THE BACK STORY …
FROM BEDRIDDEN TO
Melissa Mermaid is not my real name. (Surprise, surprise … LOL) But if I told you my real name, I’d have to
hug you.
If I showed you a copy of my resume, you
probably wouldn’t believe it. Suffice to
say that everything I’ve done in my life leads me to this day. And when I say “everything,” it’s not really
an exaggeration. I’ve been a secretary,
a rock’n’roll/festival promoter, a news producer, and
a writer/web producer. I was never
afraid to work and put myself out there—at any weight, at any time. Life was always about “going for it.”
Then I developed a debilitating autoimmune
disease that left me bedridden and feeling pretty damned hopeless and
helpless. By 2003—at age 48—I was truly
waiting for my life to be over.
My news job had taken pretty much all I
had left to give from a career standpoint and although I was loved—and in
love—and had unconditional support from my family, there didn’t seem much
to live for because any anticipation/joy for what a new day can bring was gone
and there didn’t seem to be a damned thing I could do about it. Driving back and forth between
So I just up and quit my job, basically
taking to my bed out of complete mental and physical exhaustion.
Now most of you would say I was clinically
depressed and I don’t doubt that I was to a degree but when your body and mind
can’t work as one to keep you going through the day and both are beginning to
betray you, what does that leave?
Sitting and staring at the walls—or the TV—and wondering about what got
you to this point. And for me, “this
point” was over 300 lbs, bedridden, and almost 50. (Did I
mention that was the fourth time in my life that I was well over 100 pounds
overweight?)
What I didn’t write in that letter was the
difficulty I had getting approval and validation from people who had power over
my life (which, for a while, also included our health insurance company). In the business world I could earn a buck because I was skilled,
bright, ambitious, and dedicated but there seemed to be a glass ceiling on the
universe that wasn’t going to let me bust through—no matter what I did.
What I also omitted from my letter was the
sexual and physical abuse I experienced at the hands of an alcoholic pedophilic
stepfather and a mother who I know loved me but was forever battling her own
demons of low self-worth and wasn’t strong enough to handle the situation even
when she had an idea what was happening.
Then there was merciless teasing by kids at
a time when Melissa wasn’t a very popular name.
(The kids called me “Contagious Malaria” and anyone coming within two
feet of me was teased almost as mercilessly.)
Even kids I tutored succumbed to the pressure of peers and instead of
standing by me, they went with the crowd.
When I started to act out in school
because of these challenges, the nuns came down heavily on me (yep, I endured
twelve years of Catholic school when nuns were the cop, the lawyer, the judge,
and the final word … parents never dared
question their authority). So this just increased the pressure at home … and
the cycle continued.
The abuse and teasing and intimidation
coincided around the same time—age nine—and not so surprisingly, when my weight
started to get further out of control.
I can’t really remember a time when my
life wasn’t about the weight—either
losing or gaining, virtually never maintaining.
Family members—parents and grandparents and aunts—pressuring me ad
infinitum, promising paradise if I’d only “lose the weight.”
There was almost nothing worse than
struggling and starving to become an average weight for the first time (around
age 17) and finding out life ain’t so perfect just because I fit into a size 12. It was almost like a cosmic betrayal when
every facet of my life didn’t fall into place.
Add that to the fact that I had entered a marriage doomed to fail to
escape the abuse at home, and it made regaining that much easier.
You should realize that I didn’t sit in a
room and focus on the abuse and negativity and discouragement I’d encountered
in my life and let it build in my mind and stuff my face for comfort. For me, that’s not the way that it worked.
It wasn’t until I excruciatingly examined
all the events that brought me to a bedridden state that I put all the pieces
together—reviewing my life, my mistakes and circumstances, my advantages and
disadvantages, strong points and weak points—because I wasn’t going to rebuild
my body one more time without working on rebuilding my state of mind.
My vision of what I wanted was the
clearest it had ever been. Every time I
thought I wasn’t strong enough to pull it off one more time … every time I
thought I wasn’t worth the effort … something told me that I was … to keep
going …
So I did.
And what I discovered …
what transpired … is nothing short of miraculous.
