There are two kinds of people. The one-meal-a-day types and the six-meal-a-day types. I’m the latter. I snack. Every few hours, I need to eat something, even if it is literally just a cherry tomato. I mention this because the New Year always brings about resolutions of healthier diets and lifestyles. For many of us, I’m hardly an exception. But even at 38 years old, I feel uneasy eating in front of people. Not only is it difficult to eat well when you don’t like sit-down square meals to begin with, but when you know you’ll be hungry in an hour but don’t want to eat again ‘so soon,’ it can be very anxiety-inducing. But why, you ask? You’re a grown up, you’re married and everything! Well, let me just tell you…

I was always a chubby kid, a big ol’ nine pound baby! I did my share of running and playing in the dirt when I was little, and was hardly that obese baby you see on the talk shows. But my parents felt the need to (what we now call) fat-shame me as I grew up. Yeah, I’m sure it stemmed from their divorce and constant need to get back at each other and use me in the process, but still. Telling a 10 year old that they are “fat and worthless” is hardly nice. My father was so bitchy about my weight that he would just not buy groceries. I suspect more as a punishment than as a genuine concern about my health. He would make me feel so bad, and reduce me to tears, about my weight that I would only eat after he went to bed. I would sneak food up to the privacy of my room, and eat in secret silence. That left dirty dishes though, and I couldn’t very well leave intake evidence in the sink, so 12 year old me, would leave the plate in my room until he would leave the house, then I could sneak it back down and wash it. But then he and his girlfriend would search my room, find dirty dishes, and explode about what a fat and dirty slob I was. Did he want to hear my explanation? That I was going to take them back to the kitchen, I just didn’t want him to know? Nope. I was the most terrible, evil, worthless, fat, waste of flesh ever. Never mind my protestations about why his girlfriend was searching through my fucking room and reading my diary.

And on this went for several years, this cycle of sneaking food, getting caught, not having groceries available for awhile. To this day, I feel guilty eating after my husband has gone to bed (I’m the night owl, so being up another several hours will make me hungry). I mean, how fucked up is that? I’m nearly 40 years old, and I STILL feel shame and guilt about eating when I’m hungry. I’m always telling him, “You’re a grown up, you don’t have to clean your plate, if you’re full then stop.” And yet I can’t take my own reasonable dietary advice. I feel terrible guilt when we go shopping and I put something in the cart and he innocently jokes about having just bought it last time. And I feel absolute anxiety when he gets up in the middle of the night and I’m sitting on the couch, reading and eating fruit. Fucking fruit! So, thanks. Thanks for giving me a fucking complex that requires twice-daily Xanax, Zoloft, constant guilt, sneak-eating in my own goddamned house, and a lifelong battle with zero self-esteem. The only thing worse than feeling that you’re worthless is thinking everyone thinks that, too. Because your parents told you so.