"Signs of a Compulsive Eater"




Signs of a Compulsive Eater


Following is a list of the most common "symptoms" of the compulsive eater.


a.. Think about food a lot.


b.. Eat to relieve worry or stress.


c.. Continue to eat even after feeling sick from eating too much.


d.. Become anxious while eating.


e.. Daydream or worry while eating.


f.. Overeat.


g.. Eat too fast.


h.. Eat everything on the plate.


i.. Feel guilty when you eat.


j.. Eat secretly.


k.. Cannot eat one cookie, or any treat that you really like.
l.. Binge after a diet.


m.. Hunger makes you feel fearful and uncomfortable.


To your health!


Copyright © BellyBytes.com. All rights reserved.






Because I have had private message responses I am moving this from our old forum, with the latest update by an author who contacted me about her book:
Hello!

I hope that you don't mind me writing to you....My name is Anne Beattie, I live in South Shields, England, and I have suffered with various eating disorders and clinical depression for almost 30 years now, but thankfully I am a whole lot healthier these days and the worst days are past. I am writing to tell you of a book I have written about my experiences which will hopefully help others alot. It is called 'From Grey Soup to Gateau' and it has just been published by PublishAmerica, ISBN number 1-4137-2564-3, and it can be bought now from www.publishamerica.com, as well as Amazon and all major book stores both online and off. Alternatively it can be ordered from me directly at weebopeep2001@yahoo.com.

I know it sounds as if I am trying to push my book, which I am in some ways, but I am also passionate about helping others and want as many people with eating disorders and depression, and their loved ones to read my book and hopefully see a light at the end of the tunnel. I know what it is like to feel these feelings; the terror of eating, the cravings, the despair...and I have been able to express it all in this book.

It's not a happy ever after book but it is REAL and it shows that EDs can be lived through and that we can find happiness and balance again despite all the turmoil we have been through. I want as many people as possible to know about my book, so that more people know what it is REALLY like to be in the midst of anorexia or in the grips of depression.. I would be willing to send you more excerpts from my book if necessary and any other information you need. I really want to feel as if I am connecting with others who maybe don't have a way to voice their feelings as yet - I feel a deep need to help, just as I wish someone had been there to help me when I was at my worst.

Please contact me at weebopeep2001@yahoo.com if you feel you can help me in any way, maybe adding my book to your resource list, anything at all. I have added some details about myself and the book below and hope they make you want to read more!

Thank you very much,
Yours sincerely,
Anne Beattie

book website ; http://www.greysoup.tk

FROM GREY SOUP TO GATEAU by ANNE BEATTIE


About the author……."Anne Beattie was born in England in 1961 and was abandoned by her parents in a railway station at the age of seven months. Adopted by her grandparents and raised in a troubled family, she developed anorexia nervosa at the age of sixteen, and bulimia nervosa, compulsive overeating and depression over the following years. She struggled alone through her illnesses and developed a way of coping with life that has enriched her life and hopefully the lives of others. This story shows how the seeds of the eating disorders were sown, details her fight to overcome them all and is a story of hope for all those who fight similar battles.

Anne lives in Newcastle, England, with her 15 year old daughter whom she teaches at home."


Synopsis of book……. The six chapters of this 184 page book depict the experiences of Anne Beattie, from her first few months of life to the year she wrote this book at the age of forty. The book tells of her troubled background as seen through the eyes of Anne herself, written from the point of view of the child as each event happened . The whole book is in the first person and it draws the reader through every experience as if they were travelling that road themselves.

It gives a detailed and emotional insight into eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and compulsive overeating, as well as clinical depression and the long term after effects of a traumatic childhood. It will help those who are going through any of the traumas that Anne experienced, as well as helping their families, friends and the medical professionals involved comprehend what are often very misunderstood illnesses.



Author of 'FROM GREY SOUP TO GATEAU'
http://www.greysoup.tk

…
INTRODUCTION.


Up until last night I had the introduction to this book all nicely written and had been quite happy with it too …and then I sat down and watched a documentary about a young girl with anorexia nervosa on the TV. I didn’t expect too much from the programme at first, as I usually discover that documentaries about eating disorders only seem to skim the surface of the REAL problems involved. I may not be an expert on much in life, but, having had one eating disorder or another for all of my adult life, I can claim to know a little of what I am talking about here! However, my reaction after watching this programme really surprised me, and warranted scrapping the first introduction and starting all over again! Not something I like to do either, being somewhat of a lapsed perfectionist!

I went to bed soon after the programme ended and simply couldn’t sleep for the anger I felt welling up inside me. Anger that nobody seemed to be asking this girl how she felt; how everyone just seemed to be focusing on the food issues and not the underlying reasons for her illness; that nobody just held her close and told her how much they loved her and how very special she was. Of course, they may have done that off camera, but I wanted her parents to do it there and then, to show other parents, other carers, that love and affection and validation was as much a part of recovery as feeding tubes (yuk) and calorie charts.

This particular anorexic girl’s illness followed a familiar pattern and was all too similar to my own story - she went through periods of losing dramatic amounts of weight, being hospitalised, gaining enough weight to satisfy the doctors so they would allow her to go home, and then losing it all again. When she was back at home, her parents watched her eating her meals like a hawk; they seemed to measure their approval for her by how many potatoes she ate that meal, or how much cereal she poured out for herself, when it was obvious to me that her very soul was crying out for love and attention.

There was even a psychiatrist on the programme who had the audacity to say;

“Well, of course, we really don’t know how anorexics FEEL when they eat…” and I wanted to scream at the TV;

“ASK THEM THEN!!!!!!” and in fact my 12 year old daughter picked up on that very omission and said the words for me. How could SHE see that blindingly obvious fact and not some eminent psychiatrist? God, it made me so mad!!

You see, it’s not about food at all. Oh yes, food disturbance is the symptom that shows and is the symptom that must be treated when life is threatened, but there is so much more to it than that. I didn’t realise that myself for years, and I kept on trying to solve my eating problems when there was an absolute maelstrom of feelings swirling around underneath. The thing is, I couldn’t say at the time what those feelings were, but now I CAN. And this is the main reason I have written this book…

When you are in the grip of anorexia, bulimia or compulsive overeating, you aren’t always able to put words to your feelings and emotions as they are so powerful and all consuming that you turn to the food in order to take away the pain of those feelings. It took me years before I could acknowledge the tremendous fear that I lived with day after day; the anger, the guilt, the deep pain and sadness, the feelings of rejection and being so unworthy that I shouldn’t even inhabit my space on this earth. I lived with those feelings for as long as I can remember, from being a small child, but I had no words for them, and food was my comfort, my control in this crazy and hurtful world, and my one true friend that never went away.

That sounds dramatic, but eating disorders ARE dramatic. They are life threatening. Twenty per cent of all anorexics die. It is an incredibly sad fact. And the ones who live on go through absolute hell on earth. The bulimics go through another kind of torture again, and the compulsive eaters live with self-hate and self-disgust every day of their lives. It is no way to live. It is no way to BE. As a people we need to change our attitudes towards our children, so that they grow up with a healthy self-esteem and never need to grasp desperately onto eating disorders or any other kinds of addiction to find their validation or their escape. We are obsessed these days with material possessions, with monetary gain, with stature in society – what we DO has become so much more important than who we ARE. And all the while we ignore the human beings inside the suits or the uniforms we wear. We tend to give children our love and attention more because they do well in exams or acquire a prestigious job than because of the wonderful people that they are. We are sowing the seeds for poor self-worth and terribly low self-esteem on a mass scale when we live this way. There then follows a need to reach out for external comfort, whether it be in food, alcohol, gambling, whatever …all these addictions have a very similar root cause

This book is MY voice. I don’t speak for anyone other than myself, but this is what eating disorders were like for ME. This is where MY eating problems came from and how they progressed and what lay beneath them, and maybe my words will strike a chord in the hearts of other sufferers who have not found their voice yet. Maybe my words will help someone who is close to a person with an eating disorder to see them from a different point of view and be able to help them more. Maybe my words will stop another professional saying;

“Of course, we don’t know how they FEEL.”

This is how I felt. It may be how other people in similar positions feel too, it may not be, but at least it can be a starting point for discussion; i.e., Is THIS how you feel? Have you ever felt pain like THIS?

We need to talk to our children more, we need to see who they are, we need to look at ALL they are, not just the academic side of them or the parts that achieve, but every little quirk of their personality and we need to love them all unconditionally. We need to nurture them, protect them when needs be, tell them how special they are and make them feel like when the time comes, their wings are strong enough to take them out into the world and allow them to follow their dreams.

That kind of love is food for the soul – I wish to God I had had that when I was growing up, and then I wouldn’t have been left with this gaping hole inside that I can never seem to fill. Maybe…just maybe, writing this book will help to do just that, and will tie up some loose ends for me, and hopefully for you as well. If you are going through an eating disorder right now, my heart is with you and you are not alone. You CAN get through this, you really can, and there is untold happiness on the other side, but there is also a whole lot of crap to get through along the way!!!! It is worth it though, it really is. Keep going, hold your head up high and know that you ARE so very worthy of your place on this earth. Nobody else can be a better YOU than YOU, and never ever forget that……

CHAPTER ONE ; SOWING THE SEEDS.


Every word that I have written in this book is true and really happened in my weird and wonderful life. It may not have happened at the exact time that I have said it did, mainly because my memory for dates isn’t THAT good, but my memory for feelings and situations is as clear as ever. I have changed the names of many of the people involved and I dare say there are people in my life who will come and tell me that ‘this bit isn’t true’ and so on. But, do you know what?? I don’t care!! This story is bigger than mere facts and needs telling in all its glory – or otherwise!! The incredibly severe diet which led to my anorexia, then to bulimia, then to compulsive overeating and depression, and my many other self-destructive habits began on February 23rd 1978; that date will be etched in my mind forever. But the seeds that flourished inside me and made this whole crazy lifetime possible were planted a long time before that, from birth even. An eating disorder certainly doesn’t just appear overnight, and neither will it disappear without a whole lot of love and nurturing.

