The long and complicated story of m.e.
by
, 11-26-2011 at 09:21 PM (1850 Views)
Since writing is my passion, I could not resist when I saw the word "blog" on here. Of course, I have my own personal blog as well as a facebook account and a twitter account (though I don't use twitter since it's ridiculous). Even with all of the places to share my intimate thoughts and experiences, there is still no one place where I am completely 100% open about everything in my life. Maybe there never will be and probably that's a good thing. There are some things that have to be kept a secret. However, seeing as I'm not ready to share this particular experience (my wls) with the whole world yet, I think this place is the one where I can be the closest to open. So, I will start with a little bit of background on myself and my life leading up to this point.
To start with, my given birth name is Malli which is pronounced like Molly or, as I often tell people, Mal-Lee. Since childhood, I have had to deal with people mispronouncing or misspelling my name and I have long ago decided to just shorten it to an impossible to mess up Lee. Only family and people who have known me since childhood still call me by the full name. Most people call me Lee but you can call me whatever you want as long as it's not a mispronunciation of my name. My last name before I got married starts with an E and I have no middle name and I love that because it means my initials are M.E. (and that explains why i wrote it that way in the subject). Moving on! I am 27 years old, single mother to a three year old girl, separated from my husband by thousands of miles and currently living with my parents in Ramat Gan, Israel. I was born in Tel-Aviv and moved to the states when I was four years old. I grew up in various parts of FL; mainly Ft. Lauderdale and then St. Pete but after that I moved around all over the state from South (Miami) to Central (Orlando) to North (Tallahassee) and in between (Tampa). I came back to Israel in December of 2011 with my husband and my daughter. He returned to FL in Aug. and I've been living with my parents since then. I have high hopes of one day returning to FL or moving somewhere new. I don't like to stay in one place for long. I love to travel and move around a lot.
I have struggled with my weight for almost my entire life. I was born big at around 10lbs and I stayed big for most of my life. I was picked on as a child and so I was a loner. Mostly staying home, I preferred the company of books over people. I became well known at my local library as the little girl who checked out books way above her reading level (after I had already read all the books AT my reading level). The plus side of that is my vocabulary was greatly expanded and I believe it made me the grammar/spelling fanatic that I am today. It also inspired me to dream of one day being a writer. One book in particular, which I read later in life and will discuss in more detail further down, really inspired me and I hope to one day write a book similar to that one. If I can write something that touches just one person in the way that book touched me then I will feel like I have really accomplished something and all of my struggles with not have been in vain. Anyway, as I was often picked on and laughed at because of my weight, I did a lot of diets (also, my mother pushed me into it as she was also overweight and constantly dieting). I did weight watchers and lost a lot of weight so that my teen years were less rough. It's so weird to look back and say "wow, i was so cute" while remembering how I felt about myself at the time; I thought I was fat and ugly and I wasn't.
After high school, I moved to Orlando to study Psychology at UCF. At that time, I also thought I was fat but I wasn't. I was never thin but I was curvy in the right places. But I had low self esteem and did a lot of stupid things. I started drinking a lot. Eventually, I started doing other things. I realized at around 20 that I had a serious drug addiction. I went to rehab (more than once), various treatments and programs and yes, even jail once. I was sober on and off until November 10, 2007 and I've been off ever since. I got pregnant in January 2008 so I am grateful for my daughter every day because she is the reason for my sobriety. Now, the down side to all that is that I've been steadily gaining weight over the last 4 years since getting clean. And when I passed the 200lb mark, I just couldn't let it keep going on. My mother had a sleeve and was successful and so I decided that was the thing for me. I've tried every diet and I've had much success but I gained everything back and especially since I quit using and got pregnant and then being a stay at home mother, I had a lot of things that came into play with gaining all that weight. However, I am now happily back under 200 and I plan to keep losing until I reach and pass my college weight. I want to be a healthy person. I know that I have a lot of issues with addiction, depression, personality disorders, anxiety and all of that fun stuff. I may not be totally sane but I'm not crazy hehe. I'm also incredibly smart and incredibly stubborn and once I have set my mind to something then I will find a way to get it. And right now, I am focusing most of my energy on getting my weight down to a place I can be happy with. I will probably never be super model thin but let's face it, at 5"1', I'll never be super model material anyway but I don't care about that. I want to be healthy and I want to be happy with the way I look and feel. And I want to be a role model for my daughter. And I won't lie and deny my vanity, I'm a young single mother so yeah, I want to look better than the other mothers in the park. Haha. So that's pretty much my story.
Oh, the book I mentioned earlier is called More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel (author of Prozac Nation which was adapted into a movie of the same name). I read that book right when I was starting to come to terms with my addiction and as this is her story of addiction (hers being cocaine and mine being heroin), I felt like a lot of it was about me and I really would love to one day write a memoir of my own about my own drug addiction and other struggles (maybe even my weight issues).
So, I cut out a lot of the gory details but I did reveal a huge secret about myself. As I said, I'm 4 years sober as of Nov. 10th. Interestingly, I didn't even think to celebrate this year because I've been so involved with my weight issues and recovering from the surgery that I only just realized the date passed not too long ago. Wow. Well, there you have it. More to come, I suppose. I might even do a video blog if I can gather up the nerve to actually speak of these things out loud in front of a video camera (without feeling like I'm going to vomit). Wish me luck! And also, lots of luck to all of you!