Alright, I'm new here so I'm going to lay a few things out so this might be a little lengthy. It's sort of got a long history and a lot of emotional stuff going on, so it's easy to get carried away. Stay with me though, it is sort of relevant and helpful to know for any advice you may have.
It's really a long story, but simply put, my mom has an unhealthy relationship with food, and she's the parent who's raised me growing up.
To give an idea of the situation, at 7 I was 100+lbs by 12 I was up to, if not over 200lbs, and by the time I was 13 I was close to 250lbs (yes, I was not just a fat kid, but 2 fat kids, and I'm a shorter guy at ~5'10 currently).
Through my own innitiative over the course of 2-3 years I've dropped probably over 70lbs and have completely switched from eating anything and everything that would taste good, to becoming 95% vegitarian eating maybe 1/10 of the amount I used to consume. Complete reversal, prior to I was eating almost strictly meat for YEARS.
Right now my diet is awesome. No fancy atkins, no "tricks". No unhealthy cravings, no hunger. I'm happy as far as that goes. The diet change alone has made my body feel better.
Now the problems. I did some activities as a kid (gymnastics, martial arts, yes, gymnastics, I don't know how I managed but I obviously didn't excel). otherwise, I grew up in front of the tv with a plate on my lap. That's pretty much my strongest memory that persists throughout my life. So, at 18, I have health problems I shouldn't be having until I'm ~60.
I have weak tendens in my feet (when I walk you can see my foot collapse and flatten out). 2-3ft drops are enough to cause pain to shoot from the bridge of my foot, through my ankle, and up the backs of my legs to the knees.
I have bad spinal alignment. My spinal curve is backwards. The parts that should curve in, curve out, and vice-versa, and the lower section of my spine veers off to the left. My spine prevents me from doing things that even my 60 year old father can do with his bad back. In fact I've got a cluster of nerves lodged in there right now which has left me bed-ridden for the last 2 and a half months feeling like someone was stabbing me in the stomach with their foot lodged firmly against one of my testicles.
So that's sort of my condition right now.
Not all bad though. Gymnastics and martial arts have made me about as flexible as my body can physically achieve with its joints. I've never met anyone too tall to kick in the face since. Despite my bad spine, I can arch myself into full bridge position with ease and can hold it with stability. Having carried around an extra 50-100lbs of weight my entire life, I have a naturally acquired heavy build. I was actually advised by my old 9th grade P.E. teacher to take up competitive power lifting because I was able to complete a few reps of the weight he used to train with at that age and with my figure.
So that's sort of a basic layout of my body. My organs could be healthier. I'm not a good runner for long distance. I'm a better than average sprinter though. I'm comparing myself to healthy people.
My whole mental aspect has also been affected by this. Being that size at such a young age I didn't have friends and until 4th grade even my teachers would insult me and steal my stuff to give to the other students (winter coats, gloves, boots, lunch, lunch money, etc).
Being the same shape, living in the same city, and with everyone in the city somehow having a connection through friends to other people, things haven't looked up too much since then. I've got friends I can hang out with, but not ones I enjoy being around. More ones who wont give me crap over the same stuff I've gotten crap about my entire life. Bunch of ex addicts, alcoholics, or people with various disturbances (ie. depressed and medicated, criminal history, generally being a complete loser in life, or having touches of schitzophrenia, bipolar, or a couple other disorders). To my luck none of them are hopeless cases yet although I've been watching a few of them slip further.
They're all older than me by at least 3 years. I don't have much social experience in my age group mainly because nobody my age is mature enough to give me some basic respect and dignity. This of course presents its own problems when the only people you really know how to talk to are too old to give you their full acknowledgment.
Since my friends are losers and I have some difficulty meeting people my age, or gaining respect from the people I can interact with my lifestyle options are looking sort of bleak. My refuse to leave the basement and gather outside for anything. Physical activity is completely out of the question for them beyond their sports teams that I'm not healthy enough to get involved in yet. They have no problems socially, but I'm still too young to go with them anywhere they go, and I've never had a chance to meet any of their friends outside of the basic circle. They have no interest in getting more people together.
As far as outdoor activity goes, I'm stuck to walking alone basically. I'd run, but if you got the same crap I did from both kids and adults, even while I was trying to fix the problem, you'd have blocks that trigger anxiety attacks against exercising in plain sight to. I'd love to, but I can't do it. My blood pressure goes up, my heart starts pounding and racing, I start losing my balance and my concentration, I start feeling uncomfortable in my skin and my thoughts start turning violent, hostile, and very short fused.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a violent person by nature. Given my life I've had no choice but to learn to let things slide. But you know. Repressed memories and psychological conditioning, combined with a bitter hate for how thankless, ignorant, pigheaded, self-centered, demanding and inconsiderate your average person is pretty much ignores what you're really like.
