I'm starting a nervous breakdown pool

It's for my mother, but hey, why not me, too? My brother left for Iraq either today or yesterday, and she's not happy. (According to my sister, he didn't actually leave for Iraq, he's got a layover somewhere for two weeks. But I guess it's all the same to my mom, and for that I can't blame her.) I'm trying to be sympathetic--hell, I can even be empathetic, I have two sons and I have been trying very hard not to imagine what it would be like to see one or both of them and know that it may very well be the last time I'll see them alive--but she's not making it easy. How can I be sympathetic to someone who tells me that me and my family are filthy and disgusting? Take it with a grain of salt. That has become my mantra.

I have gained at least five pounds since living with her, probably more. But that stops now. I will not let her make me revert to emotional eating--well, again, anyway.

Before my brother left, we had some pictures taken. I got them off my mom's camera and onto my computer and I am not at all happy with what I see. I look six months pregnant in all of them. The only decent one is one where I am posing with my siblings and I'm behind my sister. Here's one of the worse pictures. I'm the one in red.

I've never been particularly photogenic, but this just...ugh. (By the way, that's my sister holding my youngest, her husband behind her, and the back of my oldest's head.) I don't want to look like this any more. I think that from now on when I need a kick in the pants to get back on track I need to have someone take a candid picture of me.

I almost went to Taco Bell today. My mom was driving me crazy, my 25-year-old husband is having stomach pains because of her (onset of an ulcer?) and I was just done. I couldn't even fathom the idea of being there another day, let alone another six months. I was actually counting the money in my purse to see what I could get, and I just said, "Stop. This is not what you want." So far it's worked. And I'm right, it isn't what I want.

You know when they say that you have to lose weight for yourself first? I honestly think that if my main reason for losing weight was for myself--and especially if it was noncosmetic--I wouldn't do it. "Health" is kind of a nebulous idea at my age. I feel fine. I can walk up a flight of stairs just fine, I can ride a bike, I can do pretty much whatever I want to do. I will be drenched in sweat, but I can do it. To me it's not enough to say "I want to get healthy," even though I have a strong family history of diabetes. There is no diabetes meter that I can see my risk go down with my weight. (I'm sure there's a calculator of some sort online, but you know what I mean.) So I need something stronger than that. To be honest, most of the time my strongest reason for losing weight is revenge. Well, maybe revenge isn't the best word. I want to show people that I can overcome obstacles. That I am not a fat lazy slob. That I can be pretty. I want to show them that they were wrong about me. Right now I want to show my mother that she cannot break me. She cannot drag me down with her, and she will not make me turn to fast food for comfort because she's taken her bad day out on me.

OK. Enough of that. I can hear the swelling of the violins as I shake my fist in the air. I think I've griped enough for today. I'm going to go look at real estate online and dream.