Notes

Hey, I'm not sure if you'll actually read this. You're a pretty busy guy, so probably not, and that's okay, but I wanted to write this out just in case :) It is long, though. Sorry.

First off, my name is Samantha, but I go by Samm for short, and I'm 19. My boyfriend, whose name is Charlie, is a gamer (mostly Nintendo and Sony), and he is a huge fan of yours, so that is how I first heard of you! He has started making a gamer out of me too, so I am also a fan :) Second, from the little you have said about yourself, my story is very similar to yours, even if I'm younger than you, and that is a big reason why I am writing this note, to show that you aren't totally alone.

My parents split up before I was born (they were never married), and I lived with my mom for most of the year and visited my dad during summers. Until I was about 7 or so, my mom was a relatively good mother, even though we were poor. Then I guess something snapped inside of her, and she went kind of crazy. She suffered from being obese, which she eventually started blaming on me, stopped cleaning the house, stopped cleaning herself, and then she started starving me when she got upset with anything. She would hit me, smack me, shove my face in things (like dirty litter boxes and dirty dishes), throw objects at my head, force me to stay awake for days at a time, etc. One time that I remember, she had an angry episode, then began crying and held a knife up to her wrists, asking me if "this is what I wanted". I think I was 9 or 10. Then, she'd be back to her "normal" sweet self, until she'd snap again a few days later, and that was basically my childhood from 7 years old to 18. My dad was always either standoffish or angry, so it was never much better with him. There is a LOT more to it, if course, but that's the gist of it.

It probably doesn't surprise you, but due to all of that, I found solace in food, and quickly ballooned in weight. My mom made fun of me, my step-mom made fun of me, my grandparents made fun of me, kids at school made fun of me, and so I kept eating to escape from it, and felt even worse each time. Lol. I finally escaped from my mom a few days after my 18th birthday. Charlie let me move in with him, and I've never been so happy. I'm about 5'1 and reached 200 lbs a couple months after leaving my mom's, maybe out of relief eating? Not sure. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're that short, 200 lbs is a lot to pack on. That's the heaviest I've ever been, and Charlie stayed with me throughout it, and still called me beautiful, and made me feel it too. I have begun a journey to lose weight the past 5-6 months though, and have currently lost 12.6 lbs :) I am doing it very slowly but surely. It is still hard sometimes to overcome the impulse to eat all the time, and the most unhealthy things to boot (and food isn't just a drug that you can quit cold turkey), but I have realized that beating myself up every time I slip up is not the way to go, so I may feel a little guilty for a little bit, but I always remind myself tomorrow is a new day.

It's only been about a year and a half, so I still suffer from extreme anxiety and depression, and sometimes out of the blue, I will have panic attacks, or I will just begin sobbing and everything will crash down on me all over again, and I don't think anyone, even Charlie, will ever TRULY understand the fear and depression that grips me sometimes when the past decides to visit me, but I eventually find my way out of it by realizing how much I have to be thankful for today, and realizing that I will NEVER have to go back to living like that again. And it's taken me longer to realize this part, but I also finally see that I'm not a bad person, and that my mother's abuse was not my fault, and nothing she said about me was true either, and that there ARE people out there who care about me, even if I don't expect it.

Anyways, if you've actually read this far, thank you, and I'm sorry if I seem self absorbed or anything. I just wanted to write this to let you know that there are other people who, while not having exactly identical experiences as you, have similar experiences, and understand what you feel.

Oh, and about the cipro you are taking, I took that too last December. It felt awful to not want to eat ANYTHING, but in a sick way it was amazing too, because 10 lbs just dropped off like THAT in a little over a week. If you still have yours in, have they checked your gallbladder? Before I went in, I had several nights of extreme stomach pain, and a fever, and what made me finally give in and go to the ER was that I puked, which I only do once every 6 years or so, and that's how I know when something serious is going on. They told me it was a good thing I had come in, because it was getting ready to burst, which probably would have killed me. And I'm only 19. Lol.

I don't really know how to end this, so...

Thank you!

Samm