Anyway…. here goes, here is MY story…..GULP!!


THE BABY CRIES…


The baby’s weakening cries can be heard right across the park that night, but they largely go ignored by the inhabitants of this small cluster of caravans. It has been heard so many times before after all – always on an evening; always after the young Canadian comes back from whatever he does during the day. No one seems to know where he goes or what he does, but it obviously can’t pay very well or else no way would he and his pitiful family be living in this run-down caravan park, usually reserved for those that have nowhere better to go….

It’s exactly the same pattern every night – the baby starts to cry – she’s only little, maybe six or seven months old, and she’s probably only crying for her food like all babies do. She certainly doesn’t cry any more than any other infant, but maybe the young Canadian doesn’t know that. Neither does his wife, it seems, for her voice is often raised in anger at the baby as well, but it is always the father who ends up pushing the pram outside. He opens the door, and takes the pram, with the screaming baby still inside, as far from the caravan as he can go before he reaches the perimeter fence. His dark face is contorted with rage. He looks as if he would gladly push the pram to the ends of the earth if it meant he could be rid of his daughter for good. The rusty and broken perimeter fence is never far enough away for him.

It is pitch black outside at this time of night and there are no streetlights to brighten up the park. The wind is bitingly cold and the young Canadian huddles up inside his jacket as he puts the brake on the pram and walks away. If you crept up to peek inside the pram right there and then, you would see a tiny red face, eyes all screwed up, fists tight with rage. Her little body is moving furiously beneath the faded covers. Her hands would be freezing cold to the touch and her cries would grow hoarser by the minute as her strength ebbs away. Eventually she will give up her crying; no one will come, they never do.

Is she frightened as she opens her eyes for a moment and sees nothing but a sheet of blackness in front of her? Does she realise that she is all alone? What does she think and feel as she lies there for an hour, sometimes more, usually falling asleep at last, despite the constant gnawing in her stomach? Has she already become resigned to her cries going unanswered? Does she know that she will never come first in the lives of her young and incapable parents? Have the seeds already been sown; the seeds that will give her a lifetime of vulnerability, neediness and fear? Will she close her eyes each night of her life thereafter and feel the darkness enfolding her, the never-ending darkness with its unknown fears? I wonder……

I can hear the raised voices, the crying of the mother as she weeps in the utter despair of her miserable existence. I can hear the hysterical voice of the young Canadian as he fights to maintain his number one ranking in this wretched family. He refuses to be ousted by a needy baby – no way. I can hear that baby’s cries, I feel the cold on her fingers and I can see the blackness that covers her tiny world. I feel the hunger, I sense the fear…it is all mine…

For that baby was me…and I am her….and this is my life…..



FOUR YEARS OLD.


I am four years old and I am waiting quietly in a huge long corridor that never seems to end in a big brown building in the middle of the town. Nanna and Granpa sit on either side of me and nobody speaks. I have no idea what we are waiting for but I get the feeling that it is very important and that I should be very good. Nanna and Granpa both look very serious and when they talk to each other, they do it very quietly and with their faces turned away from me so that I can't see. It is a bit scary. I wish I knew what was happening.

A lady comes out of a brown door opposite us and asks us to follow her and we all go into an enormous room where we are told to sit down in front of a huge desk. There is a man sitting behind it, wearing glasses and looking very cross. Why is everyone so frowny today?

I sit there, feeling smaller and smaller all the time, and wonder if people have forgotten I am there, but then I hear my name being spoken by the man, except he isn’t saying it right. He is calling me Sylvia Anne R and that isn’t me anymore. That is the me that I was when I was a baby but now I’m Anne H and that is something completely different. I don’t like being called Sylvia. It isn’t me at all. It is my Mummy’s name and I hate it.

And then before we know it, we have to go back outside again and whatever has happened is all over. I look up at Granpa and he tells me that I have just been adopted. What does that mean, I want to know? It means that you are ours now, he tells me. You are our child, and you are going to live with us till you are grown up. And then we go home.

**

I still don’t really understand what ‘adopted’ means as I have always lived with Nanna and Granpa. I can’t remember ever being with anyone else and I just thought I would always live with them anyway. I didn’t know I had to be ‘adopted’ to be allowed to live with them. I know I have a Mummy, who lives with my two little sisters, Gayle and Diane, but I don’t think I ever had a Dad. Nobody ever talks about one anyway.

Maybe now Nanna and Granpa are my Mummy and Daddy. I ask them because I would love to have someone to call Mummy and Daddy, but they say No. Everyone is still the same as they used to be. Nothing will change. I still call Nanna and Granpa ‘Nanna and Granpa’, and I still call my Mummy ‘Mummy’. So what is different? I don’t know. It’s all a little bit confusing to me…

**

Sometimes I am a bit naughty, well….quite a lot naughty, I suppose. Sometimes I feel cross and I don’t know why and I shout and scream and cry a lot and Nanna and Granpa chase me round the room and smack me and tell me I am bad. Sometimes Nanna tells me that if I’m not good I will be put away in a big room that has no doors, no windows and no way out at all. I see that room in my head all the time. It is a white room with a very high ceiling, but not a very big room, and I sit in the middle, looking up and trying to find even the smallest crack in those shiny white walls. There is no way out, and my inquisitive mind can’t help but wonder how I got in there in the first place. How could I get in if there were no doors and no windows? In spite of that, I know that this place exists and that if I am naughty too much more I will go there and nobody will ever hear me cry.

Years later I ask Nanna about this place and ask why she told me that awful story, obviously a lie. She says she doesn’t ever recall saying anything remotely like that to me, yet it is still so clear in my head. Even now, all these many years later, I can see that little girl in the middle of that cold, sterile room, and I can feel the absolute fear of abandonment and the hopelessness of never being found and never being heard. Maybe Nanna simply doesn’t remember or maybe it is a place that has been imprinted on my mind in other ways. Who knows? All I know for sure is that this sealed white room was part of my waking nightmares for a long time when I was little and I was terrified I would really go there…




FIVE YEARS OLD.


I am only five years old but I seem to be so much bigger than the other kids, even the older ones in the school. I am tall and I am fat as well. Nobody else seems to look like me at all. I feel so very different from everyone else.

Today I am standing on my own in the middle of the playground, whilst the other kids run around about me, shouting to each other and playing games like Tig and What Time Is It, Mr Wolf? I want to play too, but I’m too scared to ask. I am really shy and it is hard to ask if I can play. Nobody pays much attention to me anyway…

…that is, until the horrible boy in the long, brown duffle coat comes over to where I am standing and starts right pointing at me and laughing.

“Look at her!” he shouts to his friend, and his friend laughs as well. They are both seven, I think. I have seen them sitting in the seven-year-olds place in assembly. They’re only about as tall as I am, but I’m still really scared because they look pretty mean and I don’t know what they will do to me.

“Fatso! Fatso!” the duffle coat boy shouts loudly straight at me. His friend comes right up beside me and nips my arm between his fingers, which really hurts and I try to pull away but he has hold of me quite tightly.

“Yuk! Feel all this fat.” He says, and they are both pinching me now, over and over. My anorak isn’t very thick and I can feel every single pinch. At the same time, they shout right into my face;

“Fatso! Piggy! Fatso! Piggy…”

Other children hear them and come over to join in as well, and I can’t shut out the sound of their voices, even when I put my hands tightly over my ears. They just shout even louder anyway and then they try to pull my hands away so I can hear them again.

I don’t cry though. I WON’T cry, even though I really really feel like it. I don’t want them to make fun of me for THAT, too. And so I just stand there with my eyes squeezed tight shut so I can’t see their horrible, mean faces, and I keep my hands pressed on my ears as much as I can, and I hum to myself too – not a song though, just one long low hum so that I can drown out some of their nasty words.

Then the bell rings for the end of playtime and they all run off inside as if nothing has happened. I still keep my eyes tightly shut until it all goes completely silent around me and then I go inside too and get told off by the teacher for being late. My arms hurt from all the nipping and my eyes are sore from squeezing away the tears. And now the teacher doesn’t like me either, and calls me lazy and says I should have run faster to get into the classroom on time. The other kids laugh and say I can’t run because I am too fat, but the teacher tells them to be quiet and to get on with their work. I wish so much that I could just run out of the door and go home. I hate it here so much.

…The next playtime is just the same, and the next, and the next. Different kids join in each time as they discover the new game. That’s all it is to them - a fun game. I know I should ask a grown up for help, but I daren’t say anything to anyone at all, and the teacher on duty in the playground never seems to notice or else thinks I am all part of the game as well. Can’t she see that I’m not having fun here at all?

I don’t even tell Nanna or Granpa at home. I go back to them every day at three ‘o’ clock and when Nanna asks if I have had a good day, I just say Yes and she doesn’t ask any more, so I don’t tell her any more. She would just be cross anyway. She always makes me a cup of tea in my teddy bear mug when I come home and gives me some biscuits to dip into my tea, which I really love doing. She gives me two biscuits to start with, but I always ask for another and another because I like them so much. They seem to make everything better, even if it’s only for a little while…



SIX YEARS OLD.


I really think that breakfast is my most favourite part of the day. I feel all little and cosy and safe somehow when I am eating my breakfast. I eat just the same food in the exact same way every day and I never ever want it to change.

