Dear Journal,

Response I was going to send to an email I got, but I didn’t send it. Figured I’d just post it here. Most feelings I needed to get out I guess…

“I’m sure that you didn’t mean anything mean by this, just that it was funny, but honestly I didn’t appreciate it. “Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you’ll never get back.” This part of the joke is the part I have had the hardest time dealing with. I spent sooo many YEARS angry that my counselor referred to it as my Anger coat. He also referenced to it when he would wad up pieces of paper and stuff them into a coffee cup until they couldn’t fit anymore and pushed their way out.

I am angry at things I had no control over and things I didn’t understand. Most of it was spent angry with the whole Navy life, but I have anger about being 17 and on my own, knowing my Mom picked Ray over me. “Because he’d be around, and I was growing up and wouldn’t be.” … I understand my Mom loves me, but I’m hurt.

I’m angry for all the times My mom and siblings referred to me as a Fat Slob, Sharolyn the watermelon, etc… My sister saying “You can’t be in my wedding until you lose some weight”. I understand they were all trying to either help me lose weight or they were too embarrassed and disgusted with me being fat to be seen with me. To this day I don’t know. I would have to say I have sided with the later since NO ONE has ever come to see me accept for Mom.

Anyway, I am positive this is not anywhere close to the reaction you figured you’d get from this email, but I’ve been debating sending something like this anyway for YEARS. Talking with Mom about this anger, resentment, sadness that I feel about being discarded, never good enough, too fat etc… I haven’t said anything because I figure it’s too late actually, and Mom is fragile and I don’t want her upset by any precieved mistakes that she might have made with me. I can’t say that I KNOW she loves me and that she’s proud of me, but I really like to think she is.

As far as it all comes down to now is that every “issue” I have right now is ultimately my own to figure out I can’t blame anyone else for my weight or the way I deal with things now. It’s no one’s fault it just is what it is, I know I’m mentally better than I was 5yrs ago, 1yr ago, 6mos ago, last weekend even. I still don’t take care of myself and have issues with staying up too late (see what time I posted this) and eating too much (Heck I weight just over 300lbs). I actually think that if I lost the weight and my family STILL didn’t come to see me it would devistate me and I’d have to come to terms with the fact that they just didn’t like ME, it wasn’t the weight. And the other option that they didn’t come to see me after I lost weight it’d just be tragic to me that they would judge me like that and not care about me because I was so disgusting to them. Anyway… Patrick, Timothy, Lydia, Clarissa, Sage, Michelle, and many others I believe really do care for me and love me for ME! I hate feeling “Optional” to my Siblings especially. I guess I was terrible or something.”

Ok now that is off my chest and locked away in here for no one to see I hopefully can feel better. Start healing. I just wish I had learned to love myself, think of my self as worth something, but growing up feeling like dog shit was more important to my family than I was REALLY screwed me up. Aghh… Grrr…

EDIT: Added this at 1:43am in another attempt at a response.
I know this is meant to be funny, but it really hurt my feelings. I might tease with my husband and kids that I’m a nut, that I went to the funny farm, but it was a seriously real scary thing that my family and I dealt with and I make light of it in that way to help them to know it was in the past.