I smoke to cope. My mom's been a smoker my entire life. I've tried to quit, and I've been really good at quitting, except my mom has a couple screws loose in her head and armfuls of emotional baggage, and she likes to leave cigarettes lying around the house and then forgetting about them. So, lots of room for excessive unavoidable stress, and it's almost impossible to regulate my temptation to any extent.
The other thing with my mom... She's a great person and everything, but I think in the end when you boil it down she's a helpless, incompetent, stubborn and ignorant loser all rolled up into one. She's never had a secure job in her life. She married my dad because she felt sorry for him. She's had 1 boyfriend since the divorce, who was the wimpiest, most helpless and self-disabling narcissist you could imagine. She has no friends. The only time she leaves the house is to play in a quintet 3 times a year with people she doesn't even like seeing, she only goes because she used to and she'd feel bad for not going anymore, even though she hates it and does nothing but complain about having to go for weeks on end (it's a voluntary gathering, she doesn't actually have to go, these people are barely aquaintences).
Her day consists of locking herself in her room with her computer, chain smoking (over a pack a day
), and writting books about everything that went wrong in her life that she did nothing to stop and hoping they'll get published and make her millions so she'll never need a job again. She writes about stuff like self-motivation courses that failed to motivate, which she then labeled as a brainwashing cult.
She complains about everything and everyone in her life. She's tired. People are too demanding. There's too many expectations on her. She's fat and in pain. It just keep going really. She's in such bad shape that between grade 1 and 6 I was at LEAST 2 hours late for school almost every single day. In first grade I would wake up myself at 6am, dress myself, make my own breakfast, get myself ready for school, then spend the next 5 hours shaking, shouting at, jumping on, kicking, or prying her eyelids open, crying because I was going to get another detention, deducted marks, and a lecture from my teacher on coming in on time (as if it were my fault) and because she kept telling me she was getting up, and to leave her alone, then 5 minutes later she'd be asleep again. At least twice a week I used to have to start elbowing or kneeing her until she'd realize I wasn't going to stop until she was seriously hurt, or until she took me to school. Not once did it register that getting me to school was top priority, and that she has to stop whatever keeps making her so tired (she had no job, so I don't know what it could have been).
This is the same woman who got into an argument with a psychologist because they were saying that it's physically impossible that I've been comprehensive of language since the moment of birth. As the story goes, after I was born when she saw me, she said hello to me and I smiled and put one of my hands up open-palmed. When she said "I'm your mommy" I smiled again. In her mind, to this day, I was smiling at her and waving hello. To this day she believes I smiled because I knew that she was the person who gave birth to me and who would raise me.
Now we have a dog. She believes that the dog smiles at her when she starts a conversation with him because he enjoys hearing what she has to say. She believes that the dog winks at people he likes.
She believes that the dog is like a piece of emotional glass. Any separation from its owners, and the dog will completely freak out and its world will come crashing down. Any separation from her and the dog, she believes to be animal cruelty.
It's pathetic and depressing. He follows her around all day whinning at her, and she runs around trying to figure out what he wants so his feelings don't have to be crushed by not getting what he's asking for. Because I train the dog, don't but up with his attitude, and wont let him off a leash (he's on a muzzle law after attacking an old woman, he's snapped at other people for petting him as well. My mom has yet to find a method of training she doesn't consider animal cruelty, she loves letting him off-leash though and refuses to obey the muzzle order because "he wouldn't like it").
Of course to the dog, she's his property. He pisses on her stuff. Targets the stuff he sees her using constantly, barks at her when she doesn't immediately obey his whimpering. He wont give her his attention by looking her in the eye or anything and she cuddles and praises him for being so cute even when he's acting up.
This is a HUGE problem. He thinks he's the alpha and that I simply don't like him because with my mom, he gets anything he wants. He's fine when my mom's gone, but when she's home I can't come near her without the dog charging at me barking and growling. Every time I go to the bathroom at night, or need a drink, or anything, he wakes my mom up.
She's sleep chronically sleep deprived for at least 18 years. She only sleeps for an hour at a time now because the dog keeps waking her up. She REFUSES to stop sleeping with the dog, and I've gotten in trouble for bringing it up. According to her, she's too lonely NOT to sleep with the dog... Yet she does NOTHING to speak to or meet actual people.
If her dillusions and emotional baggage wasn't enough, she can't run a household. We have no garbage cans, according to her they take up too much space. Instead, we have garbage bags sitting on the floor where we'd probably put a bin if we had one. Of course the dog likes to tear these open and people kick them, so I've never in my life seen our kitchen without a sticky film of dried on garbage juice, or moulding food.
She doesn't do her dishes when she's done with them, she leaves them in the sink to "do all at once", never does them, then the sink gets too full for anyone to do dishes and the food's all dried on, so we either have to soak our dishes in the bathtub and wash them in there, or we have to start eating off paper plates.