I have a little yellow wooden stool to sit on that Granpa made by himself, and in front of me I have a bigger yellow wooden stool which is kind of like my table. On top of the bigger stool is a little tin tray, which now has a very faded picture of Mary on it – you know, the one in the nursery rhyme who had a little lamb. But it is a very old tray – I think it used to be my Mummy’s – and it has been washed so much that Mary and her lamb have very nearly disappeared. If I squint hard enough with my eyes mostly shut I can just about see where she is though. That’s what I do whilst Nanna makes my cup of tea in a morning. I trace round the outside of the lamb and then try to find Mary’s face. Then Nanna brings me my breakfast, which is always four biscuits from her big tin on the cabinet. It’s always the same, and I love it.

Some of my favourite biscuits are called Safety First and they have all different road signs on them, which I always look at before I eat them. I don’t like it if I have two the same and I ask Nanna to swap them for different ones. My other favourites are called Sports biscuits and they have pictures on as well, of people doing all kinds of sports, and they have to be different too.

Sometimes Nanna will give me extra biscuits if I natter at her enough, but not all the time. It depends what mood she is in. I always dip them in my tea - I never just eat them as they are. I love the way they go all soft and kind of melt inside my mouth and I don’t like them so much when they are hard and crunchy. Sometimes I leave them in the tea too long by mistake and Nanna has to give me a spoon to fish the soggy biscuit out with. I even eat that, as I never want to waste any part of my breakfast.

This is my lovely, warm time of the day before I have to go out to school. I like it even better on the dark winter mornings. I feel as if I am in my own little safe world, sitting on my little yellow stool with my Mary tray, my tea and my biscuits. I am warm, I am safe, and I wish I could stay there forever and never have to go outside at all….



SEVEN YEARS OLD.


I am so scared and so embarrassed and so ashamed of myself that I want to run away and hide somewhere where no one will ever find me. I am seven and a half years old and I have noticed that two small bumps are beginning to grow on my chest. I don’t know what they are as no one else in my class has them. No other children have them anyway, only the teacher and I am sure I am far too young to have THEM. I think I may be ill or something and I am so afraid that something bad is happening to me. What if I’m going to die?

Nanna sees me trying to cover myself up the next time I am having my bath and she says I am starting to ‘develop’, but I don’t know what she means at all. Developing what? What does develop mean anyway?

“You’re starting to get a bust.” she explains to me and then SHE looks really embarrassed too, and she looks away from me and gets busy finding my towel so that I can get out of the bath.

“But why am I getting a bust NOW?” I ask her, even more frightened than I was before. I thought it might be something the doctors could make go away and then I would be okay again, not a BUST – not something that older people have.

“I’m only seven, Nanna! Nobody else has bumps like me in my class, or even in my whole year. They’ll all laugh at me even more now and call me a freak. A bust is for older girls, isn’t it, not little girls like me.”

But then I’m not really little, am I, and that is the problem…

Nanna says she’ll get me a nice bra next time she is at the shops but I’d rather die than wear a bra to school, so I tell her that, and she just tells me not to be silly and that it’s quite natural to develop and it had to happen someday. ALL girls end up wearing bras, and as soon as you start developing you have to wear one and that’s all there is to it. But I just can’t understand it. Why is this happening to me now? If it wasn’t such a freaky thing to happen, then other girls my age would have bumps as well, and they just don’t.

I want them to go away so badly. I try to push them back in again. I lie hard on my tummy against the floor and try to flatten them down. I even wrap some of Nanna’s bandages around my chest really tight and keep them on for ages. I would sleep in them if Nanna wouldn’t notice me putting them on, but it wouldn’t make much difference anyway because as soon as I take the bandages off the bumps are there again and they never disappear. I just don’t know what else to do except cry and cry and cry…and wish and hope that they will go by themselves.

…. It is PE today and I am so very scared that someone will notice my bumps. Nanna hasn’t got me a bra yet, thank goodness, so no one will see that, but we have to do PE in our vest and pants and my bumps show up quite a lot under my vest.

One girl, horrible Amanda Brown, is my partner when we have to do throwing and catching and she looks right at me and asks me what I have got stuffed down my vest. I have no idea what to say her at all and so I blurt out the very first thing that comes into my head.

“It’s my lunch.” I tell her and she seems to believe me for some reason, even though I know I wouldn’t believe it myself. She doesn’t say anything else about it then, but she keeps on staring at my chest, and when we have finished PE and go to get changed, I see her whispering to Jenny and Sally, and soon they are looking across at me and giggling behind their hands. I get changed as quickly as I can and rush back to class but I know I have gone all red and I feel like bursting into tears. At that moment if I had a pair of scissors I would cut off my bumps just so that I could be like the other girls and not feel like such an alien, but of course I can’t do that and they will never go away again. Nanna told me that for sure. They are here to stay, whatever I do.

From that day on I hate PE, I hate school, I hate those horrible girls, but most of all I hate my cruel, cruel body for all the tricks it is playing on me. I hate myself for being so different. I never ever want to ‘develop’ – I want to stay a little girl forever and ever and never ever grow up…

**

I hate the darkness. I hate my bedroom. I hate the night. I am so terrified of the blackness around me when Nanna puts out the light at night and I lie there rigid in my bed, just willing myself to fall asleep or wishing the night would fly by and it would be morning again. But the nights never go fast, no matter how hard I wish them to.

Nanna says there is nothing to be afraid of in the darkness, and she makes me look around my room before she switches the light off to prove there is nothing there. I know there is never anything there in the daylight, it is just when all the lights are out that things come. But she doesn’t believe me because she can’t see anything, and only I can. It’s not ghosts or anything, or at least I don’t think it is. And it’s nothing to do with what I watch on TV or read in books, although I am very afraid of the Daleks on Dr Who. No, I don’t know where all these scary things come from and so it is hard to explain to anyone, especially to Nanna.

You see, I have these ‘little pictures’ which float around my room in the darkness all by themselves. Nanna says I am just imagining them and it is because I read too many stories and think too much about things. People even laugh about it sometimes and my ‘little pictures’ have become a kind of family joke, as if they don’t really matter, but they are so very scary to me. Even when I close my eyes really tight shut, these pictures are still there. Sometimes it can be a person or an animal or just an object, but I can see them clearly with my eyes and in my head and they only go away when they want to. I don’t seem to have any control over them at all.

One night I see a man sitting by my bed, just sitting there, not even looking at me, and I try with all my might to make him disappear but he just won’t go away until he is ready. I can’t move at all, I can never go through to Nanna and Granpa’s bedroom because they will be cross, and besides, I am far too frightened to even climb out of bed. So each night I go through this torment until I eventually fall asleep and when I wake up and it is finally daylight I am so incredibly relieved that I have got through the night safely once more.

Then one day I realise that my ‘little pictures’ have just gone, all on their own. I even stare into the darkness and see if I can find them again just to make sure, but they are most definitely gone. The fear of the darkness is still there and will be for many years to come, but at least the pictures have gone. I don’t know where or how, but they never come back again.

About twenty-five years later, I am staying at my mother’s house with my daughter who is about the same age as I was then, and lying there in our beds in the darkness we are talking about the day. Then she tells me about a picture that she can see floating in the black room. Describe it to me, I ask her calmly, but my heart is thumping in my chest as I wonder what is to come. She tells me about a beautiful horse pulling a golden carriage and she describes it in such immense detail and with absolutely no fear in her voice at all. Instead, there is more of a sense of wonderment in her that she can see such beautiful things in the darkness.

I am truly amazed. I have never ever told her about my own ‘little pictures’ and now she sees them too. What else do you see, I want to know? Tell me about them? So she tells me about the people, the animals and the objects she can see in her room every night, just floating around in the darkness, and I listen in awe. She has no fear at all, they are just something that happens in her life and she accepts them as normal. I tell her I had them too, and it is yet another seal on the close bond we share. But what thrills me even more is the fact that they do not frighten her at all and that she can tell me about them without fear of being ridiculed or disbelieved, and that darkness to her means nothing more than night-time…



EIGHT YEARS OLD.

Granpa is still at work tonight, at the metal smelting factory – at least I think that’s what it’s called, but I don’t really know what it means. I know he is a boss and he took me to his office once which looked really big and grand but I don’t really know what he does. Some days he doesn’t come home until after I am in bed and other days he works from very early in the morning and is here when I come home from school. But today he goes to work in the afternoon and it is just Nanna and I tonight for our tea.

Nanna has this huge box of chocolates up on her shelf that Granpa gave her for her birthday back in June and every night she gets it down for us to have two each after our tea. It is one of those really big flat boxes of chocolates with a lovely picture on the front of it and only one massive layer of chocolates inside, and when Nanna gets it down from the shelf and puts it onto the table so we can choose what we’d like, it seems to fill the whole table top. My eyes grow wide as I look across the sea of chocolates and Nanna usually ends up getting cross because I take far too long to choose the two that I really want. It is so very important to me that I find the exact right two that I’d like or else the rest of the night will feel kind of wrong. I don’t know why - that is just the way it is. But Nanna doesn’t know this and sometimes when she is cross because I take too long, she just hands me the first two she comes to and puts the box away quickly. I can only sit there looking up at the shelf, wishing I could just climb right up and swap the chocolates for the right ones, but I know that Nanna would go mad if she ever found me doing that, so I just have to make do with what I have. Those nights aren’t so good though.

Tonight when she puts the chocolate box down on the table and I see the fluffy white cat on the lid, I stop what I’m doing straight away and come across to see what is left.

“Not many to choose from now,” Nanna says, opening it up and showing me the contents. “Only six there now, so that’s two each for you, Granpa and me.”

“But Granpa isn’t here, “I point out. “We could have three each, you and I.”

