Warning: This post covers a topic that some may find disturbing or offensive
I’m taking a break from my history of weight loss and regain to talk about one of the topics that I believe underlies my inability to keep the weight off. I’ve read enough self-help books to be familiar with the idea that I wouldn’t keep gaining the weight back if I wasn’t getting some benefit out of it. I’m sure my subconscious feels several benefits from the constant weight gain, but one of the benefits is that the fat seems like a magic force field that keeps me from being attractive to men, and therefore, safe.
When I was six years old I was molested by a neighborhood man. He grew an amazing flower garden in the apartment complex where we lived in Chicago. He wasn’t really friendly with children that I recall, but his garden was full of gorgeous blooms of every color. I remember that the flowers were the lure that he used to get me into his basement. I don’t remember everything that happened, but I can still picture most of it. I remember him putting his hand down my pants and making me rub his erection with my hand. It was over 45 years ago and yet I can see certain things and hear certain things clearly. I know he told me not to tell anyone. And yet somehow my older brother found out and said he was going to “tell on me.” I remember at the time that it was happening, there was a part of me that knew there was something wrong with what was happening despite my molester’s assertions to the contrary. Then when my brother said he was going to tell on me, my gut reaction was that I was somehow in trouble. After all, someone only told on you if you’d done something wrong, right?
My memory of my discussion with my parents about what had happened is very vague. But I do remember feeling that no matter how much they were acting normally, what had happened was not okay. For years when I talked about it I would tell people that the biggest problem with the whole thing was that my father was so angry about it that I was afraid he was going to kill the man and then go to jail. It was only when I was an adult that I ended up having a discussion about it with my stepmother and found out that what I had been telling people wasn’t even close to the truth. My father had deliberately reacted as little as possible in front of me because he didn’t want to attach too much importance to it in my mind in the hope that I would forget it over time. He went to the man and told him he needed to move out of the apartment complex and not come back or he would press charges. The man moved. I think a part of me came up with my story of my Dad’s rage because that would mean it was definitely all the guy’s fault. After all, if the man had really done something wrong, why wouldn’t my Dad be angry. Ironically, the way that my Dad controlled his reaction to try to protect me, actually made me feel more guilty.
The strange thing was that the man sent me a birthday present on my next birthday. I remember getting this really cool present. I think it was a little machine with which you could make lollipops. And then I saw it was from him. I remember my confusion. I understood that what had happened was bad, so it was hard to figure out how I was supposed to act about the present even though I thought it was a really cool present. I have no idea why my parents chose to give it to me. I think that it was another attempt to keep the incident from sticking out in my mind, but it just confused me more. If people did things wrong they got in trouble. If the man never got in trouble maybe he didn’t do anything wrong. But it WAS wrong and if it wasn’t him that had done something wrong then maybe it was me. I don’t think that I ever consciously decided this, but I think that subconsciously this is what I was worried about.
A few years later my parents got divorced and we moved to Rockford to live with my grandmother. The divorce had not been a nice one and although my parents worked to keep it from us, we were all aware of the anger and hurt permeating the air. Eventually, my Mom moved us in to an apartment in the middle of Rockford. My Mom was pretty devastated by the divorce. I’ve always been a person who can pick up on other people’s emotions and I was protective of my mother. I was eleven, but I’d always looked older because I was so tall.
I had a friend who lived in an apartment across the complex. My younger brother was friends with her brother. So, one night my brother and I went over there to see them. I remember that I had just curled my hair the night before and I had been getting compliments on it all day. I was feeling really attractive that day which was unusual for me since my acne had already started to make me feel ugly. We were sitting around watching TV and my friend’s father came in with a beer. The Tom Jones show came on TV. There were lots of dancers with very provocative clothing on the show and her father kept saying things like “Yeah, baby, that’s the way to dance.” I felt a bit uncomfortable, but we were all sitting there, so I figured everything was cool. He had another beer and then at the next commercial he told my friend it was time to take her bath and she could hang out with me after she was finished. Then he sent his son upstairs saying he’d take a bath next. My brother went up with him. By then I was feeling even more ill at ease. But we sat on opposite ends of the couch watching the TV and I relaxed a bit. At the next commercial he got up to get another beer and for some reason that made me feel really worried. When he came back into the room he sat right next to me, not just next to me but with his legs and arms pressing against mine. I remember sitting there clenching every muscle I had. His kids were right upstairs so I kept telling myself that everything was fine. Then he put his arm around me and started rubbing my breast and kissing my neck. I was pretty much frozen there for a minute. He was my friend’s dad, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted him to leave me alone, but I also had respect for authority figures. And I was petrified that his kids or his wife would come walking in and think I was to blame. I have no idea how long I was frozen there, but it probably wasn’t longer than a minute. He grabbed my chin and turned me toward him and started kissing me and that’s when I shoved my elbow in to his gut and jumped off the couch.
I walked out to the stairs and yelled up to my brother that we had to go. He kept yelling down that it wasn’t time to leave yet. My friend’s dad just sat on the couch and didn’t seem in the least worried. He said, “I suppose you’re going to tell your Mom about this.” And I told him no because I couldn’t hurt my Mom like that. My brother eventually came down the stairs and kept asking why we had to leave and what was wrong, but I just kept saying that we had to leave. I never did tell my Mom what happened. It was true that I didn’t want to give her something else to worry about. But I also think a part of me was worried that this would be too much, that it must be my fault somehow because it had happened twice. If my Mom didn’t know she couldn’t be mad at me. I made sure I was never alone with him again. I told one of my other friends in the neighborhood and she said, “Oh yeah, he’s done that with me too.” I went out of my way to not even walk within ten feet of him whenever I saw him and my friend didn’t understand why I wouldn’t come over to her house any more.
A few months later my mother was involved in the accident that took her life and we moved out of there. I never saw him again.
It wasn’t until years later when I’d lost and gained weight several times when I realized that part of my problem might be my fear of being found attractive. What a dichotomy. I was a person with very low self esteem when it came to my looks because of my acne and because I was so tall I always felt like a giant with all the boys. One of the things that I wanted most was to feel attractive. And yet I’d learned that being attractive meant I was a target. Normally, this probably wouldn’t be a problem. But my perception of my ability to protect myself seemed to be frozen at the age of six with my first encounter with a pedophile. Any time that a group of construction workers would whistle as I walked by I would feel an almost visceral reaction of fear. In my mind when men find you attractive, you have no power to protect yourself from them and they can do whatever they want to you. But when you’re fat, men tend to overlook you. That means safety. Intellectually, I know that I have the power to say no and to protect myself, but my fear reaction is stuck in that six year-old mindset, that says you do what adults tell you to do.
I would never consciously try to get fat. But each time I’ve lost weight and started to feel attractive I also start to feel insecure when men start to come on to me. I know it’s not the only trigger I have, but I also know that as much as I yearn to be attractive and sought after by men, it also scares me enough that I can see myself subconsciously sabotaging myself to feel safer.