Saturday, July 28, 2012

Five Jars a Day

What started out as a harmless way for a moderne woman to keep off the pounds, grew to a full blown disorder affecting my life in various wintertime scenarios.  Yes, It was a way to manage my weight, but also so much more. I always looked wonderful and trim and this was so very important in my family.  Bulimia never took a large stronghold into my life, but it did seem much more effective than the riskier tapeworms or those messy laxative tea concoctions that were being sold door to door at the time. I was able to maintain a size 7 figure through most of my life, and even now I am trim and svelte using a good girdle and sensible diet.  Some days were harder than others, and thankfully the bulimia episodes eventually stopped.

There I was, curled up like a little baby, crying my eyes out on the couch of, well, lets call her Peggy. Peggy is an analist or, as you kids today say therapist. Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas will no longer be a miserable old lady.  Would you look at that!   I am 85 when I finally succumb to shrink quackery, so that proves I must be in real pain right now.  With no where else to turn for dignity, I needed answers, and I dialed that number.

When the person said HELLO, I broke down crying and was having difficulty speaking.  It was a phone number that someone had given me many years ago, when I was feeling similiarly unhappy.  At that time, I was so afraid to discuss my personal and private thoughts so I never once would permit any forms of therapy, for why should I, when my weekly devotionals at face to face confession seemed to serve a better purpose.  The past few months have been very traumatic for me. 

My pruny next-door neighbor Gert Whipple is always in her backyard when I am outside, and when she catches my eye, she'll wave her index finger at me with a "Shame Shame" as if she knows something I don't.  This causes me to stiffen up, remove the smile from my countenance, and pretend I do not even see her.  She is invisible to me.

I cannot imagine why people would treat me this way!  She is not the only one who has been reacting to me with negativity and cat calls.  To think that for my entire life, I have worked hard and long to be perfect.  To always do and say the right things, to always be the one with a quaint and charming smile, acting all pert and efficient in misses coordinates. I can no longer cry in remembrance of the good old days because I don't think my days back then were happy either and I am only realizing it now through therapy at age 85.  Was I put on this Earth to be miserable?

For many years I would hide food in my purse, closets, sewing room, toolshed, etc.  Binge and purge is what they call it nowadays.  My analyst tells me this is because I wanted to control something in my life during a period of depression. Depression?  Is that what I had?  I don't think I'm depressed at all, I tell jokes and giggle loudly all the time!  Depression seemed like a real fancy word that didn't apply to me and we were always the last to get anything new in town here in the Wyoming Valley anyway.  I didn't understand it until the analist forced me to think back on all those years. All those jars of peanut butter! All those uncontrollable urges to eat dirt! I now know the reason.

There was this one year when my Walter got down on his knees and cried to me that I needed to get help and that he was going to leave me if I didn't stop buying so much Peanut Butter. Yes, my Walter wanted to leave me over this! He told me once that I needed to get help or else, but I didn't stop to consider his point of view, I just got so angry at him that I scratched his face and went into deeper denial.

Dr. Cummington was our trusted physician, told me my bad habit would eventually disappear on its own, which it did, and he vowed to keep my secret. Thusly, I was given a clean bill of health time and again, but I was nowhere close to being normal.  I am so ashamed of some of the things I have done.

But Lord in Heaven above, those winter months with the dark grey clouds, and the cold Earth, and the barren trees, covered in ice?  Well they became just terrible for me, and for my marriage. Why even now, the days in January and February and March are just terrible for me because it gets so cold and icy. Oh woe is me to endure it! And now last month this analysis was able to get me diagnosed right quick about depression, but Jeepers, I still don't feel any better!!

Yours in the Love of Christ,
Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.

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