“Don’t be so greedy,” Nanna tells me. “Granpa can have his two when he comes home. Now choose the ones you want and don’t take too long about it.”

I still take ages to choose, even though there are so few of them to pick from, but at last I take the strawberry cream and the caramel cup. Nanna picks the Turkish delight and the hazelnut truffle. We’ve left the chewy nougat one and the orange cream for Granpa.

I eat my two chocolates so very slowly – nibbling round the edges to make them last as long as I can, like I always do. I take the tiniest bites possible, but even so, they are both soon gone. They never last long enough. My eyes wander back to the table where the box still sits with its lid on, waiting for Granpa to come home later. Nanna said it wasn’t worth putting it back on the shelf with only two sweets in it, and that I can have the picture of the fluffy white cat on the lid once the box is empty. But I don’t want the picture….I want those two chocolates that are left, and I want them so badly that when I go back to reading my book, I can’t seem to read the words at all, and I can’t stop thinking about the chocolates, still sitting there in their box. I have a drink of orange juice, and then a drink of water. I watch TV, I go to my room and play with my toys, but still I can’t get the chocolates out of my head. I know they are Granpa’s, but I do so wish they were mine.

I feel as if my whole head is going to explode soon as the thoughts build up and up inside. So I go up to Nanna in the kitchen and take a deep breath, then say,

“Do you think I could just have one more chocolate, please? Just one?”

“You know full well there are only two left and they’re for Granpa.” is her reply and she turns back to the washing up at the sink. But I can’t just leave it at that. Something inside me is gnawing away and it feels as if something terrible will happen if I don’t have those chocolates right now.

“Please, “I ask again. “Granpa won’t mind. He probably doesn’t even know they are there. Please can I?”

I don’t just want the chocolates now, it’s as if I really NEED them. I HAVE to have them or…or what? I don’t know, but I have this awful feeling that it will be bad. So I natter on and on at Nanna, and in the end she really loses her patience with me and tells me to ‘have the blasted chocolates then if I have to.”

I hate it when she is cross with me, but right now I don’t care. She has said Yes. I take the sweets out of the box quickly before she changes her mind and then go back to my chair in the corner of the room and hide behind my book. I nibble my way around the edges of the chocolates as I did with my own two, but these sweets don’t taste as good as I thought they would. Because now I feel so guilty about taking Granpa’s chocolates that I simply can’t enjoy them the same, even though I know I had to have them. Now he won’t have any for himself when he comes home and it’s all because of me. Nanna is cross with me because I am so greedy, and Granpa doesn’t have his sweets any more. I am an absolutely greedy pig, and I am a really horrible person. I know I am…

I finish the chocolates because I have to now that I have them. I couldn’t leave them even if they were poisonous, because I made such a fuss about having them, but I feel so very bad inside and I wish I never even seen the rotten box tonight.

I am eight years old and I have just discovered the power that food can have in my life. It can make you feel oh, so happy but it can also make your heart feel full of tears…

****

One of my very first best friends is called Carrie. We are in the same class at school together and she has this lovely, big family which I would love to be a part of. She has two big sisters and a Mum and Dad and lots of dogs and there is always something going on in her house. I just love spending time there.

Carrie and I spend our dinner times together as well and it is with her that I discover what is to be a secret and shameful pastime of mine for many years to come….shoplifting, stealing, thieving, whatever you want to call it. It is shameful whatever the name and it is my most well kept secret over many years and the part of me that I hate the very most.

One lunchtime Carrie and I are in the newsagents shop just a minutes walk away from my house, the one that delivers Nanna’s papers every day, the one where I am known by my name as I am in there just about every day. The newsagent is a foreign man and he speaks in a way that I can’t always understand. He is very tall and a little scary but he has always been nice to me and sometimes he gives me sweets for nothing.

This particular day, for no real reason apart from a dare, we wait until his back is turned and then we steal two packets of the football stickers from his shelves and we leave the shop as fast as we possibly can. We haven’t got very far away from the shop though, and we are just starting to open the packets of stickers when we hear a loud voice behind us. It is the newsagent, Mr Jasper, hurrying after us, waving his arms in the air and shouting for all to hear. I panic and throw the stickers into the nearest garden but it is much too late and he has seen them and picks them up again. He shouts and shouts and it all becomes a blur to me, as I am so terrified of what will happen now. He is going to tell Nanna, he says, I should be ashamed of myself, Carrie too, although he doesn’t shout at her as much as he doesn’t know her. I am nothing better than a common thief. I am bad, I am no good, I am a disgrace to my family. He says more and more things like that until he has had enough and lets us go. We wander slowly back to school and I spend my afternoon terrified of what is to come when I go home. I don’t even know why I took the stickers…football means nothing to me. It was just something to take, that’s all. For no reason, just something I wanted to do at that moment.

Nanna is waiting for me when I get home and she looks so angry I want to run away there and then. So he has told her…I kind of hoped he would change his mind, but no. Why did I do it? She shouts at me…What did I want them for anyway? Didn’t I get enough pocket money to buy whatever I needed? How could I do this to her and Granpa after all they have done for me? I beg and beg her not to tell Granpa as I couldn’t bear him to know and she grudgingly agrees because she says it would break his heart if he knew, and that makes me feel even worse, if that is at all possible. I want to crawl away into a hole and die. I feel like the worst person on earth and I know I have done something so terribly wrong…

But….

At the very back of my mind another seed has been planted. When I took those stickers I experienced a few moments of what I can only describe now as ‘fullness’. I had something in my possession that I hadn’t had to give anything of myself to get. I had gained something without losing anything, and it didn’t matter what I had gained – the actual object was immaterial….the feeling inside was far more important. I didn’t realise it at the time but I had become hooked on stealing. I craved that feeling again and again, to feel full, even if only for a few minutes. It would override any knowledge that it was wrong, any fear of being caught, any guilt, any shame, anything at all. Nothing could compete with this desperate need inside me to fill that gaping hole in which ever way I could, and sadly, I had discovered at the age of eight, another very shameful and dangerous way of doing just that…



NINE YEARS OLD.

I am sitting on the toilet in the bathroom upstairs, shivering and shaking like a leaf. I am so afraid of what is happening that I simply can’t move at all or make a sound, and I just don’t know what I am going to do. You see, there is this awful blood coming out of me…coming out of my…I can’t even say it, but I know it must mean that there is something badly wrong with me and I have never been so afraid in the whole of my life. Have I cut myself without knowing? Is something wrong inside me? What have I done? What is happening to me? I am absolutely terrified.

I sit there for what seems like ages, shaking and crying, far too frightened to call out to Nanna because I don’t want her to see what is happening to me in case it is all my fault and she is cross with me. I’m so afraid I will get into trouble as I have made quite a mess on my clothes and I remember Nanna once saying that blood doesn’t wash out very well. I am even more afraid that something terrible is happening to me and a part of me feels that if I don’t know what it is, then it is somehow better. What if I am going to die? I could sit right here and just bleed to death and no one would know until they found me, would they? Is this my punishment for growing up too fast and developing too soon? Has my body stretched too much inside because of all the extra food I have been eating? Has something burst inside me? Am I going to bleed forever? I sit and silently cry and cry and cry some more…

In the end, Nanna shouts up the stairs to me and asks me what on earth I am doing up there as we are meant to be going out to the shops soon. I can’t even answer her because I am crying so much and making those horrible sobbing sounds that take your breath away and so she comes up the stairs to see what I am doing. She walks right into the bathroom and finds me still sitting there on the toilet, with a hanky stuffed into my mouth to stop me making any noise.

“What on earth…”she begins then she sees my bloodstained pants and says, “Oh, my God.” and looks as if she is going to faint or something.

I am convinced now that I am definitely going to die and I cry even more, but loudly now and I go towards Nanna for a hug. But she is busy raking in the back of the bathroom cupboard and she comes out with a plastic bag full of white towel-like things. She hands them to me and says;

“You’ll need one of these. But let’s get you cleaned up first.”

“What is it?” I ask, still so very afraid. “What is wrong with me?”

“It’s nothing to worry about, “Nanna tells me. “It happens to all young girls sooner or later. You just happen to be one of the sooner ones. It comes along every month and it keeps on going until you are just a bit younger than I am. It’s something that helps you have babies. Here…” she hands me one of the towels and I look at it, not knowing what in earth it is for. “Put this in your pants to catch the blood. Keep yourself clean.”

The towel thing is like a long piece of cotton wool and it feels very strange and uncomfortable between my legs. I don’t like it at all. I still don’t really understand what is going on inside my body and I wish I could ask Nanna more questions, but she is getting busy with my dirty clothes, soaking them in the sink, and she has her ‘don’t interrupt me just now’ face on and I daren’t say anything else.

I just go over and over in my head what she has told me. Every month? For how many days every month? All the time? Just a few? And my tummy hurts now as well. Is that normal? Will it always be that way? My head is buzzing with unanswered questions and I feel as if I have become a whole new person in the space of a few minutes. I don’t feel like a little girl any more. I don’t feel like ME anymore.

Nanna says she will find me a book about what is happening to me. They are called ‘periods’, these times when I will bleed, which is a funny name to call such a horrible thing, and she also says that I can ask Aunty if I want to know anything else right now. Aunty is a better person to talk about such things, she tells me. She is kind of like a big sister to me. She is twelve years older than me and is Nanna’s youngest daughter and she knows all about these things. She has a little baby and she lives with us now. I like Aunty a lot.

There are certain things I must do though, Nanna tells me, when I have these ‘periods’. I must never let Granpa know that they are happening, and when I have used these pads I must wrap them up tightly in toilet paper and burn them on the coal fire in the living room, but only when Granpa isn’t in the room. I have to wait until he isn’t there as he must never know what is happening and must never see what I am doing. I don’t know why he can’t know…it must really be something quite shameful.

