THE START OF THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

My Mother and I did not get on. I came to this conclusion when I was aged 8 and held "witch nights" on Wednesdays when I "analysed" what I had done "wrong" and which ended up with "punishments" I did not necessarily "agree" were valid. Of course, I was not an angel and did occasion reasons for my Mother to send me to my room. But those times, I knew what I had done wrong and knew I "deserved" those moments....I have two, much older, brothers who, because of their ages, were at boarding school abroad when I was born and hence we never lived together though we share the same parents! Hence, I have been brought up as an only child.My Father died on my twelfth birthday as I lay sleeping on his arm. Within a year my widowed Mother and I, she with her menopausal hormones and me with my teenage quirks, continued on the slippery slope of our relationship. We spent the better part of our time at daggers drawn. But, in fairness, we did have some peaceful and magical moments around extraordinary events over the next 35 years.Usually my Mother would compliment me but in a spin of a sentence would give me a stab, so the pleasures of the compliments were bittersweet.I was 15 years old, quite conscious of my body and lack of boobs and was wearing a bikini I was rather pleased with. And that is when The Start of the Downward Spiral happened. Mother photographed me and had a real go at my "roll" over the edge of my bikini bottoms. Looking at the photograph now, indeed there was a hint of flab, but truthfully, we are talking half to three quarters of an inch! But the sting was deadly and I never felt slim again. And it did not help that, a couple of months later, I was raped by our next door neighbour either. I had been sexually "interfered" with by him since the age of 5, without my parents' knowledge. My Father would probably have murdered him had he known!My self-image was very poor, my Mother and I sold the house a few years later and today thankfully that horrible man is dead... The sad part is that he was the Father of my little playmate.I was living in Switzerland and had access to the wonderful Swiss chocolates - alas too much! But thankfully, the French feminine culture permeated my life. Until the birth of my first child I managed to keep my weight within a regular scale and was slim and attractive. I put on a whole 14 pounds with each of my three children, and sadly never managed to get rid of the increase in a permanent fashion. I dieted on and off and with each failure became increasingly depressed.My relationship with my Mother was following the same tracks it first took when I was 8 though we did have a few periods of truce. However, overall, I was very sad with being a burden and a failure in my Mother's eyes.So, now you have part of the background of how I got to be a BIG girl!