So, where was I in my life before I took the detour to the past? Oh yes. I left Rocky Hill Police Department and went to Manchester Police Department. Manchester was a much larger town. It was twice the size of Rocky Hill, had more than three times the population, and probably four times the number of police officers on the force. Rocky Hill had three police districts, Manchester had seven.
When I started at Manchester PD their dispatch room was in this back room and the radios were so old that some of the wires were taped together. I started with two other new dispatchers, but I was the only one of the three that had dispatching experience. Still, it was a lot to learn. Manchester had two separate fire departments. The south end was covered by the town fire department which were paid city employees. The north end was covered by a volunteer fire department…and the two departments didn’t always get along. There had been a court case many years before I started working there over the boundary and the decision that came down was that each fire department could only fight fires within their own boundaries. I heard stories of fist fights at fire calls before the boundary was set in stone. One of the south end’s fire stations was within the north end’s boundary. So, if their station house caught fire, they could only deal with small fires within the station, but if the larger structure was on fire, they would have to wait for the north end fire department to come and fight the fire.
It took a while to sort all of these idiosyncrasies out. Once I became adept at the job, I loved the four to midnight shift. For one, I hated getting up early for the day shift, and the midnight shift exhausted me. But four to midnight was perfect, and that was when all of the crazy stuff happened. I lived for the “balls to the walls” shifts. Myself, my best friend Robin, and another friend Sandy, would swap into the four to midnight shift because we all loved it. We also sent the cops out to pick up our food almost every night…lots of high calorie foods. We had our favorite grinder places, hamburger places, Chinese places…you name it, we ate it…along with all of the fat.
I wasn’t huge, but I was certainly more than chubby. I’m sure that the high stress, as much as I loved it, contributed to weight gain, but realistically, it was more the cycle of low self-esteem, followed by eating to feel better, followed by eventually feeling worse over the weight gain, followed by more eating for the quick fix that was becoming firmly established in my life.
For most of my adult life up until I met my future husband, pretty much since my engagement ended, I had almost no relationships that lasted longer than a few weeks. My first relationship after my engagement ended was a few months long and lasted until he was supposed to pick me up at college to bring me home for Thanksgiving break and he never showed up, never called…left me standing out in a deserted place until 11 PM or midnight. I ended up having to call my brother to drive the hour or so to get me while I hoped that no serial killer would happen along and cut me up. I never spoke to him again.
I had another relationship with the brother of one of the girls who lived on my floor in my dorm when I was in college. That lasted about a semester until he began the “distancing himself” thing that I’ve decided must be taught at puberty to most men. I remember telling this boyfriend that the only thing that he could do that would really hurt me was if he tried to date my best friend Jo Anne. She had always been so beautiful and I always felt so inadequate next to her. She was a great friend to me and I didn’t resent her, but I just wanted someone to want me for once. After I broke up with him I remember one night going on and on to Jo Anne about how maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe I’d misunderstood. Finally she got really mad at me and told me he was a jerk. She admitted he had called her right before I broke up with him and tried to get her to go out with him. She refused because she told him I was her best friend. She hadn’t told me because she knew how much it would hurt. Talk about emotional devastation.
I also had several “relationships” with married men. When I look back on them now I realize that they weren’t really relationships. I was the only one who was in a “relationship.” And since I’ve been married, and discovered the trust that should be in a marriage, I would never date a married man again. But at the time I was so needy I was willing to believe anything. That same premise followed in the numerous “relationships” that I had with lots of unmarried men as well. I’m sure it was a combination of my feelings of being unattractive and my feelings of being unworthy that I got when my father left. I was doing the same basic thing I’d done to ensure that my father didn’t leave again. With my father it was trying to be as “perfect” as possible so that I would be lovable. With my relationships I used sex. After all, I’d learned at a young age that sex was quite attractive to men; so much so that they would even risk jail to get it. I think subconsciously I figured if I was the perfect sexual partner they wouldn’t leave me either. It never worked…ever. And I can’t think of a single man that ever had the fortitude to actually break up with me. They just stopped calling or acted like a jerk on purpose to get me to break up with them. A little proof of how little actual caring they had for me. I know this is what they were doing because I’ve had several guys admit it to me, usually with a little shrug and a smirk.
So, I was working at Manchester PD and nothing had changed. I still kept making poor choices where men were concerned. And for a short while I would feel as if “this one” was finally going to work. But the same thing happened over and over again. And I got fatter and fatter, which just added to the cycle of misery. There was a new cop at the PD that I was crazy about. We were “friends” but I wanted so much more than that. And I had finally hit thirty. I could see my life passing by and I was sure I was never going to get married. I felt completely overwhelmed. When I started thinking about driving into a telephone pole I decided I needed to go to counseling. I didn’t want to die or even get severely injured. There was a part of my brain that just wanted to have an excuse not to be strong and to have all responsibility taken from me for a while. I talked to a counselor that I liked for a couple of sessions. But my insurance required that I speak to a “psychiatrist” in order for them to pay for it. The psychiatrist spent most of the session talking about herself rather than asking me anything about myself and when I left I never went back.
Then I decided that I needed to change my life. This was when Oprah had made her debut after she lost 60 pounds and I decided to go on the Optifast program. It was a completely liquid diet of about 800 calories a day. I had to go to group support sessions and have blood work done every couple of weeks, but I was ready for it. The beauty of this diet is that there are no decisions to make. You know exactly what you are going to have to eat each day. And you lose weight really fast so it is easy to keep your motivation up.
The weight started falling off. Then I added in exercise. And one of the cops that I worked with owned his own gym so he introduced me to weight lifting. I loved it. I began to feel strong and healthy and I had so much more energy. Pretty soon I was walking everywhere rather than driving and I had joined Gold’s gym and was getting slimmer and slimmer. I applied for police officer in Manchester. They didn’t require any pull ups and I was feeling as if I might just succeed. Unfortunately, I didn’t pass the run portion of the test. I was so embarrassed to talk to the guy who had been helping me learn to lift weights. But he just said, “hey, you’re having less than a thousand calories a day, of course you have no power. You should try again after you’ve started to eat again.” That made me feel better because he was kind of a gruff guy, but his acceptance made me feel as if I wasn’t a complete failure.
But I was still making poor decisions where men were concerned. Even though I was 150 pounds of solid muscle and I had a killer figure for the first time since I’d been a teenager, I’d feel terror whenever guys who I didn’t know came on to me, and I kept trying the same things with men I liked and expecting a different result. Yes, the definition of insanity. The guy I was crazy about was more interested now that I was slim and looking good, but he still had no desire for a long term relationship. I cringe with shame now when I think back on how I let him treat me.
Then, on Valentine’s Day 1991 I got a call from the FAA. They told me that there was an opening at the Academy on March 14th and it was mine if I wanted it, but I only had 24 hours to make a decision. I went into work and asked a couple of my friends what I should do. All of them said I was crazy if I didn’t take it. But what finally made my decision is that I knew that I would continue to allow this cop to treat me badly if I stayed. I was basically obsessed with him. I knew that the only way to get him out of my system was to leave. And I realized that I would be starting at the FAA as a slim healthy woman and no one would know my history of weight problems. I called the FAA back and told them I’d be in Oklahoma City on March 14th.