It is a big secret that I can’t tell anybody else about. Only me, Nanna and Aunty will know. It feels as if it is something bad, especially when Nanna tells Aunty about me later in the day and I hear Aunty saying ‘but she’s so young! It shouldn’t have started just yet, should it? ”

Once again I feel as if my body is doing something that it shouldn’t be doing and somehow that it is my fault. I must be doing something wrong to make all these horrible things happen to me – first the developing and now these awful periods. Aunty tells me they are a natural part of becoming a woman but how can I be turning into a woman when I am only nine? I am a freak, that is what I am. I bet none of the other girls at school even know about periods, never mind have them themselves. Aunty says they are all to do with babies, but I don’t need a baby at my age, and I am so scared that one will start to grow inside me. These periods don’t belong in my life, they are dirty and horrible, painful and shameful, and I hate my body for doing this to me. I hate myself for being the sort of person this happens to and I wish I was anybody else but me, I really do…I want to curl up in a cave somewhere and never ever come out again. I want to go back to being little…



TEN YEARS OLD.

I am ten years old, lying in the blackness of my room and my imagination is running riot again. I cannot sleep for imaginary scenarios of all the awful things that could possibly happen in my life playing in my head like a non stop film. I don’t know why I am thinking of these bad things tonight. I don’t mean to scare myself this way but it is as if my brain is just running away on its own and I haven’t got the power to stop it thinking these awful things.

Right now I am going through what it would be like if Granpa died. What would our lives be like? How would we cope? Would we have enough money? How much would I miss him? How much do I love him? How much does he love me? The thoughts go around and around and I can’t stop them, even if I try very hard to think of absolutely nothing. What feels worse is that there is a part of me which actually likes having these thoughts – a part of me feels that if something bad happened in my life, than maybe someone would actually pay attention to me and be nice to me. Maybe I would be noticed, maybe someone would feel sorry for me and put their arms round me and say all those lovely things you see people saying on the TV when someone is sad. I crave this attention and love so much that I try to imagine all the possible ways it would come to me, no matter how horrible it may seem. I create these nightmares for myself and then wish they would go away. I seem to be my own worst enemy.

* * *

Six months later it is a foggy Wednesday evening at the beginning of December. I usually go to a choir practice in a local church after school on a Wednesday but Nanna has sent a message across to the school to tell me to come straight home because of the fog. It is so thick outside now and the night looks so ghostly and scary. I am glad I don’t have to go out anymore.

Granpa is ill in bed as he often is at this time of the year. He gets a lot of chest infections in the cold weather and I have grown used to visiting him in bed, and I like to snuggle up to him and feel the ‘prickles’ that grow on his chin after he hasn’t shaved for a few days. Most years he is poorly over Christmas and my birthday and the New Year as well, and sometimes I get mad at him in my head because Nanna says I can never have a birthday party when Granpa is ill in bed, and I SO want a proper birthday party one day.

This particular Wednesday Granpa gets worse and worse and I am not allowed to go and sit with him as he is coughing so much. In the end Nanna calls an ambulance and I have to sit in the front room and keep out of the way. The whole scene that follows that night remains etched in my mind like a scene from a Halloween movie – the foggy atmosphere outside only adding to the spookiness and the fear that surrounds the whole night.

Nanna and Granpa hardly ever have anyone else in their house but family, as they don’t seem to have many friends and so it is strange to see the two large ambulance men in their dark uniforms enter the house by the front door. That is odd in itself because hardly anyone ever uses the front door, and so it is stiff when it is opened and makes a funny noise.

When they come back down the stairs a few minutes later, they are carrying Granpa on a stretcher between them and he is all wrapped up in blankets. All I can see is his face and his eyes are closed as if he is asleep. I peek out from the doorway and wish I could go up and speak to him but I know Nanna would be cross, so I just watch as they take him out into the cold, grey night. Some of the fog from the garden curls into the house and I shiver in the biting cold. I hear the ambulance drive away and then there is silence.

Nanna stays at home with Ian and I. Ian is my cousin and he is only a baby. Aunty works night shifts at a hospital and Nanna looks after Ian on those nights. That means she can’t go to the hospital which is what she really wants to do, I can tell. I am sent off to bed and know no more until the morning, but from what I learn later on, Nanna decides that she has to go to be with Granpa after all. She calls a neighbour to look after Ian and I, she phones for a taxi, but before the taxi has even arrived the hospital has called to say that Granpa has died. It is too late…It is 9.25pm on the night of December 1st and I have lost the only father figure I have ever known.

When I wake up in the darkness of the next morning Aunty is there to tell me that Granpa has died, and I am to take the day off school. From that moment on I have a complete blank in my mind for the rest of that day. I don’t know who came to the house, I can’t remember if anyone cried or not, I’m sure we did, but I just can’t remember anything. I can’t even remember my own reaction. All I can recall is the immense guilt that is raging inside me – this is all MY fault. I have imagined this whole story and now it has all come true and Granpa had died because of me. Of course I can’t tell anyone this terrible secret or everyone will hate me, even more than I hate myself right now. I say nothing to no one and so nobody is able to tell me that it just isn’t true, no way was it my fault and Granpa was a very sick man who would have died no matter what I had imagined all those months ago. To me it is MY fault for a long long time and I drive myself crazy with the guilt.

This guilt and the deep sense of loss that I feel at Granpa’s death sends my behaviour way over the top for a year or more. I am so angry, so frustrated, so ashamed, so afraid of my own thoughts, but I cannot put these feelings into words at the age of ten and neither dare I tell anyone why I feel this way. I blame myself for every last thing that goes wrong that year and I rage at others because I can’t say what I really feel inside. Most of all I shout at Nanna and make her life even tougher than it already is, which just makes me feel even worse. Nanna is so staunch and strong in her grief and in the entire time I live with her I do not see her cry, no matter what is happening. It means that I don’t want to cry in front of her either as I feel I must be as strong as she is, and so my grief turns into anger every single day.

People in the family tell me that I have to try my hardest to be good. I have to look after Nanna and be really well behaved for her at this awful time. I am just causing her more pain. I know that, but I just can’t stop the way that I am acting and I really wish that I had died too or even instead of Granpa. I simply don’t want to BE any more…I have had enough…I don’t deserve to live.



ELEVEN YEARS OLD.


Today I have come away on holiday with my mum and my two sisters. I was so looking forward to this holiday as we are staying in a big caravan which I have never done before, and besides, I have never been on a real holiday where you have to stay overnight and I am really excited about it. Nanna and Granpa and I used to just have days out, not like real holidays though and this one is going to be REAL, like the other kids at school have. We are going to be away for a week and I even get to have my own little bedroom in the caravan!

Mum’s friend, Alan, is taking us to the caravan in his car. Gayle and Diane say that he is her boyfriend, but I don’t know if that’s true. I can’t imagine her having a boyfriend and he is really creepy anyway. If she was going to have a boyfriend, she could at least have someone nice. I really really don’t like him at all. He is so bossy to us. He tells us what to do all the time, but not like other grown ups do. He tells us what we like and what we don’t like. He makes up stupid rules when it isn’t even his own house, like he came to my house once and wouldn’t let us watch TV when we were eating. Nanna and Mum just let him get away with it too! He decides what programmes we CAN watch, what we should eat, what we should say and do, and I hate it that he is that way to me as well, as I don’t even live with Mum. He can pretend to be Gayle and Diane’s Dad if he wants but I don’t want him to be mine. But I can’t say anything, as everyone seems to like him, so as usual, I stay quiet.

When we get to the caravan, Mum says she has a surprise for us. We are all really excited and wonder what it can be. The holiday is good enough, but a surprise as well?

“Alan is staying with us for the week”, she tells us and we try not to look disappointed. How can that be a surprise? Even Gayle and Diane don’t really like him, but they pretend harder than me to like him because they live with Mum and so they have to. “It’ll be great” Mum tells us. “Alan can take us out in the car every day.”…Great…

It is KIND of fun, but not as fun as I thought a holiday should be. Alan makes us all write a diary every day of what we have done and he reads it every night to make sure we have done it right. It is like being at school, except worse because I don’t really know what he wants us to write.

Worse than that though are the strange games that he plays with us. He makes up all the rules, of course, and they are always made so that HE can win and we lose, and then he has to punish us. He chases us around the fields outside the caravan and puts nettles down our backs and then tells us not to be silly when we cry. He hits us with coat hangers if we lose. His games aren’t fun and we hate playing them but Mum seems to think it is good that he spends time with us. I want to go home, and I wish for the holiday to be over, Mum seems to love Alan, but we all hate him and wish that he had never come with us…

****

I have walked across to my Mum’s house today to see Gayle and Diane and to stay for tea as well, but as soon as I walk in, I know that Alan is there as well. He smokes and the kitchen is full of the smell of his rotten cigarettes. Granpa used to smoke as well, but he used to make his own cigarettes with some tobacco out of a tin and they smelt different to Alan’s. His are horrible, just like him.

He is playing his stupid games again whilst Mum does the washing up and of course I am told to join in. Mum seems to think it is fun. I don’t know how she can’t see what he is really like. Today’s game is just the same as all the others and I lose. He has to think of my punishment, he says, and I cringe as I wonder what he is going to do today. It would almost be easier if he just hit us and then you would know what to expect but he always has to think of something really strange and different. At last he decides that I am to sit on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me and he will stand on my lower legs, all his weight, just stand there on my legs for a whole minute. Gayle and Diane just look at me and Mum doesn’t even seem to notice what is happening.