It's really a long story, but simply put, my mom has an unhealthy relationship with food, and she's the parent who's raised me growing up.
To give an idea of the situation, at 7 I was 100+lbs by 12 I was up to, if not over 200lbs, and by the time I was 13 I was close to 250lbs (yes, I was not just a fat kid, but 2 fat kids, and I'm a shorter guy at ~5'10 currently).
Through my own innitiative over the course of 2-3 years I've dropped probably over 70lbs and have completely switched from eating anything and everything that would taste good, to becoming 95% vegitarian eating maybe 1/10 of the amount I used to consume. Complete reversal, prior to I was eating almost strictly meat for YEARS.
Right now my diet is awesome. No fancy atkins, no "tricks". No unhealthy cravings, no hunger. I'm happy as far as that goes. The diet change alone has made my body feel better.
Now the problems. I did some activities as a kid (gymnastics, martial arts, yes, gymnastics, I don't know how I managed but I obviously didn't excel). otherwise, I grew up in front of the tv with a plate on my lap. That's pretty much my strongest memory that persists throughout my life. So, at 18, I have health problems I shouldn't be having until I'm ~60.
I have weak tendens in my feet (when I walk you can see my foot collapse and flatten out). 2-3ft drops are enough to cause pain to shoot from the bridge of my foot, through my ankle, and up the backs of my legs to the knees.
I have bad spinal alignment. My spinal curve is backwards. The parts that should curve in, curve out, and vice-versa, and the lower section of my spine veers off to the left. My spine prevents me from doing things that even my 60 year old father can do with his bad back. In fact I've got a cluster of nerves lodged in there right now which has left me bed-ridden for the last 2 and a half months feeling like someone was stabbing me in the stomach with their foot lodged firmly against one of my testicles.
So that's sort of my condition right now.
Not all bad though. Gymnastics and martial arts have made me about as flexible as my body can physically achieve with its joints. I've never met anyone too tall to kick in the face since. Despite my bad spine, I can arch myself into full bridge position with ease and can hold it with stability. Having carried around an extra 50-100lbs of weight my entire life, I have a naturally acquired heavy build. I was actually advised by my old 9th grade P.E. teacher to take up competitive power lifting because I was able to complete a few reps of the weight he used to train with at that age and with my figure.
So that's sort of a basic layout of my body. My organs could be healthier. I'm not a good runner for long distance. I'm a better than average sprinter though. I'm comparing myself to healthy people.
My whole mental aspect has also been affected by this. Being that size at such a young age I didn't have friends and until 4th grade even my teachers would insult me and steal my stuff to give to the other students (winter coats, gloves, boots, lunch, lunch money, etc).
Being the same shape, living in the same city, and with everyone in the city somehow having a connection through friends to other people, things haven't looked up too much since then. I've got friends I can hang out with, but not ones I enjoy being around. More ones who wont give me crap over the same stuff I've gotten crap about my entire life. Bunch of ex addicts, alcoholics, or people with various disturbances (ie. depressed and medicated, criminal history, generally being a complete loser in life, or having touches of schitzophrenia, bipolar, or a couple other disorders). To my luck none of them are hopeless cases yet although I've been watching a few of them slip further.
They're all older than me by at least 3 years. I don't have much social experience in my age group mainly because nobody my age is mature enough to give me some basic respect and dignity. This of course presents its own problems when the only people you really know how to talk to are too old to give you their full acknowledgment.
Since my friends are losers and I have some difficulty meeting people my age, or gaining respect from the people I can interact with my lifestyle options are looking sort of bleak. My refuse to leave the basement and gather outside for anything. Physical activity is completely out of the question for them beyond their sports teams that I'm not healthy enough to get involved in yet. They have no problems socially, but I'm still too young to go with them anywhere they go, and I've never had a chance to meet any of their friends outside of the basic circle. They have no interest in getting more people together.
As far as outdoor activity goes, I'm stuck to walking alone basically. I'd run, but if you got the same crap I did from both kids and adults, even while I was trying to fix the problem, you'd have blocks that trigger anxiety attacks against exercising in plain sight to. I'd love to, but I can't do it. My blood pressure goes up, my heart starts pounding and racing, I start losing my balance and my concentration, I start feeling uncomfortable in my skin and my thoughts start turning violent, hostile, and very short fused.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a violent person by nature. Given my life I've had no choice but to learn to let things slide. But you know. Repressed memories and psychological conditioning, combined with a bitter hate for how thankless, ignorant, pigheaded, self-centered, demanding and inconsiderate your average person is pretty much ignores what you're really like.
