Eating markers.

I still eat markers.
No, I don't have one of those odd urges which makes me eat highlighters or anything. I eat markers as in foods; snacks or candy which shows me how much of my food I have disgorged.

For 25 years it has to some extent cast a shadow, a curse even, on me, my life and my body.

If I knew how hard it would be to write down this confession, would I do it again? I don't know. I sit here, curled up inside, in shame, while I continue to write my compunction and abashment.

Strange how I feel this way in spite of it began so unintentionaly. I didn't have problems with my weight or body. I didn't have low self esteem due to my appearance: I was healthy, strong, slim, young... Any garment looked good on me, because I wore them with confidence.

Even when my friend told me I was gaining weight, she could tell, because I had gotten dimples on my knees, I laughed it off. That's how confident I was in myself.

When I was 20 I would experience occasional involuntary throwing up. I thought perhaps I was sick, but as it increased, and it would happen more and more often I went to see a doctor, worried something more serious was wrong with me.

I went through every test in the book, and then some. My doctor sent me to one specialist after another to find out what caused it. Maybe he was just humoring me, sending me off to another specialist to shut me up, because he would say: "You have an eating disorder. There is nothing physically wrong with you, it must be of psychological reasons". And I strongly refused, saying I had no problems which would cause that kind of troubles.
And he would weigh me in and raise his eyebrows.

One week I had gained 5 kilos, the next one another 4... then I would lose 8 kilos the next.
My weight went up and down like a jojo, varying from 55 kilos to as much as 90.
Keeping three sizes in your wardrobe is perhaps not the most normal thing to do, but to me it was how it was.

There was no internet, encyclopedias weren't updated on the matter, and though it didn't start out as an eating disorder, my condition developed into one.
I needed some sort of control, and it's funny how the tricks I learned myself, are now the most common signs to look for when suspecting someone is having an unhealthy view on food and their body. (I guess that means I found out a clever and sensible way to deal with it... from a sick point of view.)

I know exactly what to eat, and how to eat it, to disengage effortlessly.
Mind you: I never stuck my fingers down my throat, or used any other means, to make me retch.
I just decided it would feel better if I emptied my stomach, so I did. Very controlled, no fuss, no hurry. I have great control of the muscles in my stomach and can still throw up just by will.

It didn't take me long to control the food expences, it didn't take me long to learn how to hide the smell from my breath. All in all I didn't think of it as such a big problem. When I was slim I looked great, when I was fat i knew I would bounce back into sexy shape in no time. No hassle.

Not untill my dentist started to charge me sky high fees, and told me something odd was going on, because I had cavities under even fairly new fillings.

Then I got pregnant, and 4.5 months into my pregnancy I got these pains, like phantom pains in my stomach and my appendix was removed one night,
I woke up from the anaesthesia, and I was still in pain, but they told me I was making it up: My appendix had been fine, and pregnancy was all well. They blamed it on my eating disorder and the psychological state which had brought the condition upon me.

One of the specialists in x-rays was a friend of my father. He had heard I was in a bad shape, and pregnant, so the next night, when he had little to do, he woke me up, took me by the hand and we walked down to his ward.

He did an ultrasound on me then, and his findings were life changing to me:
I had no infection, but my gall bladder was almost bursting with the amount and sizes of the gallstones.

They all apologized, telling me how unexpected and uncommon it was for a young person, such as me, to have that. Suddenly I had no eating disorder anymore, I was suffering from symptoms of a physical disorder.
I was sceduled for a surgery a year later.

Suddenly I had no medical backup anymore. Suddenly I had no psychological challenges. Now there was an explanation to my weight issues, and it was like as if it was already fixed.

It wasn't. Now I turned worried, and ate even more to make sure the baby got the nutritient it needed, and my weight changed faster, and more, than ever.
It took me years to get a balanced and healthy view on food.
And to do that I had to accept being over weight. Sounds strange, but that was what it took for me to get peace of mind.
The chemistry in my body is a mess and not functioning right.

