(no subject)
I learned the hard way that my child is hearing the things I say about myself. She's paying attention to how I act. This seems like such an obvious thing, but it isn't.
Last night as I was getting Anneke ready for bed, I heard her talking to herself in the bathroom. She was lamenting about all the things she'd eaten, why had she eaten that much, never eating that much again. She even threw in a few "ugh".
She was mimicking me.
Bulimia is not over. It's not like I was able to leave it in New York. It's not something I was miraculously rid of when I was discharged. I know it's a lifelong struggle. It has been a lifelong struggle. And now I have it to thank for being on an antiarrhythmic for the rest of my life. I'm nowhere near where I was, but I have still had trouble with it and I've expressed my frustrations out loud.
But I really have no way of knowing when Anneke picked this up.
I can remember her watching me struggle with my clothes in the mornings. She watched me change several times because I felt like whatever I put on made me look even bigger than I was.
Maybe she heard me arguing with her father about it when he confronted me. I wasn't going to change my behavior just because he was there.
I don't know if she was just parroting or if she has any real sense of what she was saying. I've read articles about children as young as four associating fat as bad and thin as good. I heard a story from a friend whose 2.5-year-old niece came home from preschool and said "Yukky, look at my fat chicken legs!”
I told Anneke not to say things like that. I told her she's beautiful no matter what. I hope she's too young to think I'm biased. After she was asleep, I sat at the kitchen table and cried. My first instinct was to bury my sorrows in a box of Frosted Flakes. I wanted to call Seb. I couldn't do either.
I fell asleep there until Steve woke me like she usually does.
Last night as I was getting Anneke ready for bed, I heard her talking to herself in the bathroom. She was lamenting about all the things she'd eaten, why had she eaten that much, never eating that much again. She even threw in a few "ugh".
She was mimicking me.
Bulimia is not over. It's not like I was able to leave it in New York. It's not something I was miraculously rid of when I was discharged. I know it's a lifelong struggle. It has been a lifelong struggle. And now I have it to thank for being on an antiarrhythmic for the rest of my life. I'm nowhere near where I was, but I have still had trouble with it and I've expressed my frustrations out loud.
But I really have no way of knowing when Anneke picked this up.
I can remember her watching me struggle with my clothes in the mornings. She watched me change several times because I felt like whatever I put on made me look even bigger than I was.
Maybe she heard me arguing with her father about it when he confronted me. I wasn't going to change my behavior just because he was there.
I don't know if she was just parroting or if she has any real sense of what she was saying. I've read articles about children as young as four associating fat as bad and thin as good. I heard a story from a friend whose 2.5-year-old niece came home from preschool and said "Yukky, look at my fat chicken legs!”
I told Anneke not to say things like that. I told her she's beautiful no matter what. I hope she's too young to think I'm biased. After she was asleep, I sat at the kitchen table and cried. My first instinct was to bury my sorrows in a box of Frosted Flakes. I wanted to call Seb. I couldn't do either.
I fell asleep there until Steve woke me like she usually does.