Pauline Sharp had a horrible childhood of sexual abuse. This is her story of how she used binge eating to cope:
I can barely remember the taste of anything I ate as a child. For the 17 years I endured emotional and physical abuse at the hands of my parents, every one of my senses was numbed. When you are in survival mode, you don’t feel anything.
My family home looked like any dull suburban detached house, but inside it was hell. It was my father who carried out most of the abuse, but my mother was completely under his control. She had to be waiting by the door with his briefcase when he left the house in the morning and have dinner on the table for him when he got home. Whatever she cooked, it was never meant to be enjoyed by me.
At the dining table, I was told by my father that I was poisonous and lucky to be fed at all. At dinner, I would sit in silence carefully eating my mother’s pies, trying not to drop pastry crumbs. I was terrified to say anything that might upset them. I believed if I could just be “good” for my parents I could win their love, but that never happened.
When I was “naughty” they wouldn’t let me have any food, so I would resort to stealing whatever I could get my hands on. I remember being so desperate I scraped a piece of chewing gum from the playground to eat. I would stash cheese, slices of bread and tomatoes and eat them in secret in my bedroom. If they caught me, I would suffer for it. My parents never needed much of an excuse to punish me. I am sure they made things up. If I didn’t make my bed properly or if I was five minutes late from school I could be hit with a wooden spoon, cut, burned or sexually abused depending on how my father felt that day. They would use food to ritually humiliate me. One morning, I was fed porridge that made me sick and my mother forced me to eat my own vomit. I still struggle with the shame of those memories.
My parents strictly forbade me from visiting other people’s houses, but one day I was allowed to go to my friend’s house. There was laughter and noise and it smelled of warm biscuits. I can remember thinking how odd it was that the children could open the fridge without being punished. I didn’t dare go anywhere near it.
After decades of being sexually abused by my father and other men, I failed to escape their emotional control, until, aged 22, I left my parents’ house for a job as a nanny in Canada. I flew as far away as I could, but I was never really free from them.
I tried to build a “normal” life away from my parents. I was convinced I was gaining control, but with them living inside my head, I began forming more destructive habits.
Since the age of eight, I had abused my body. I was always told it was full of poison and wanted to inflict as much damage on it as I could. Alongside the self-harm, I started drinking heavily and mindlessly, frantically gorging on food.
My father made me believe everyone was watching me, that people could see that I was rotten. I was trying everything in my power to cover it up. Being fat was all part of the cover-up. “I’m already ugly,” I thought, “so why not make it a double whammy? Then people really won’t want to know me.”
When I was feeling low I would order Indian food and eat it in my bedroom. I would look at the piles of curry and rice in front of me and say to myself: “I don’t want to do this, but I need to do this.” When I had finished bingeing, I would feel a split-second rush of relief from the pain my parents had inflicted on me. I’d do anything to feel something. I would eat and eat until I felt sick and ashamed. Then, a few hours later, I would start eating again.
Image copyright CHARLOTTE EDEY
Every day I was putting on a mask. My increasing body weight was padding between me and the outside world. For me, being obese was a disguise. It kept me safe from watchful eyes. It protected me from people seeing the evil me underneath, but it also made me feel more invisible. I mean, who wants to bother with a fat, ugly nothing?
I think there is a perception that for all obese people, eating is a luxury. People believe fatness is self-inflicted, that obese people are just indulging themselves, but I didn’t like food much then. In fact, I couldn’t even taste it.
At my biggest, teenagers would shout at me in the street calling me “Elephant Woman”. I was well aware I was being judged for my size, but it was nothing compared to how I felt about myself. Nasty comments were what I deserved. I craved them.
For many years I worked hard to appear normal. I hid the pain of my childhood from everyone. I did so well, keeping my head above water. I never told anyone about the abuse. Then, in 1991 I met my wonderful husband and we had a beautiful baby boy. All I wanted for my son was to create happy memories for him, so I pushed my own pain down in order to show him he was loved.
It was in my 40s that everything fell apart. While on holiday, I caught sight of a man. Something familiar about the way he was dressed triggered an episode of PTSD from the sexual abuse. I was hospitalised for seven weeks. Even on the psychiatric ward I was self-harming and binge-eating. I would order pizzas and takeaway curries to my private room, with my sweets and chocolates stashed away, the same way I had stashed food as child.
Finally, after several appointments with mental health professionals, I found a therapist who helped me open up about my childhood. It was through the therapy that I began to process what I’d been through. At this point, therapy was focused on keeping me alive and stable, rather than unpicking my harmful relationship with food.
I knew I was unwell, I weighed 24 stone and was getting bigger and bigger, but I couldn’t stop eating. I was getting pains in my legs and knees. I found out I had arthritis and fluid on the knee. I had damaged my Achilles tendon and could hardly walk. I was told I had high blood pressure and was on the verge of diabetes. But eating and self-harming were the only tools I had to control how I was feeling.
As much as I hated my body, I didn’t want to die and leave my family behind. I was told I needed to lose 10% of my body weight to qualify for weight loss surgery.
I tried slimming groups but I couldn’t tell anyone about the abuse. The focus there was on losing the weight and buying the diet products, not the trauma that drove me to eat. Slimming groups were too public to talk openly and didn’t feel like a safe enough space for me. I lost five stone of my padding but I didn’t feel supported or emotionally resilient enough to keep it off and soon fell back into my old habits.
My health problems were so bad I went to see my GP who recommended a gastric bypass. In preparation, I saw the psychologist and discussed how losing my physical padding might make me feel.
Before my weight-loss surgery I had a number of psychiatric assessments to make sure I was mentally stable enough for the procedure and worked with a personal trainer to lose enough weight to qualify for the operation….