“Put your legs out.” He orders me and I do it, because I don’t know what else to do. He carefully stands on my calves, one heavy boot on each leg and balances there, looking at his watch so that he can make sure he does it for a whole minute exactly. He isn’t a very tall man but he is quite chunky and he is very heavy to me. I have to stay quiet, I mustn’t complain, however much it hurts. Nobody else does or says anything and the minute seems to last forever. Nobody dare talk. Alan is the boss in this house. When he finally steps off me with a smile, I stagger to my feet and run out into the garden, hardly able to feel my legs now. I curl up in a ball at the end of the garden and burst into tears, hugging my poor sore legs to my chest and feeling my heart fill with such hatred that I don’t know what to do with it. Nobody comes out to see how I am, and through the kitchen window I can see Mum still doing the washing up. It is as if nothing has happened…and when I eventually go back in, it is only to find that Alan has thought of another game…

“Come and join in, “he says…

*****

It is six months after this and Alan has stopped coming to see us anymore. I am really happy about that but don’t really understand what has happened. A part of me hopes that he is dead, but then I feel so guilty for even thinking that way and when Nanna sits me down one day to talk about Alan, I am terrified that he has been killed and it is all my fault again, like with Granpa.

But it’s not that at all. Nanna is so embarrassed by what she has to tell me that she can barely bring herself to say the words at all. Gayle and Diane have been staying at Alan’s house some weekends and he has been making them sleep in his double bed with him and he has been touching them in places that he shouldn’t. Nanna doesn’t tell me any more and I daren’t ask anything more as she looks so uncomfortable, so I just have to use my imagination for the rest. I don’t know much about stuff like that, but at school they have told us about staying away from strangers and always telling if someone tried to touch us…you know, THERE. Is that what Nanna means? Has Alan been doing THAT?

Next time I go to Mums house she carries on as if nothing as happens but as soon as I can get Gayle on her own I ask her about Alan and she says it is true. He made them take off their pyjamas and let him touch them and then they had to touch him too. He told them not to tell, and they wouldn’t have but Diane said something by mistake and then it all came out. Mum has told him that he can’t come round to see them any more. I think she should have told the police but Gayle says that she didn’t want to get Alan into big trouble. If it had been me, I would have made sure he was locked up for ever.

Now I hope more than ever that Alan dies, and I don’t care how mean it sounds. Why should good people like Granpa have to die and people like Alan get to stay alive? Granpa never hurt anyone – it’s so unfair. And why did Alan do it anyway? He is a grown –up! Mum should never have let him get away with the games he used to play with us, then maybe he wouldn’t have gone on to play THOSE kind of games as well. I am just so glad that I live with Nanna otherwise maybe I would have had to go and stay with him as well.

****

*****

It is six months after this and Alan has stopped coming to see us anymore. I am really happy about that but don’t really understand what has happened. A part of me hopes that he is dead, but then I feel so guilty for even thinking that way and when Nanna sits me down one day to talk about Alan, I am terrified that he has been killed and it is all my fault again, like with Granpa.

But it’s not that at all. Nanna is so embarrassed by what she has to tell me that she can barely bring herself to say the words at all. Gayle and Diane have been staying at Alan’s house some weekends and he has been making them sleep in his double bed with him and he has been touching them in places that he shouldn’t. Nanna doesn’t tell me any more and I daren’t ask anything more as she looks so uncomfortable, so I just have to use my imagination for the rest. I don’t know much about stuff like that, but at school they have told us about staying away from strangers and always telling if someone tried to touch us…you know, THERE. Is that what Nanna means? Has Alan been doing THAT?

Next time I go to Mums house she carries on as if nothing as happens but as soon as I can get Gayle on her own I ask her about Alan and she says it is true. He made them take off their pyjamas and let him touch them and then they had to touch him too. He told them not to tell, and they wouldn’t have but Diane said something by mistake and then it all came out. Mum has told him that he can’t come round to see them any more. I think she should have told the police but Gayle says that she didn’t want to get Alan into big trouble. If it had been me, I would have made sure he was locked up for ever.

Now I hope more than ever that Alan dies, and I don’t care how mean it sounds. Why should good people like Granpa have to die and people like Alan get to stay alive? Granpa never hurt anyone – it’s so unfair. And why did Alan do it anyway? He is a grown –up! Mum should never have let him get away with the games he used to play with us, then maybe he wouldn’t have gone on to play THOSE kind of games as well. I am just so glad that I live with Nanna otherwise maybe I would have had to go and stay with him as well.

****

And now it is only a few weeks later and when I go over to Mum’s house, he is there again, sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette in his hand and a horrible smirk on his face. I am struck dumb, as he is the last person I ever expected to see there again. I know Mum didn’t have him arrested like I would have done and thrown into jail, but I never thought she would want to see him again, but here he is. I stare at him, as if I am just imagining it.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asks me. “Cat got your tongue?”

I don’t answer; I can’t speak. I look over at Mum but she looks away from me quickly. How can she let him back here after what he has done? I don’t understand any of it. I thought Mums and Dads were supposed to protect their children. It all seems wrong to me, but there seems to be nothing I can do but just carry on as if it is normal, just like everyone else is doing.

I walk through into the living room where Gayle and Diane are watching TV.

“What’s HE doing here again?” I whisper to them as I sit down beside them.

“Mum missed him, I think.” Diane told me, “She called him up yesterday.” There is a pause, then, “Look what he bought us!!”

There are two brand new Barbie’s up sitting on the settee, complete with half a dozen outfits each. “Aren’t they great? Want to play?”

I shake my head and pretend I am interested in the programme on TV. It is ages until I have to go home and I count the minutes as they drag slowly by, all the time praying that today there will be no more of Alan’s ‘games’…



TWELVE YEARS OLD.


I am twelve years old and I still don’t know where I came from, why I live with my Nanna, why Gayle and Diane live with my Mum but I never did, or what happened to my Dad, if I ever had one. I ask Nanna occasionally but she always just tells me that I will find out when I am ‘older’. I am left with this constant nagging fear that something terrible happened when I was a baby and she can’t possibly bring herself to tell me about it. What can be so bad about my past that it has to remain hidden from me until that magical day when I am ‘older’? My imagination works overtime as usual and I spend many hours at night trying to work things out, but I never can, and I am too frightened to keep on asking. I start to fear being ‘older’ because even though I am desperate to know what happened to me, I am also terrified of finding out the truth. At least right now I can still pretend it was something good, but when I know the truth I won’t have that chance any more.

Then one day it happens…I am at last old enough in Nanna’s eyes to know the truth. She just sits me down and hands me a well-worn plastic bag and inside this bag are the answers to some of my hundreds of questions, all there in black and white. In newspaper cuttings, photographs, police documents, statements, countless articles….all covered with the names of my parents, with photos of me, my name, my OLD name at least, the one I was christened with as opposed to the one I use every day.

I simply don’t know what to make of these answers, it is all too much, and I turn to Nanna for help, but she feels she has done all she can by giving me the information and I can see that she just doesn’t want to talk about it. A volcano has just erupted in front of my eyes, but I am to pretend that I didn’t see it or feel its impact and carry on as normal.

Except nothing can be normal ever again. I stare at these stark, inhuman cuttings and try to take in the enormous fact that this is MY life, MY beginnings, MY family, MY parents. Names just jump out at me. MY name, HER name, HIS name. I have known nothing about my father all my life and yet suddenly he has a name and a story. He is the man that so detested my crying and the responsibility of having a wife and a child to support that he persuaded my mother to leave me, abandon me as a seven month old baby, and not only do it once, but twice. They had dreams of a new life for themselves in London, they figured someone else would look after me and that I would be better off without them.

First they left me in my pram outside an amusement arcade, left with nothing but a note pinned onto me like Paddington Bear. ’Please look after this baby’. The police soon found my parents though and I was reunited with them, amazingly enough. Only for them to try again and this time they were a lot more successful in their escape. My mum left me in the waiting room at the local railway station, asked a lady if she would look after me whilst she went to the bathroom and then disappeared onto the next train for London. It took the police a few days to catch up with them this time, but they did and they were both jailed for abandoning me, and I was placed in a children’s home until it could be decided where I should go next. After a little while, my grandparents were allowed to bring me home with them, and after four lengthy years they finally adopted me. In the meantime I find out that my parents came out of jail, got back together again and had two more children before my father had finally had enough of family life and he went back to Canada where he had come from in the first place.

Nanna doesn’t know where he is now and says she doesn’t ever want to know as it was all his fault. He was a bad man, my mother should never have married him, they told her that, and she doesn’t want to hear his name even mentioned in the house. I am not to go bothering my Mum with questions either as it all happened a long time ago now and I shouldn’t go raking up the past. She just thought I should know, that is all, and now that I know, I should try to put it behind me like everyone else has. But it is not that easy at all…far from it.

These bare black and white facts paint my life, and I simply cannot grasp what it all means to me. I have so many questions, I need to ask why, I need to know so much more but it seems that all the doors are closed now. I know what happened, that should be enough, Nanna seems to think, but it can never be enough for me, and these questions haunt me. I turn in on myself, thinking it was somehow MY fault, why didn’t they want ME? Why did they keep Gayle and Diane but get rid of ME? If only I could ask these questions out loud, them maybe they wouldn’t drive me crazy, and maybe I could start to feel a little better about myself instead of spiralling down into self-destruction as I begin to do. All I know for sure is how I feel deep inside…. I have such a sense of worthlessness, of being rejected, a feeling that I don’t really matter in this world and that no one will ever be there for me, no matter how hard I cry…



THIRTEEN YEARS OLD.


