Hello everyone.  I am looking for an outlet to my mind and thoughts.  A place I can try and connect with someone or even a place to just cast out my mind into the void, to release the thoughts and feelings I have.  This is me.  I do not expect anyone to read it all, but I have to get it out there, so apologies for the length.  Basically my life and how I got here

Ok.  So I was watching a show on TV, My 600lb life, looking for some inspiration to get myself going.  One of the things that he guy’s therapist suggested, was for the man to write a letter to his mother, whom he thought was the root cause of his weight.  The idea was in the act of expressing all that he had been suppressing all these years, and it would then begin the healing for him.  So I thought I would give it a try

I must make a point right at the outset.  The way I am now, I have never blamed my parents, or for one second thought that they were in any way responsible for my situation.  I had a wonderful childhood with them.  It was outside the home where it all happened

Thinking back, I always thought that it was when I started Secondary school.  But if I really think about it, it had always been there, at least since junior school (7-11), perhaps even infants (5-7).  I can remember some time at infant school, little snippets of time in the playground, in the hall but not a great deal.  No real school friends as you see in the movies. Well at least I do not remember any.  That is perhaps why I think that is where it started.  I know it certainly was in junior school.  I lived on a street full of my school friends until 3rd year (age 10) and remember getting excluded all the time from activities the other kids did.  Only once was I asked to join them when they were exploring an old convent before it was knocked down.  But as I was climbing through the window frame, someone pushed past me and I ended up cutting my head on a little piece of glass that had been left in the frame.  I ran home with my head pouring with blood but not one of them bothered to go with me to see how I was

In the playground, and this may sound kind of pathetic but it has always stuck with me.  We would all play Catchy Kissy.  Basically, a boy would chase the girls around the yard, and if he caught one of them he gave them a kiss.  All innocent child fun.  But, whenever it was my turn, all the girls would walk away and didn’t want to play it anymore.  Kids are hurtful and spiteful, that is how they are.  But I always think of that as my earliest memory of me not fitting in, or no one wanted to be around

I got in a few fights as all kids do, and when I did fight, I always won.  Usually in one or two punches.  But then I was always jumped on by the others because I had won.  Didn’t matter that the other person had been teasing me for weeks, I didn’t hit them sneakily, it was always an “arranged” fight in the alley, after school.  On the field before youth club.  That lad was 2 years older than I was.  That was one punch after he had been bullying me for months and I was the one that got suspended and he got the sympathy.  So no matter what I did, i was always excluded by everyone or bullied then beaten when I stood up for myself.  I suppose that is when I started to withdraw a little.  I always thought, what was the point.  Damned if I do and damned if I don’t.  Well I do not suspect for one moment that I thought in those words, but you get the drift

3rd year juniors was when it started properly.  I remember talking to one lad and I was stood behind his chair.  I put my hand on his shoulder as I was pointing at something with my other hand.   Then suddenly I was gay because of that.  I was even more shunned and ignored than before.  4th year and age 10-11, had someone constantly bully me all year and at the end of year disco I had had enough.  The whole disco I kept walking past him and slapping him, “outside after this”, you know the kind of thing.  I never blacked out, but I felt nothing.  I was punching the wall when I was waiting for him, and I mean PUNCHING it.  And I felt nothing.  I was in sucha  rage at 11 years old, I was punching a brick wall with all og my might and did not feel a thing.  The fight went the usual way, two punches and he was down.  Then the usual ridiculing of me started and the others jumped on me for beating one of their friends.  You know when you see it in the movies and the quiet kid finally stand up for himself and people treat him like a freak for it, that was me

I was also VERY self concious of my body and weight when I was in junior school.  One sports lesson I was picked to go on the skins team (shirts V skins) and I refused to take my top off, so much that I ended up in the headmaster's office over it.  I mean, an 8 or 9 year old boy should not be having worries like that, but I guess a lot of what had been said and done to me had started to sink into my consciousness .  These are the informative years of development, and what I learned was I was useless, fat, ugly and no one wanted to be my friend

Then to secondary school.  Where it just got worse and worse.  From day 1 I was it.  1 boy tortured me relentlessly, physically and mentally at every opportunity.  “Call my mother a prostitute, I want a reason to beat you up”.  Never usually needed one.  Even when I snapped and hit back, he smashed my nose and I got into trouble.  These were the years when you start to grow and find yourself, learn all the nuances of being a person, how to act in social groups, start forming your own path in life.  Mine was a dark, dark place, full of pain and ridicule.  I went one way, once bunch of lads got me, I went the other way, a different bunch of lads got me.  No matter what I did or didn’t do, someone was always there to get me.  So my feeling of self worth even at that age was zero.  It must have been at 12 or 13 when I stood in that phone box, my pocket knife pressed into my wrist and the feeling of what a failure I was in everything (even the fact that I could not just draw that blade the 3 inches I needed to then escape it all).  That put me down to an even lower point that I suspected I could go

