I have been battling my weight since i was a teenager, i felt like the fat girl in every group and like i didn't fit in, the guys always commented or like my "phat" ass.
Over the years i tried all sorts of diets and pills lost some weight here and there and i was "happy" at 150lbs for many, many years but something inside was struggling to be happy with the woman i saw in the mirror, I could be because our culture always expect you to be THIN, if you are not thin then something is wrong with you!
Growing up at every family gathering everyone would talk about how FAT
"fulanita" was and how she was letting herself go and (i'm sure that was said about me as well),that does not mean the family didn't love love you it just means they think you are FAT and you should look a certain way. I guess is the Dominican culture and even though they think you are fat they cook so many fatty things. (that are delicious i must say)
When i gave birth to my first lovely daughter my weight remain the same, she was a preemie so i didn't gained much, with my second daughter i gained 70lbs which put me at 220lbs in three years i manage to go down to 180 and then my third daughter came and "luckily" I only went back to 220lbs again! I guess 220 has been my lucky number for years lol.
In 2007 i was in a very dark place in my life, my kids father was leaving for younger woman, i had just given birth to our 3rd child, i went thru post postpartum depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, i literally i wanted to die, the humiliation was too much for me to bare, i was FAT and i was a single mother of three kids!
I remember being so angry that because he had told everyone i was FAT and disgusting that i cried every night for months and also remember one woman saying to me "you do not deserve him he is too handsome for you, you are fat"
My anger led me to a destructive path, a friend was selling the famous "Brazilian" pills and I wanted a way out of my own body! she said these will make you skinny in a few months and they sure did!!
I began taking these Brazilian pills which were prescribed by doctors in Brazil to extremely obese people, i started to walk around my lunch hour, I danced and did crazy exercises at home for 2 hours everyday; I only ate Activia, salad and chicken and drank lots of coffee and water and the weigh started to disappear and people finally started to like WHO i was, the new skinny girl, everyone was happy for me. People did not know that deep down inside of me was a woman that was bitter and mad at so many people.
In 2008 I was so skinny people started to get concern (really!!!?????) I would get questions and comments like:
"are you doing drugs?" "are you loosing weight to get him back?" "you should stop loosing weight your BUTT is gone" and these made me even angrier these were the same people that called me FAT! like really people get off my back! I WAS 125 lbs!
In less than 6 months I had lost almost 100lbs,
I was anemic, starving, emotionally gone I was a zombie acting like i was happy but in reality i was dying inside and that's when GOD gave me a series of wake up calls:
NUMBER ONE: On January 25th 2008 my youngest daughter (it was her first birthday) had a Complex Febrile Seizure and was Unresponsive for 3 long days laying in a bed of ice to keep her temp from going up her temp was at 107, the doctors had no clue if she was going to make it, everyone around me was praying and i was busy blaming her dad for leaving us, i felt we were being punished.
NUMBER TWO: In December of the same year my oldest daughter was really sick and loosing a lot of weight, I remember calling my cousin one day and saying to her
"They think Ashley has Leukemia, can you gather the family and let them know in case we need a Bone Marrow transplant". When the test results came back it turned out not to be Leukemia but she was still sick and for months the doctors couldn't figure out what i was wrong with her until her final diagnosis was Addison's Disease, i went online to research about this and the first website i came across was a memorial site and there was a story about a 16 year old girl that had past away from the illness and then i remember her doctor saying the condition was rare in kids and they barely made it to their teen years, I cried for months!
NUMBER THREE: with all of this going on I stopped dieting and the weight started coming back but i was still "happy" not being FAT, I was 140lbs when the worst thing I've experience happened at this point our condo was in foreclosure our boiler was broken so i resorted to my Dominican survival mode and started to boil water for my girls to take a bath; one day i was bringing the water up the stairs in a pressure cooker, it was boiling hot and i tripped all the water splashed in my face, arm and back; it hurt badly but my daughters were at the top of the stairs and i didn't want to freak them out so i did not cry, I grabbed my girls and rushed to the hospital (not sure why i didn't call 911) when i got there they looked at me and went to panic mode, I had 2nd degree burns and i looked like a monster from one of those scary movies.
At the end of all the Morphine treatments and pills i had manage to gained another 50lbs HOWEVER i was a different woman less angry and more thankful for God's wake up call, I was still struggling with weight but not as much!
Thru it all i have never lost my faith in GOD, i question WHY, many times!! I thank him for making me strong enough to survive all his test.
Everyone kept telling me i was Bewitched (me hicieron BRUJERIA) but when you have an unbreakable faith like mine no evil in this world can harm you.
This story is true to its entirety so God is my witness!
I'm a product of GOD and it took me a while to find myself and I'm sure there are many other things to come but my faith will guide me thru them. Never give up!
The pictures below shows how much damaged i did to myself.