I am in the middle of watching ‘Coronation Street’ when the telephone rings. Nanna shows no sign of moving and so I get up and answer it, half expecting it to be my Mum who calls Nanna every night without fail. Instead it is a strange female voice that I have never heard before…she is foreign, American I think at first, and she drawls my name out over the phone.

“I’d like to speak to Ayannne?” she says and I wonder who on earth this is. Some kind of market researcher perhaps? But they never usually ask for me.

“This is Anne speaking,” I tell her and the next thing she says nearly has me on my knees in shock.

“Oh, good. Would you like to speak to your father? I have him right here with me.”

I cannot speak for what seems like several minutes, but is probably only a few seconds. Would I like to speak to my father? My father? This mysterious figure who has never been a part of my life, and who left so many unanswered questions behind him…do I want to speak to him? NOW?

I stand there petrified, my back to Nanna, trying not to let her see the panic that is rushing through my whole body at that moment. She mustn’t know what is happening. No way would she let me speak to him. She hates him, and she wants ME to hate him too.

“Yes,” I answer, in the tiniest voice and the next thing I hear is a man’s voice on the line - it just has to be HIM.

“Hello, Anne. This is your Dad.”

For so long I have dreamed of this moment, meeting him at last, talking to him, having a REAL Dad in my life, and yet now it is happening I am speechless, I am stage struck and I want to hang up, my feelings are so raw. It feels as if I have fallen into some kind of time warp, or have found myself in a movie of someone else’s life. All my life I have dreamed of having a Dad, of being like the other kids, of him showing up one day and wanting to be with me, of him saying sorry that he left me and that it was all one huge mistake, and how he wants more than anything to make it up to me. And now here he is, and I just can’t take in the enormity of it all.

I can barely speak properly but I know I have to carry on as normal so that Nanna doesn’t get even an inkling that something is amiss. So I struggle with words and find some, although I have no idea if what I say makes any sense at all. We talk for four and a half minutes exactly; I see every second of this precious conversation tick by on my watch and I try to remember every word of it so that I can replay it over and over in my mind later on. He asks if I want to meet him and of course I say, Yes! How could I NOT want to meet him? He is my Dad…My Dad!! Wow…MY DAD. So we arrange a time and place and I hang up, feeling as if my world had just tilted on its axis and something huge has happened to me that I want to shout from the rooftops. My palms are sweaty and my heart is pounding…

“Who was that?” Nanna asks…

I amaze myself by lying so convincingly.

“Just Julie,” I tell her. Julie is my best friend at school just now and also a distant cousin. “We’re meeting tomorrow night at seven in the Square. Just for a chat.”

Nanna grunts and goes back to the TV, suspecting nothing. I feel a surge of guilt for deceiving her but she would never in a million years agree to me meeting my father and I just HAVE to do it. I have to find out for myself what he is really like and where I really come from…

****

I hardly sleep that night and the next day at school is spent daydreaming, playing through all kinds of possibilities in my mind. What will he be like? I bet he’s tall because the three of us girls are tall. Dark haired as well for the same reason. What will his life be like? Maybe he will want me to go to Canada and live with him? Or at least go for a holiday…..wow, would I want to go? It could be a whole new life for me. He is married again now; that was his wife on the phone to me last night, Eve, she is called. She is my stepmother…what an odd thought. I actually have a stepmother. I wonder if they have children together. Maybe I have new brothers and sisters. That would just be perfect, like a REAL family at last. A new mum and dad, a new family in a whole new country….

Then I feel so damn guilty for even thinking that way after all that Nanna has done for me – how could I even think of leaving her…. Still, dreaming is sooooo very good…. And you never know, do you…

****

Then before I know it, it is seven ‘o’clock that night and I am standing in Hessle Square with my friend, Julie. I have asked her to come along with me anyway, just in case. I mean, I know it won’t happen but what if he tries to.... I don’t know, kidnap me or something? It would be so silly to meet him without somebody else there as well and I can trust Julie not to tell anyone at all. Not that Julie, who is 4 feet 9 tall and about 6 stone soaking wet is going to be much use to me if he tries to abduct me, but I feel better just having her there.

I do wish other people were on time though. I have got there early so I wouldn’t miss him, and it is well after seven now and there is no sign of anybody remotely resembling a man looking for his long lost daughter. It is driving me crazy.

I walk up and down in front of the bus shelter where we have arranged to meet and I just will him to turn up before I explode inside. My nerves are wound up so tightly with anticipation that I am sure I will have a heart attack very soon if…

And then suddenly he is here…. And I stare and stare intently at this man as I see my father for the very first time. It’s the first time that I can remember anyway, and I try to take in everything that this moment means to me. He is tall and dark haired, just as I thought he would be, and his face has a lop-sided appearance to it. Right now he is frowning and looking as if he would rather be anywhere else on earth than here, as he seems so very awkward and ungainly. He doesn’t look like me, or at least I don’t look like him. Is this really him? We look at each other nervously as he climbs off the bus that has brought him here, and it seems forever before one of us makes a move. I desperately want him to run towards me, pick me up in his arms and swing me round and round. I want him to hug me and kiss me and tell me how much he has missed me and will never let me out of his life again…but real life is so very different. As always.

“Are you Anne?” he asks, almost distantly, coldly, as if he is meeting a business client for lunch. He doesn’t even make a move towards me, just stands there as the bus pulls away behind him. All I can do is nod back.

“Okay, then…”is all he can reply. “How about we find somewhere to eat?” Then he sees Julie beside me. “Is this Gayle?”

“No, no… “I stutter, awkwardly. “This is my friend, Julie. Is it okay if she comes with us as well?”

He doesn’t look too pleased and my heart sinks as my dream of how this night would be slowly dissolves in front of my eyes.

“Okay, I suppose so,” he says, and we get back on the next bus into Hull where he is staying in a city centre hotel with Eve. But it is all so very wrong, and I want to be anywhere but here right now. It feels as if someone has handed me a treasure chest and I have opened it, only to find that it is empty after all. My dad can barely look at me as we sit side by side on the bus. He sits as far away from me as he can, so that we don’t even touch, and he drums his fingers on his knees throughout the journey and never says a word. I keep waiting for him to talk to ME – HE is the grown up, He is the one who left ME, not the other way round. Surely it should be him who tries to make it all okay? Who starts up the conversation. Who asks how I am. How I have been all these years. TALK TO ME!!!!, I want to scream at him.

We get off the bus in silence, walk to his hotel in silence and eat a meal of greasy burger and chips in silence. Well, maybe there are a few words here and there, but nothing of any consequence and I feel as if I could be sitting with anyone in the whole world, not someone I am actually connected to in any way. Stuff like, How is school, what grade are you in, what subject do you like best? Not, what has your life been like for you since I left you? How has it affected you? Do you know how sorry I am for what I did?

Then we go up to his room and meet his wife. She is a small, dark haired lady who reminds me of a witch. She has an abrupt manner about her, and a kind of twitchiness, which makes me even less at ease than I was before. Once again I am afraid and wonder what is going to happen next. I should never have come up to his room. Eve asks me if I have ever flown before…This is madness, I have to get out of here fast. I should never have come here. He was never going to be what I wanted him to be, otherwise why would he have left in the first place?

There are no kidnap attempts though, nothing happens at all after that. He takes a couple of photos of me, standing there in my black duffle coat with my long hair spread around my shoulders. He says he loves my hair…He loves long hair…He gives me his address in Canada, I give him another friend’s address so he can write to me too, as no way could he send anything to my house or Nanna would have a fit. We say Goodbye, still never touching and Julie and I catch the bus back home. Three days later I have my hair cut short....very short.



FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.


I am sitting here in my bedroom, in floods of tears, wishing that I could just disappear off the face of the earth somehow and never come back to this godawful life. Nanna is so very angry with me right now and I know she just keeps on blaming me for what is happening, but how can it possibly be my fault? I just wish she would stop shouting at me and shaking her head in despair and just give me a hug, but that will never happen.

We have just had three taxis in a row showing up at our door, all of them from different companies and none of which were actually ordered by Nanna or I. Yesterday we were sent the bill for a huge bouquet of flowers that I had supposedly ordered to be sent to a boy in the fifth year that I have a crush on. I swear I didn’t do any of it, and I THINK Nanna believes me, but she is still so angry with me because I have brought all this trouble to her door, so she says. I am sure I know who is behind all this though and right now I could kill her stone dead. It is Emma B, a girl at school who is making my life a real misery right now, and I hate her with every fibre of my being.

She only came to our school a year ago, having moved here from up near Newcastle. She knew nobody here at all, so my best friend, Nicky, and I took her around with us and made her feel really welcome. For a short while it was the three of us who were good friends, but very soon I began to feel pushed out and it was increasingly obvious that Nicky and Emma wanted to be by themselves. And soon they were, and I was on my own again.

Since then Emma has made it her life’s work to make me unhappy and she is really succeeding as well. She makes fun of my size, my background, of my glasses, of the fact that I am clever and answer questions in class, of anything she can think of really. And worse than that, she gets other people to join in; people I once considered to be friends of mine. One day she told me I was a total nonentity, which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, except that I knew it couldn’t possibly be a compliment coming from her. I looked it up in the dictionary as soon as I got home and found out that it was ‘a person or thing of no importance, non-existence, non-existent thing’. That describes just perfectly how I feel about myself right now and it hurts like hell that Emma can reach right into my soul that way and find the very thing that would hurt me the most. Is it really that obvious to her? Who else can see that I am one big Nothing?

I feel as if I have a vast emptiness inside me; there is no real life, no spark, nothing that remotely appeals to anyone else. I have no confidence. No guts to stand up for myself. I just sit there and take all the hateful words and comments that Emma throws at me and I never even retaliate. I can never think of a single thing to say back to her and that makes me hate myself even more. I am a sitting target for her, a toy, a hobby, a bit of fun, but essentially in her eyes, and in mine as well, I am a big fat Nothing. A Nonentity.

