I was reading another subreddit and had an epiphany when reading about an awful MIL boundary stomping all over her grown daughters food choices and laughing about it. Now I'm just sad. Just a side note, I had a pretty shitty childhood. Narc family members all around, made a ward of state at 3 and tossed from foster home to foster home. Some were good, some were what nightmares are made of, I've never really talked about the really bad ones.
I'll take you back to adorable little 8yr old bugscuz. Now at that age I was in my 5th foster home (taken off mum, emergency foster home, temp foster home, institution for disabled kids - my little brothers were disabled and they didn't want to split us up, foster home, children's home, trial foster home, amazing foster home) and had a weekend with my mum every second week (if she was around). So I was chilling out being 8, and awesome foster mum (hereby AFM) calls me in for dinner. I ask what it is, she says veal, I ask what animal veal comes from and just about fall off my chair in shock when I learn it's a baby cow.
A baby
I was served a plate of baby
I was suitably horrified and devastated about all the baby cows that died. Then I realised...
Lamb was a baby too
I was practically inconsolable all week, swore off any and all baby animals including eggs. I was so sad that I had eaten baby animals, and felt so guilty. AFM made a note in my file, and my Nmother was informed. Being an adorable 8yr old, I didn't take note of what went on behind the scenes, I just knew that Nmother knew I didn't eat babies any more and wouldn't cook them for me on my weekends. So she allowed me to make the choice of what I didn't want to eat and only ever served me the literally millions of other meals I was happy to eat....NAHHH I would be be here if that happened would I!
So maybe 3 months later I was over there and we had just finished dinner, a mother had TOLD me it was mutton and explained it was old lady sheep, which I was okay with (kid logic). While I was halting clean up after dinner I found the empty meat pack which said it was lamb. I was furious, I started yelling and kept calling an mother a liar. I demanded that she call AFM right away because I hated her and wanted to go HOME which was not at her house. We argued for a while (I was a very articulate and opinionated child, and I argued with mostly adult logic) and I ended up calling AFM and told her to pick me up. While I was waiting to go home, Nmother was laughing while she told me that she had been feeding me veal and lamb AND EVEN KANGAROO every time I was there to show me that I actually liked them and it was silly to stop eating them. She told me my Ngrandmother had been doing the same thing. I remember even now 20yrs later, just feeling numb. This was the moment I realised I couldn't trust her, or my Ngrandmother. I couldn't trust them to follow my food choices, which was so simple, so how could I trust them with anything bigger than that.
Now when AFM made my dinner, for a few months I checked the bin to make sure she was telling the truth about what she was cooking. I lost all trust with a mother and Ngrandmother, and stopped eating meat at their houses completely. When I moved out of AFM's house at 10 was when my food issues started. The next foster home wasn't as understanding. I spent many nights sat on the wooden bench in front of lamb or veal or egg, not allowed to go to bed until I ate it. It took me sleeping a night sat at the table and telling the teacher about it the next day for them to stop, and after that I had to sit on the floor to eat my meal.
From the next foster home onwards, I restricted my eating to a handful of meals either from a packet or cooked in front of me. Now, as an adult, a mother still laughs in my face about it. Only difference is NOW when FH tries to be spontaneous and make a new dish I haven't tried before, I have a panic attack because I don't know if I can trust him. When we eat out, I order the exact same thing every single time. I still mostly eat from a packet, and I still get super anxious even shopping and going past new foods and different meals. I feel sad. Sad that the little kid I was, made her first autonomous choice about herself, and was crushed like a bug.
Submitted January 31, 2017 at 09:31PM by bugscuz http://ift.tt/2koSykm
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