Patterns
I guess by now you’ve noticed a pattern. Text book? Maybe. I just knew that I was unhappy with how I was. With my quality of life. I just didn’t know how to change it.
Even though I was so close with my mom, I felt so far away from her. I think a big part of me always wanted to protect her. I knew how much she wanted kids, and I knew she would be beyond devastated if she ever lost one of us. I also know, some things she didn’t have any ideas on how to help me.
I know that if I had gone to her and said, “Mom, this is a serious problem and I want to change it.” She would have bent over backwards to help me. The problem, though, lay with me. I didn’t really know if I wanted to solve this problem. I felt, even as close to my mom as I was, she would judge me like she had inadvertently done with my diabetes. My dad already judged me in part thanks to his parents. My “friends” at school judged me. But food, it never did. It was always there. Waiting for me to come home. It became my parent, it became my security, it became what I needed to sustain life, but also the thing that I knew would one day help me end my life.
I was alone, except for food, and even food knew it.
I started dating this guy when I was in my mid-twenties. I had just called it off with a serious boyfriend — we had been engaged, we had been planning our wedding, but too late I found out, that he had been cheating on me. One of my good friends at the time knew that I needed to get my mind off of what had happened. So the day that I had picked out for my wedding day, we — ironically — went to her husbands cousins wedding.
It was just what I needed. The distraction, the ever flowing alcohol, the food — ugh the food!!! They were Hispanic, so the food was plentiful, flavorful, rich, juicy, the beer seemed to grow from the ground, and the tequila (my drink of choice) magically kept refilling in my shot glass. I was their “token white girl” in the family. I learned to speak spanglish, and they adored me for it. And I adored them.
I would come over, and my adopted abuelita would always, without fail, say something along the lines of “You look too skinny” “I made tamales” “I have a big pot of menudo, you want a bowl?” She would feed me all day, just like she would with everyone in the house. We were her “chiquito gorditas” and she loved us. And we all loved her.
(Back to the wedding)
That was when I met him. I didn’t even really notice him at first. He asked his cousin who I was. He spoke only Spanish, and I spoke only English. His cousin would translate for us for a time, but soon we started using google translate, texting back and forth all night (because the music was so loud that was the only way we could talk). He brought me drinks, he brought me food, he told me I was the most beautiful woman there. He said all the right things, and I was desperate enough to believe what he was telling me. He brought me food, and never told me I was eating too much. He danced with me. He sang to me. That night was amazing. He kept calling me his “reina”, his “queen”. He brought me food.
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It was a whirlwind type of relationship. It came in like a storm out at sea, the kind that sailors talk about “red sky’s at night, sailors delight, red skies in the morning sailors warning…” Well my mornings were as red as a glowing ember. I ignored the signs because I wanted so desperately to be loved. I let the ember ignite into what I was very sure was passion and adoration.
Promises of buying a house together were soon thrown around, talks of children. He already had a son. I adored his son. He also had an ex-wife. She insisted she was “still his wife”, which I didn’t know if it was a cultural thing, since she had been his “first”, or since she had given him a child? I didn’t know, but what I did know was he was MINE and I wasn’t going to let some crazy drunk “puta” try to camp on my territory.
In hindsight (like everything in life ends up being) I probably should have listened to what she had to say. I probably should have seen the giant wave of hell fire that followed in his path. I was desperate. I didn’t want to see what I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t want to know that he was such bad news for me.
After several months of our blazing romance, things started to change. He began to drink even more than he had before. All, and I do mean ALL, of his paycheck went to buying beer. He reeked of it. It literally seeped out of his pours, like soured olives that had been sitting in the sun. He went to his “primos” house — there was a central location that all the “homies” and “bachelors” hung out at — and would stay there until sometimes 1030–11 o’clock. He didn’t have a car, or even a valid license, so I would have to pick him up after I got off work, then I would have to drive him back to the house so he could go to his job at 430am. I barely had time to sleep. He hated if I went home and went back to bed after dropping him off. If he couldn’t get ahold of me, suddenly I was cheating. He wanted to control who I worked with. He began to judge my eating, saying I was getting too fat. He was mad I wasn’t pregnant already. At first it was yelling. Then it turned physical. The more he hit me, the more I ate. I began taking longer and longer lunch breaks so I could eat my fill of food before having to go back. I would eat before I picked him up at his primo’s house. Like a smoker, I began keeping mouthwash in my car. Gum in my purse. All so he wouldn’t know I had eaten.
A neighbor once saw him hit me, square in the face. My glasses had dug into my eye socket and I thought I would for-sure lose my eye. The neighbor got in the middle. Told him he was being disrespectful to me. You don’t treat your “esposa” (wife) like that, ever! He asked me if I was okay. I told him I was fine. That it had been my fault. Of course, after the neighbor had left, I had been accused of sleeping with the neighbor, too.
I had become isolated. My friend kicked me out of her apartment. I never saw my mom, or even talked to her after I had started dating him. We (him and I) had moved into my dad’s house, and it benefited him because my dad had just started dating again, so he was always gone. Nobody knew, but everybody knew. Black eyes were excused away, bruises on my arms were explained simply, breathing hurt but I never told a soul that my ribs had been cracked over and over again. I had to take some time off work after one terrible fight. He had gone so far as to accuse me of sleeping with my best friend. Yelling that I was “gay” because we had been holding hands. The reason — she was scared for me and didn’t want to let my hand go…She had hoped that I would tell him to get out of the car and stay there with her. He didn’t understand that. He didn’t care to understand that. He yelled, I yelled back. He raised his fist and I slapped him first, this time.
Have you ever seen a shark before they go in for the kill? Their eyes become completely 100% dilated so all you see is a black void. That was his eyes. I had never seen eyes like that before, and I never wanted to see them again. I was suddenly and very scared for my life.
I will never forget the force he used, grabbing my upper arms. The bruises lasted into months, instead of days or weeks. He pulled me towards him, and with every ounce of strength he had in his body, threw me into the front door. My back began to burn, and I began to cry. My legs buckled under my weight and I crumpled into a ball on the floor. I was scared to move, my back pulsed from top to bottom, the burning centered in the middle. He had broken my back. He didn’t care. He walked out, leaving me in the living room. After enough time had passed, I managed to crawl my way into the kitchen. I lifted myself from the floor, everything hurt. I opened the fridge and grabbed the tub of rocky road from the fridge. I knew my dad would be mad, it was his rocky road, but he was spending the weekend camping with his new girlfriend. I had time to replace it.
After that day, I had finally had enough. He had walked out on me, had taken MY car, and left to god only knows where. I laid myself in my bed, cradling the ice cream, and ate the whole thing. Eventually he called, I told him I wanted my keys and my car back. He had left them somewhere — I don’t even remember now. He walked out of my life and I was okay with that. I didn’t deserve to be loved by another human being. The love of my life, was once again, food.
Nobody would stand between me and food again. No matter what promises were made, no matter the joy and happiness I might feel at the time. Food was going to be my love. So, once again, the pattern of my vicious life cycle ensued. I cried, I ate, I hated. I cried, I ate, I hated. My pattern.