I smoke to cope. My mom's been a smoker my entire life. I've tried to quit, and I've been really good at quitting, except my mom has a couple screws loose in her head and armfuls of emotional baggage, and she likes to leave cigarettes lying around the house and then forgetting about them. So, lots of room for excessive unavoidable stress, and it's almost impossible to regulate my temptation to any extent.
The other thing with my mom... She's a great person and everything, but I think in the end when you boil it down she's a helpless, incompetent, stubborn and ignorant loser all rolled up into one. She's never had a secure job in her life. She married my dad because she felt sorry for him. She's had 1 boyfriend since the divorce, who was the wimpiest, most helpless and self-disabling narcissist you could imagine. She has no friends. The only time she leaves the house is to play in a quintet 3 times a year with people she doesn't even like seeing, she only goes because she used to and she'd feel bad for not going anymore, even though she hates it and does nothing but complain about having to go for weeks on end (it's a voluntary gathering, she doesn't actually have to go, these people are barely aquaintences).
Her day consists of locking herself in her room with her computer, chain smoking (over a pack a day
), and writting books about everything that went wrong in her life that she did nothing to stop and hoping they'll get published and make her millions so she'll never need a job again. She writes about stuff like self-motivation courses that failed to motivate, which she then labeled as a brainwashing cult. She complains about everything and everyone in her life. She's tired. People are too demanding. There's too many expectations on her. She's fat and in pain. It just keep going really. She's in such bad shape that between grade 1 and 6 I was at LEAST 2 hours late for school almost every single day. In first grade I would wake up myself at 6am, dress myself, make my own breakfast, get myself ready for school, then spend the next 5 hours shaking, shouting at, jumping on, kicking, or prying her eyelids open, crying because I was going to get another detention, deducted marks, and a lecture from my teacher on coming in on time (as if it were my fault) and because she kept telling me she was getting up, and to leave her alone, then 5 minutes later she'd be asleep again. At least twice a week I used to have to start elbowing or kneeing her until she'd realize I wasn't going to stop until she was seriously hurt, or until she took me to school. Not once did it register that getting me to school was top priority, and that she has to stop whatever keeps making her so tired (she had no job, so I don't know what it could have been).
This is the same woman who got into an argument with a psychologist because they were saying that it's physically impossible that I've been comprehensive of language since the moment of birth. As the story goes, after I was born when she saw me, she said hello to me and I smiled and put one of my hands up open-palmed. When she said "I'm your mommy" I smiled again. In her mind, to this day, I was smiling at her and waving hello. To this day she believes I smiled because I knew that she was the person who gave birth to me and who would raise me.
Now we have a dog. She believes that the dog smiles at her when she starts a conversation with him because he enjoys hearing what she has to say. She believes that the dog winks at people he likes.
She believes that the dog is like a piece of emotional glass. Any separation from its owners, and the dog will completely freak out and its world will come crashing down. Any separation from her and the dog, she believes to be animal cruelty.
It's pathetic and depressing. He follows her around all day whinning at her, and she runs around trying to figure out what he wants so his feelings don't have to be crushed by not getting what he's asking for. Because I train the dog, don't but up with his attitude, and wont let him off a leash (he's on a muzzle law after attacking an old woman, he's snapped at other people for petting him as well. My mom has yet to find a method of training she doesn't consider animal cruelty, she loves letting him off-leash though and refuses to obey the muzzle order because "he wouldn't like it").
Of course to the dog, she's his property. He pisses on her stuff. Targets the stuff he sees her using constantly, barks at her when she doesn't immediately obey his whimpering. He wont give her his attention by looking her in the eye or anything and she cuddles and praises him for being so cute even when he's acting up.
This is a HUGE problem. He thinks he's the alpha and that I simply don't like him because with my mom, he gets anything he wants. He's fine when my mom's gone, but when she's home I can't come near her without the dog charging at me barking and growling. Every time I go to the bathroom at night, or need a drink, or anything, he wakes my mom up.
She's sleep chronically sleep deprived for at least 18 years. She only sleeps for an hour at a time now because the dog keeps waking her up. She REFUSES to stop sleeping with the dog, and I've gotten in trouble for bringing it up. According to her, she's too lonely NOT to sleep with the dog... Yet she does NOTHING to speak to or meet actual people.
If her dillusions and emotional baggage wasn't enough, she can't run a household. We have no garbage cans, according to her they take up too much space. Instead, we have garbage bags sitting on the floor where we'd probably put a bin if we had one. Of course the dog likes to tear these open and people kick them, so I've never in my life seen our kitchen without a sticky film of dried on garbage juice, or moulding food.
She doesn't do her dishes when she's done with them, she leaves them in the sink to "do all at once", never does them, then the sink gets too full for anyone to do dishes and the food's all dried on, so we either have to soak our dishes in the bathtub and wash them in there, or we have to start eating off paper plates.
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