I have to admit it's got to be my fault. Drunk guys molested myself and other girls in a group. They were repulsed. I went for it. I wanted to feel beautiful. Anyway, the guy. Great, beautiful, changed his life for the better as much as he changed mine. Still had more health issues - more surgery, more sickness. We worked through it.

Second year together we moved into a shared house with friends. Well, his best friend, under the influence of my former best friend, formed a little coalition in which our relationship was not supported. We lost the two. And slowly everyone else in the house. We were alienated and ended up growing super-dependent on one another. He was my only love and friend. I was his.

Summer, more trials and tribulations, still living together. We get through an instance were I catch him petitioning and receiving dirty photos of some internet bimbo. I react very harshly. He breaks off contact with all long-distance friends that are girls to prove himself to me (his idea). He grows bitter over having to do this as time goes on. He also lashes out defensively whenever its brought up later on. Fair enough, it hurt him because he wasn't the man he thought he was. However, for me, someone who constantly (and wrongly) always saught reassurance and was insecure with her body, it was a blow I had trouble recovering from.

Finally, I am on my year abroad in Spain. I notice my health once again begins to deteriorate rapidly. Hair falls out, my weight drops below 100 despite abandoning my diet trying to counteract it. I grow lethargic. I have to return home. Before doing so, I go to stay with him at his house now shared with some old friends he wanted to reconnect with. I have to stay longer than expected to get the flight back. This coincides with his essay writing week. He is not happy. I am told by his housemates not to clean dishes anymore because my hair keeps getting everywhere. I make constant mistakes that seem to do nothing to endear me to them, despite trying to clean and cook for them all as much as possible, and stay out of their way.

However, he tells me he's happy I was able to stay, we make love quite passionately, and I leave telling him that finally, a year after everything nearly fell apart with us, I'm safe and secure in our relationship and we're in a good place.

I am told two weeks later to call him, while undergoing tests here to gauge my health. All is well otherwise. I'm having fun, volunteering to keep myself busy, liasoning with the university and feeding them the medical records in attempts to not completely destroy my chance at finishing my degree n ext year, things seem on track.

I'm told we're through. He can't take it anymore. He can't feel anymore. I've changed him into something he doesn't want to be. He needs to think of his social life and his career. Evidently, he did not realize he had a big assignment coming up due to me being at his house. He had precious little time left to do it in. He was also the loneliest he's ever been in his life due to having few friends anymore. I'm to blame. I've destroyed him. I'm too unhealthy and my life is too dramatic.

Me? I lost my best friend, my boyfriend, and the only family I have (as my own disowned myself and my mother following my father's death, and my mother's side all passed on long before I was born. His took me in every holiday for the past two years. We got close. We bonded. I felt love.). I'm facing a potentially life threatening diagnosis. My degree is hanging in the balance. I'm more depressed than ever as I knew happiness for the first time in my 22 years and now it's gone. I exist only to breath and that seems a bit redundant. I overate two days, then began overexercising. I'm dizzy and have a pounding headache. I don't care. I feel like working myself to death and getting it over with. I now, officially, have nothing. No family, no belief in love, noone to love me, no future, and I will always be 'damaged goods' - psycologically broken, needy, and, as always, unhealthy. Noone will ever be able to love me. Every day, guys hollar at me. They love my body. But noone wants to look further than that. I'm the complete opposite of what I was and I'm still unhappy. Now I LOOK attractive, healthy, and.. utterly crushed. I cry in public. I run on treadmills until I collapse. I'm some beautiful disaster. And my health has now plummited rapidly.

I tried my best for him. I was too annoying, too self-depreciating, too needy, too cold over one single mistake in the length of the relationship, and evidently made another life other than my own miserable. The only life that mattered to me because mine sure as hell doesn't. I absolutely HATE myself now. It was all me. I'm to blame.

What is wrong with me, why does this happen to me, and what on earth am I here for other than a sick joke? Ladies and gentlemen, I officially give up. I can never be what this world wants nor needs and I don't have the heart to try and find another diamond in the rough only to grind it into sand and have it leave me when I need it most.

God help me, I can't cope anymore...