What it is to me

So a little over a week ago, I had a bit of a health scare and was hospitalized for a weekend.  The day that I was to be released from the hospital, I met with a dietitian about how I could change my health, permanently, for the better.  One of the things that she suggested was support from my wife.  I told her no, I didn't want that because I don't feel like my wife supports me with dieting.  I feel like she beats me down (even though I know she doesn't, but that's how it feels to me) whenever she is trying to be "supportive" or tell me that I shouldn't be eating this or that I have eaten too much of that.  I know that this isn't how Amanda is.  I know it.  But regardless, it is how I feel whenever she says anything to me about food.  The dietitian told me that I should think about how support feels to me.  So I have.  At great length.  Since the moment those words came out of her mouth, I have thought about it.  I have come up with absolutely nothing.

The truth is, I don't know what support feels like to me.  I have had so little support when I was young that I don't know what it means to feel supported now.  I do know this, the things that Amanda has been doing up until this point is NOT supportive.  It makes me feel like a worthless human being and my response to her current "support" is to just go and gorge myself with food just to spite her.  I know she is only trying to help when she says "You didn't eat very well today.", but to me, all I hear is "You are worthless.  You have screwed up so badly.  I hate you."  That is what I hear and it makes me hate me even more than I already do.  It makes me want to just eat until my heart or stomach explode.

So I sit here.  I sit here wondering what support feels like.  I try wracking my brain to come up with something that my parents did when I was younger that made me feel supported.  The only thing I can ever come up with is hearing the words "Good job" a few times.  That's it.  And that is certainly not what I'm hearing now.  I promise you, I am trying very hard to figure out what "support" is to me.  But at the same time, I can assure you that the way things have been handled in the past isn't it at all.  It will just make things worse.  I didn't write this so that anyone can try to help me figure it out.  I just had to write this down.  While talking with my dietitian earlier today, one of the things I said to her was "I got myself in this mess (health wise), I'll get myself out."  I meant that too.  Rome wasn't built in a day and I didn't get to be this fat mess of a slob overnight.  It will take me some time to get it back right.  In the meantime, I don't know what support feels/looks like to me.  Just know that I am trying.