The very worst thing for me is that there is no one to talk to about the way I am feeling and I do feel so very alone. Nanna is so upset and angry about the taxis and the flowers, oh..and also the funny phone calls we have been getting which I am sure are down to Emma as well. I feel like Nanna blames me for it all, and I just don’t want to make things any worse by trying to discuss it with her. She still hasn’t got over Granpa’s death properly and she is a lot more remote from me than she used to be.

I can’t cope with this anymore, I really can’t. I wish to God I never had to set foot outside this bedroom again – I wish that I could just hide myself away from the world and never get hurt again. But Nanna insists that I go to school, of course, and I am so scared of the consequences if I decided not to turn up. I am one of the Good Girls, always have been. So I am reduced to making up strategies to get myself through the days instead. Coping mechanisms of a sort. I make myself out a chart with every single lesson I have to endure before the start of the Christmas holidays. Eight lessons a day, five days a week, nine weeks to go….that’s 360 lessons until I will be free of Emma, at least physically free of her for two whole weeks, although I know that her insults and mocking sneers will still be rooted in my head. I put a capital ‘E’ next to every lesson on my timetable that Emma shares with me. She doesn’t take every subject that I do, thank goodness, and so I get a reprieve from her here and there, but not enough to make the days really bearable.

Tomorrow is only Wednesday….how I wish it were Friday…and I have to go to school and see Emma and Nicky sniggering at me as they discuss the taxi scam they have obviously cooked up between them. If I had the guts I would end it all tonight, I really would. I would swallow some lousy pills and end it all. I could – they are sitting right there by my bed. But I don’t have the nerve. Instead, I sneak downstairs whilst Nanna is in the bathroom and grab a handful of biscuits and a Mars bar. It’s the only way I can even begin to quiet my mind right now…

FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.


Aunty and the two children are living with us again now and the atmosphere in the house is crazy. Ian is four years old and Joanne is only a baby, just a year old. They have been living in a flat in Hull for a while now but had to move out and this is the only place Aunty could go so quickly. I hide away in my room most of the time that I am home, whilst the children shout and scream downstairs, and Aunty tries to keep them quiet. My bedroom is my only refuge, as much as a room without a lock CAN be. I can put on my stereo, plug in the headphones and shut out the outside world as I drown in beautiful music.

I really hate living here right now. The atmosphere is forever tense, as Aunty and Nanna clash on a regular basis. They are either fighting or ignoring each other, and no way is there enough room for us all in this pokey little council house. There are two adults, a teenager and two very active children living here and we are all sharing a small two bedroomed house, with only one living room and a little kitchen and bathroom. There really feels as if there is nowhere to go some days, especially when the kids find their way up to my room and play there. We fall over each other all the time.

Nanna gets so upset and angry when the kids scratch a piece of furniture with their toys, or when they tear a book that she has had for years, maybe one her own children used to read. She and Granpa bought all the furniture in the house when they first married and she feels as if her life is being eroded piece by piece. She doesn’t tell me this, of course, as we never speak about it, but I can see it in the pained expression in her eyes, and it makes me want to put it all right for her but I simply can’t. I am always so damn powerless.

The fights between Nanna and Aunty are becoming so petty as well. Nanna says that Aunty is drinking too much of the coffee and she can’t keep on affording to replace it. So she has hidden the jar of coffee upstairs in the bedroom and if I want any I have to sneak a cup when Aunty is out or asleep. I am sure she can smell it anyway and I feel like a guilty thief just for having a cup of coffee in my own house.

Aunty says that Nanna watches her every move and is always interfering when it comes to disciplining the children. She says Nanna doesn’t have the right to be so judgmental and Nanna says that she does all the time they are living under HER roof.

They fight over what TV programmes we all want to watch, what food we eat, when we cook the meals, who does the washing, who has used up the last of the wash powder, who irons the clothes – just anything you can think of and then some. They are so venomous that you would never think they were mother and daughter and that they once had a love for each other. Maybe they still do, but I can’t see it at all. Not now. I try to keep out of the way as much as I can, as I love them both and can’t stand to see what they are doing to each other. I am constantly waiting for the next fight to erupt and I can never relax and never feel at peace when I am at home.

I hate to come home from school these days, no matter how much I hate going there as well. I never quite know what I will find when I walk in the door. Today is the very worst day of all up to now. I walk in to find Nanna furiously washing up at the sink in the kitchen, the plates crashing against each other as she thrusts them onto the draining board. She barely looks up when I say Hello and I know straight away that something bad has happened.

The house is very still and there is no sign of Aunty and the children. They are usually in when I come home from school as they have their tea not long after that, so it is odd that they aren’t here. It is pouring with rain outside as well, so I doubt they have gone for a walk. I want that moment to freeze in time right there and then, as I am so afraid to ask Nanna what has happened and to actually find out. These days are so very unpredictable that it could be anything and the fear in my stomach ties me up in knots. As if she can read my mind, Nanna turns round very slowly and says;

“She hit me.”

Her voice is so low and she sounds so defeated that I can hardly bear to look at her. I look down at her arm, which she is holding out towards me, and I can see an enormous purple bruise beginning to develop on the top of her upper arm. I want to scream and scream and run and run but I am rooted to the spot and I can’t even bring myself to speak. The emotions swirling round inside me like a dust storm stick in my throat and I feel so very sick.

“I hit her too, though. I’m just as bad as she is.” She takes a very deep breath and I can see that she is fighting away the tears. “She called me an evil old witch…my own daughter called me an evil witch…”

At last I am able to move and I hug her so tight and cry so hard that I feel as if I will die right there and then. It is too much, far too much for any of us. I feel so incredibly trapped her, drowning in quick sand with no way out. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no peace, no freedom, no space, no time, no happiness, nowhere to go without fear following right behind me, I have nowhere to go. I have no rights anymore in this house. I have to give in to the whims of the children just to keep the peace, I have to try and make everyone happy, I have to try and be friendly towards everyone, I can’t do this any more….

I stop crying at last and Nanna pulls away. She has stayed strong all the time, she hasn’t cried, she is as stoical as always, resolved, determined just to carry on, and I must do the same.

“Put the kettle on, “she tells me. “We’ll have a cuppa before they come back. I got some more biscuits this morning….get them out of the cupboard, will you?”

I wipe my eyes, and prepare to stuff it all back down once more…..



SIXTEEN YEARS OLD.




I am rushing around the house like a mad thing, trying to get myself ready before I go out. As usual I have spent ages up in my bedroom trying on different outfits then hurling them across the floor because they simply don’t fit. How can I have put on so much weight so fast? I try to diet, I really do, but it never seems to get very far – and this is what I get for it. Trousers that won’t fasten, skirts with waistbands that dig tightly into me, jumpers which fit me like a second skin….How could I possibly have let myself go this way?

Okay, so I don’t exercise very much and I do love my food. In fact I would go as far as to say that I desperately NEED my food for more than just feeding my body. It means far more to me than that at this point in time. And I admit here and now that I have started to sneak extra food into the house and I eat it in the relative peace of my bedroom last thing at night when everyone else is asleep. Some nights I even try to hide a bar of chocolate behind a book I am reading and nibble at it when I hope Nanna isn’t looking. God, I hope she never sees me. I am so damned ashamed of what I do and she thinks badly enough of me as it is. She is such a small eater and always looks at me disapprovingly when I eat more than she does. Which is every single day without fail.

At last I find a pair of awful brown trousers that used to be Aunty’s and which only just fit me if I breathe in enough. I also come across a polo neck jumper which doesn’t match the trousers at all and certainly doesn’t do my ever increasing figure any favours but I have no choice if I ever want to go out tonight. I slip a black jacket over the top of my outfit in the hope that it’ll hide the bits that I don’t want anyone to see. Some hope, but I try.

Nanna is reading a book when I go downstairs and she looks up at me just in time to see me lifting up my jumper to pull on a loose thread hanging from the waistband of my trousers. I have exposed the roll of fat that hangs over the top of my trousers and which I spend most of my waking days trying to hide from the world. I pull my jumper down fast but it is too late.

“You’re fairly piling on the weight, aren’t you?” Nanna says and then goes back to her book as if she has just casually remarked on the weather rather than shaken the whole of my soul to the core. She’s NEVER commented on my weight before, maybe my behaviour or what I say, but never on my weight. She’s always said I looked just fine, even when it was blatantly obvious to me that I looked huge and disgusting, but tonight…why tonight? Why did she say that to me tonight?

I don’t answer her, I can’t. I walk slowly back upstairs, take off my clothes and climb into bed, covering myself up completely with the blankets and wishing that I could make myself really disappear just as easily. I sob and sob until I have nothing left inside me. Then I fall into oblivion and sleep. By the morning I seem to have turned the utter pain and despair that I felt last night into a ball of anger and hatred towards myself and the world at large. I sit up in bed and swear to myself there and then that I WILL lose the weight this time. I’ll show them…. I never ever want to hear those words said to me again, and feel this desperate pain and rejection, this self-hate, this disgust at who I am. Never again. Today I will go on yet another diet but this time it will be different. This time it will work. This time it will change my life for good…

Candy Holcker <editor99@apk.net> wrote:

Hi Anne. I am taking this seriously and not as spam. I have already recommended without endorsement your book to an inquiry this morning. Would like to receive a gratuitous copy of this book by you.

Candy Holcker
10971 Franchester Road
West Salem, Ohio 44287

and also how you found God's Grace For Dieters

Hope you don't mind!



Author of 'FROM GREY SOUP TO GATEAU'
http://www.greysoup.tk