I did make a friend, a lad in my sister’s year.  Went well for quite a while, then he suddenly turned round and was telling everyone I tried to “bum” him.  There was that gay thing again…. He was all “yeah look how good I am” as he punched me in the face as he walked past, laughing.  Again I snapped one night at the bus stop and the usual story unfolded.  So now I was starting to learn that along with being useless, fat, ugly I was also a complete and total outcast.  It was like I must have had the plague or something

I then met who I thought was my guy.  Number 2 son as my mum called him.  We were inseparable for years, we hung out every day, went on holiday together and so on.  Then he dropped me like a piece of shit.  Everything came back ten fold.  I thought I was one of the Aikido crew also, then one night we were having a course and everyone were invited back to someone’s house to watch a movie and hang out, except me.  So now add being used to the list

At 16, I even lost a shit load of the weight (I always remember my 28” waist), and still nothing changed

I was really in the throes of depression at that stage (18) but I didn’t know it.  I became addicted to gambling on fruit machines.  For that one smallest moment of winning that jackpot, I suffered even more for years and years later.  I met my ex during that period.  And as I think back, I must have been that desperate that I put up with the being stood up all the time, the extreme jealousy in the early stages, because I could not believe someone liked me.  Yet I still gambled, I started eating again.  Things had happened to her as a child, terrible things.  But (as I now realise looking back) I concentrated on fixing her and used that as an excuse so I could ignore me.  I became so emotionally detached, I never shed a tear at my Grandad’s funeral

I am not going to go through all of that relationship in great detail.  That is not the point of this.  When I finally broke one day at work, I was then diagnosed with depression and given tablets.  They seemed to help.  The Doctor took me off them, I got worse, back on, better, off worse, back on permanently.  But for the 10 years or so I was on them I was a zombie inside.  I was so empty and dark and all the doctor did was up the dosage.  It was not until we had moved to a different town to try and save the marriage that the new doctor there changed my tablets and it was the difference between night and day.  So I thought AT LAST.  Time for me to heal

But no.  Despite all the time, and care I had put into us, she decided she didn’t love me like a husband.  And to be honest thinking back over the 23 years, it was like that from the beginning.  All the little things you do as couple for each other like waking up in the morning and there is only 1 teabag left.  So you leave it so your partner can have a drink.  She never said thank you or even did that for me once.  I should have seen the signs even then.  But no, I wanted to try and fix things.  I guess I was afraid of being alone, or perhaps thought it was my time to be looked after as I was getting to grips with the depression.  We were even trying to start a family.  But then on that day, Saturday 31st August, I found out that she had done the most hateful thing that would cause me the greatest amount of pain.  In full knowledge that it was the ONLY thing I could never forgive.  She was sleeping with someone else

There it all was again, fat, ugly, unlovable, used, despised, worthless joke

I do not remember parts of those first few months.  I remember actually starting to see the appeal of suicide and wondered the best way to do it.  I even started to research it.  One day I thought I had made a breakthrough and thought I could fix me.  Lost some weight, went to the gym, started to do things.  Then the anniversary of the breakup came and hit hit me like a steam train.  And here I am, years later sat in my flat, fatter than ever, empty, lonely and desperately trying to find a reason 

One thing is clear to me now.  I am going to be alone for the rest of my life.  I have been alone from the very start.  I have done nothing.  I have not been anywhere.  I have no stories to tell, experiences to express.  I have no social skills, having it all beaten out of me as a child.  Fat, ugly, balding worthless excuse of a man

I am a nice guy, a good guy but no one cares apart from my best friend.  She would do anything for me but has her own family to look after.  I go for days without any interaction with anyone, even at work.  There have been a couple of women I have felt something for and thought they did for me.  But as usual, my dillusions.  They don’t.  I have no interests, no skills, only food.  I fucking hate food.  I want to stop eating if I could, like cigarettes, coffee, gambling, just stop it.  I did it with them, so why can I not with food.  It has always been the one thing constant in my life I guess.  Food has always been there to comfort me.  But now I struggle to go for a walk without pain and sweating buckets.  How can a friend be a friend if they do that to me???????   Why can I not get that through my fucking thick skull??????  Am I scarred that I will truly then have nothing with that gone.  So the abuse I am now doing to myself, is better than nothing.  How totally fucked up is that.  I have to stop.  I will be dead if I don’t.  I will be one of those that people say, “didn’t someone used to sit at that desk????”

I still try to accept I am going to be alone forever now, never to feel the loving touch of another human, share the joys of being.  I see that, and almost at the point of accepting it now.  But that is no excuse to remain how I am.  If I can get healthy and lose the weight, I will at least be able to go for a walk in the country with my camera and enjoy the company of the earth and animals and birds, be that lonely old man that takes pleasure in feeding the pigeons in the park every day.  Yes I can see myself with the overcoat and cap, sat with a paper and some bread

I cannot help but have regrets.  I know I cannot change the past.  I do not want much from life.  I just want to be loved.  I suppose as no one else is going to love me, I need to love myself.  But I just can’t do it 

I need help.  I cannot carry on like this.