For 15 years I have been over weight. 1/3 of my life, and enough is enough. I am ready to take the next step.

Financially it has cost me a lot. At times I have cut back on every expence, just to spend as much as possible on food.
Dentist bills have been astronomical. Still are cause my teeth now crack and fall out in pieces. You can't tell by my smile, but they do. I have to be careful where I chew, and what I chew.

Buying clothes which fit has become quite an obsession, almost as bad as my shoe purchases. (Maybe that's why I like shoes so much, because they always fit, no matter my size.)

I never buy clothes in a store. I hate it when the helpful, smart and smiling, young staff come over to tell me how great I will look in this or that in those colours.
Almost all my clothes are grey or black.

I hate to see great garments on the online stores, knowing I can't wear it because it will reveal too much, or I will be too noticable. I cling to my previous love for cut and fabric by having a somewhat black and grey chic punk style. And people call me eccentric for it. Not even realizing I AM eccentric, but for other reasons.

I find it quite a paradox, you know, knowing I now hate pictures of me. I avoid being taken pictures of, and get quite upset when I find out somebody did. When I see a picture of me I examine my double chin, the shape of my body, my "love handle" of excess skin, and I get upset.
All the normal and perfect imperfections everybody has, is to me a reason to hide. And admitting to this is quite surprising to me, as I find all people, regardless their shape, color and style, beautiful.

I hate doing any kind of physical activity because I know I am too heavy. And I know my kids at some level are missing out on things I would love for them to experience.

But now I have come to a point in life when I have to take a grip and make a few changes, more than a few: many! I need to become good enough again. Being like this is too exhausting. Because, after all, I am not sick anymore... I just still eat markers.

When good tales are told.

Life is full of those all too familiar ups and downs. Situations we experience, see or hear about that create the everyday stories we remember for a short time. They turn into tales we tell to get sympathy or to make someone laugh. Sometimes we tell them to cause a bit of drama, other times we tell them to support someone, which may lead to the terribly unfortunate episodes of slander travelling across minor, or major, parts of people and area.

Sometimes the stories make an impact, other times they are just food for swift entertainment.

I am not good at telling stories, never have been. I can't even tell a joke properly. 

Actually I write a lot better than I tell, which is a strange perplexity to both me and others when you think about the nature of my profession: being a teacher.
A teacher should be good at telling stories.
A teacher should be able to get the students interested in any topic, just by adding "fun facts" and stories related to the topic.
A teacher should trigger all the knowledge a student has, which can be linked to, and fill in gaps, which they achieved on different arenas in the past. School is not a separate department apart from the rest of your life.
School is part of your breeding and growth, a compliment to all the other experiences and knowledge that you  acquire through life.

I often get students who claim they don't know English. They can't speak it, they can't write it. Of course it's just nonsense: they chat while gaming online, they listen to music with English lyrics, sing along even, they watch a lot of movies and they speak English when travelling abroad. But they think this is something different than the English they are supposed to perform in school.

Often my job is to push the right buttons and trigger their understanding of English and Norwegian  as English and Norwegian, and not English versus school English and Norwegian versus school Norwegian.

I try, it's not that I accept my shortcoming and admit to failure, but I trust my students to carry the story on and add the remarks and catchy associations. It works. It works the minute you make them pay attention.

Yesterday we had Global Dignity Day here at our school. HRH crown prince Haakon Magnus visited, and it was a surprisingly pleasant experience.

That too culminated in stories. Not mine, but the students' stories about what they understood dignity to be all about.
They told about everyday situations in which they had contributed to somebody else's dignity. Or when somebody else contributed to theirs.

We heard about young talent, making the wrong choices, siblings with extraordinary challenges because of some diagnose, we heard about hospitality, kindness to strangers, arrival to a new home country... the stories were many and ever so warm and told with heart.

Listening to them I was rather proud how their everyday, little stories showed what material these youngsters are made of. The stories they carried with them, and told with such shyness, defined dignity in brilliant ways.
Makes me think their tales of everyday life will improve in the future, just like good wine.