For me, my body issues are related to a deeper, darked issue, my past.  I cried alot over this. For me my weight issue is a many faceted it thing, it is not black or white. I have many deep cutting issues to solve, weight, being only one of them. However, I do want to lose weight for health reasons, but feeling better about my body is going to be a very hard battle. As I was a child, I started to hate my body, trying to kill myself, in one way or another.I stated at the very impressionable age of 5, by taking too many vitamins.I upgraded at 9 with taking a handful of painkillers. How sad is that? That got me thrown in a mental hospital for 6 months. At 12, I stared drinking to blur the pain of my past.The pain would dull, but not go away. I tried harder to get rid of the deep feelings of self hatred that stemmed from the vicious abuse I endured as a child. At 14, I started to do pot, but that didn't help, so slowly one - by- one I added more and more drugs, trying to make the pain go away. In a way, trying to kill myself, just more slowly. By the time I had quit at 20 I had tried every drug known to man and had been in the ER 6 times for overdose. But, even now, I realize that even though I have stopped the drugs and the drinking, that I am still trying to kill myself slowly, only now through over eating.Wow, I feel freer admitting that, well, how about another eye-opener, I weigh 310 lbs. Wow, I said it I weigh 310 lbs. Hell as a teenager I always said if I EVer weighed over 300lbs,( all my abusers ( but 1) weighed over 3oolbs) I would kill myself. But now it seems, by trying to kill myself, by overeating, I got exactly where I didn't want to be. But, being that someone I am related to died at 660 lbs by suffocating, I really need to lose weight.

Born under a bad sign.. a song sung by Homer Simpson once. But I feel as if it describes my life, to a tee!
                   I was born in December of 1974 to two drug abusing parents. My father had just been discharged from the army for medical reasons. ( The war "made" him schizophrenic (sp?) ) and my mother apparently "grew up in abuse".  This may seem obscure to you, but it was the reasons my life began so poorly. At the tender age of 3 , ( probably before, but I don't remember) I started to suffer great amounts of tremendous abuse at the hands of what was susposed to be "my protectors".  I remember many many details, and I am about to go into them, they are VERY graphic though, so if you can't handle that, please don't read it.
                 My father and uncle were the first to began the sexual abuse at the age of three. I will tell you first of those memories, sorry if this is choppy, it is VERY hard to write!  One such memory: I was home alone with the two of them and they came up and asked me if I wanted a candy bar. When I said yes, I was told that I had to do something in return. I was lead to their room where I was told to suck their dicks. I remember they unzipped my pants, showed me their wrinkly, worm like penises. I looked at them in utter shock. I was then hit and had my face was shoved into my uncle's  smelly groin. When I put tis foul smelling and tasting piece of maggot meat in my mouth , I chocked and gagged on it, trying not to puke.  When he was finished and unloaded his foul load into my mouth, I tried to pull away, so I wouldn't have to swallow it, I was shoved even further into his crotch and held there until I did. Then I was shoved into my fathers lap, I yelled and screamed I didn't want to do it anymore. But then he took his belt and thrashed me 10 times. I was then pulled face first into his penis and made to suck on it. Then when they were finished the discussed something my mind couldn't fathom. then next thing I know my vagina was ripped apart by my uncles penis. I bled and bled, my little mind felt close to bursting. I felt everything go blurry at the edges, I let go. The next thing I knew, I woke up laying in bed, hoping it was all just a nightmare. But when I opened my eyes and realized I was laying in a pool of my own blood.  One time I was changing the channel and my father kicked me into the wall over and over again, and when my mother tried to intervene, he pushed her down the stairs, while she was preggo with my brother.  His mother was no better she made us eat spoiled food  and dirty plates. And we (me and my brothers) had very little clothes, and if we made an accident in the we were forced to stay in them. MY father and uncle continued to sexually abuse me until I was 5. But even after we were "free" of them, we still had court appointed visits with our father.
          At 6, my mother finally got up the courage to divorce my father, but much to my dismay, she married yet another abusive man;  and things got worse, she got heavier into drugs, meaner and more cruel. And my grandfather and cousin joined in on the abuse.  My started telling me how she hated me and wished I had never been born,  how worthless I was. When she fount out how my stepfather was sexually abusing me, she mad as hell, at me!!! She began to tell me it was my fault, if I weren't such a slut and a seductive whore, I wouldn't have neen able to lure her man away from her. After that the cruelty got worse., the words got harsher, I was now a cunning bitch. I was scum of the earth. On one trip, I had to go potty and told them so, they refused to pull over, I tried to hold it, but eventually my bladder let go. When they fount out, they immediately pulled me over and beat me with a willow branch and threw me in the trunk. After what seemed like forever, we arrived back at home, I was pulled out of the trunk by my hair and drug into the house and threw into a scalding hot bath and told to scrub  with a brillo pad. I had to scrub and scrub, til my skin was raw. And if I ever spoke up in my own defense, I was sent to the corner where I had duck tape wrapped around my head, over my hair and my mouth. If I screamed out in pain, I was locked in my closet overnight and made to wear the same urine soaked clothes the next day. ( I wasn't allowed out to go potty. )  Many a time, while they were out scoring drugs, they would leave me and my brothers outside all alone for hours, no matter what the weather was like and when we made a mess on ourselves, we were forced to stay in it or face the " scrub tub".When they tired of me, which was often, I was sent to my grandparents, where I would get abused by my grandfather and my cousin. My grandfather would often get him and my grandmother drunk, wait til she passed out, then take me and my cousin into my room, where they would takes turns using me sexually.  but the worst was when they both penetrated me at once, I screamed with agony, because my anus felt like fire ripped through it. And to make sure I didn't tell, he shot my dog, in front of me.
            One year, when I returned home from a trip to the grandparents, my stepfather was in a terrible mood, he had beaten my mother terribly ( I wasn't there to take it), when she tried to pile us all in the car and leave him, he came out swinging a baseball bat and slammed it into the windshield, we ran out of the car and he chased us down. Then starting beating my mother over the head with a telephone. The police were called, he put up quite a struggle, in the end, after threating the officer's life with a baseball bat, he was arrested that and that alone. He was do for release after 6 months, while he was gone, my mother made me take nue pictures of her for my stepfather and she made us visit him every week. But the worst day was when the DFS lady showed up on our doorstep, see my stepfather was due to be released from prison any day and they had come to extract me from the house. Apperantly the state had known what was happening to me for some time,because I was a ward of the state from age five. They came to tell my mother that me and my stepfather could no longer reside in the same home any longer. She told them, bluntly loud that I was not wanted there anyways, that I had caused much grief to the family and with that I was whisked away from my brothers.
             I was however, not free of the verbal and emotional abuse of my mother, she would call daily and tell me how she was glad that I was gone. and that I was nothing but trouble, I would beg her to talk to my brothers, I missed them so much., but she said that she didn't wanting me to warp their innocent little minds. And my first foster home didn't really free me from the sexual abuse either, both one of my foster brothers (he was 21) and the foster father would take turns having their way with me sexually, often double penetrating me.  When I finally got out of that situation, I had turned to drugs, alcohol and cutting to relieve the pain and trauma of the past. I even tried to commit suicide many a time. Hell my first attempt was when I was only 5, I had taken a whole bottled of vitamins, only to puke them up. It wasn't until I met my hubby at 20 that I started to learn what love really is and how to trust again. I even quit all the drugs and alcohol.