Purging my feelings of loneliness

       I feel lonely sitting here at home knowing that there is world out there that is going on and I am really not a part of it.  I here of my sisters going places and not inviting me and I think they are ashamed of me because of my weight and feel really left out of the picture.  I've always been the one to stay at home and take care of things and to this day that is all I do.  Stay at home and take care of things.  Today made those feelings of loneliness even worse.  It's my 40th birthday and all day long I waited by the phone for a phone call from my parents and siblings to wish me a happy birthday and it wasn't until earlier this evening that I got a call from one of my sisters, then a couple of hours later from a niece.  I called my mom to see how she was feeling and she asked me what I was doing and I told her getting ready for my husband to take me out to eat and she asked what the occasion was for.  I had to remind my own mother that it was my birthday today.  That hurts and makes me feel like I'm not that important to any of them.  Growing up my parents both worked swing shifts and I ended up staying at home taking care of all my younger sisters.  They got to go and do things be with friends and pretty much whatever they wanted to do.  I was stuck at home not allowed to hang out with friends cause I had to take care of the house, cook dinner, make sure my sisters got baths at night and did all their homework.  Things a mother or father should have done.  I always wanted to participate in school dances and things like that but wasn't allowed to because I needed to be home to take care of my younger sisters.  Everything fell to my shoulders and I turned to the one thing that would never leave me.  The food.  Years and pounds later I finally was able to strike out on my own and move into my own place and yet there I was still lonely.  I didn't really flirt or date and wasn't that confident of myself.  I'm so shocked that I actually ended up with my husband because I was so afraid of any kind of relationship.  I had learned that the only relationships that didn't take from me was that of the relationships I had with food.  After I got married, I felt abandoned by my husband when he would go visit his mother (I wasn't welcome and didn't feel comfortable there) and would stay for hours on end on his days off and not spend time with me.  I sacrificed my life for him to live his dream of being a long haul truck driver and again was left alone all the time.  Food was still my only vice.  I got to the point where my health started to suffer and knew that I needed to make changes.  Throughout my marriage I suffered several miscarriages, never carrying a baby any further than the third month and was told that because of my excessive weight I would probably never have my own child.  After the last miscarriage I decided I needed to lose weight if I was ever going to be a mother and since I was alone most of the time I knew just how to do it.  I lived in the country and my husband worked several hours a day then had an hour drive each way between our house and work.  I went to the doctor and was prescribed with the phen/fen combination.  I took that, I ate usually no more than 500 calories a day, and I exercised 6-8 hours a day.  I had replaced food with exercise.  Food became my enemy and the reason for my loneliness.  I started hating food and not eating if I could get away with it.  The only time I ate anything real was when I was around other people.  Then after eating to make them happy I would excuse myself and go to the bathroom to throw it all up.  This pattern continued for several months until at the age of 26 I had my first heart attack.  It was a minor one but was a big warning.  Food was killing me one way or another.  If I let it be my friend and take away the loneliness it made me very fat and unhealthy, if I walked away from it it made me unhealthy.  Even today though I sometimes struggle with wanting to lose myself in some kind of comfort food because I am feeling sad or lonely and then promptly hate myself for even thinking about it.  I really hate food and see it as my enemy still to this day.  My body is not using the food as it should and I have a hard time eating because it is hard for my brain to wrap around the fact that I need to eat in order to lose weight.  That when I don't eat I put my body in starvation mode and it saves anything I eat to fat so that when I don't eat it has something.  I have no appetite and even forget to eat sometimes.  The blessing of adopting our son became a reminder for me to eat.  If I had to feed him than I could remember to feed me.  But then I would use his eating time as a reason to get caught up on things I couldn't do when he wasn't occupied with something else.  I don't go much places and it feels crappy but its because I can't fit behind most of the booths at any place I would like to go eat and I have a hard time getting in and out of my car.  I avoid looking in a mirror because I don't like what I see.  I try to pretend that I have a great self image but I don't.  On the outside I smile and pretend that I am ok with how I look and yet on the inside I hate it and just feel like everyone is staring at the fat pig that is me.  I've went from one extreme of food to another.  The yo-yo needs to stop.  I would love to go with my husband a little more on the truck but I hold back because it must be embarrassing for him to be seen with me.  I have to be very careful of where I go because my fat behind is likely to knock something over.  He wants to go explore things and I can't walk it.  So he dives off into the computer and his own little world.  Leaving me alone yet again.  I don't want family and friends thinking that they can just call me as a stand by because I will always be home because I don't go anywhere due to my weight.  I hide in my room most of the time when nobody is home so that I don't have to deal with the outside world.  This has become worse in the past few months and I am dealing with all these issues with my counselor.  But I bought a coping book for wls patients and one of the issues they work through is getting through the loneliness aspect of this surgery.  While I realize that I am going to have different issues after the surgery purging these feelings now will help me cope more effectively later.