Chapter 5: Where it all Began

When I think about my childhood and adolescence, I do not have to look too far to find possible contributing factors to my eating disorder. Dwelling on the past is counterproductive to me. I rarely ever think about the good old bad old days, but I know some of what occurred in my young life likely played a role in what I became. Of course, I am not suggesting there was any one specific event that led to this mess I am having to deal with, but this is a valid question worthy of my contemplation…what happened to me?

Like so many of us, my childhood was what you might call difficult. My teenage parents divorced before my first birthday. My mother and I moved to another state across the country for her health. It was a critical necessity, but we knew no one. My grandmother came out with us to help us get settled, but she had to return quickly because she discovered she had terminal breast cancer. Now we were completely alone. My mom had to work sixty hours per week just so we had food to eat and a small roof over our heads. There were times when she went hungry in the beginning, but she made sure I never did. I had the same babysitter from the time I was almost two years old till I was twelve. That was our one fairly consistent consistency, and we were lucky we had her because she gave us some semblance of “family” and helped us not feel so alone. She was one we could turn to if we needed a little help. Since we became in a small way a part of Babysitter’s extended family, I was the flower girl in her daughter’s wedding. I was three years old. I know we practiced what to do, but when I started to walk down the aisle of the church during the wedding, there were rows and rows of people staring at me. Terrified, I turned around and bolted out of the church! The bride came running outside after me. I most definitely did not like being in the limelight even then. Kneeling down in the parking lot in her lovely white gown, she somehow convinced me to go through with it. I survived. Of course, my mom paid for everything we ever had there, and in more ways than one. It was a particularly challenging relationship because Babysitter had many issues, and she did not keep many of them to herself.

I remember the television was on almost all the time; she tuned into the news for hours daily. That was way too much bad news for a young child to have to hear about day after day, year after year. This was during the 1960s and 1970s. There were numerous images and reports about the war, protesting the war, and about the fallen soldiers from the war. Then there were reports of the dead college students who were shot and killed for protesting the war that created the poor dead soldiers. This was not in some repressive totalitarian regime, no, this was in the United States of America. There were also numerous assassinations, a lot of drug abuse, and a “family” that murdered people in their homes—including a pregnant woman. The news reporters also talked frequently about serial killers, which to a young child can sound an awful lot like cereal killers, thus explaining the recurring nightmares I experienced when I was about seven years old, of bad guys putting drugs in our cereal to try to kill me and my family. There was a steady diet of this daily. It is interesting to me to think about the personal outcomes of that bombardment of atrocities. For more than the last twenty-five years, I rarely watch television and I never watch the daily news. I will read about the news, but I do not watch it. That definitely made a lasting impression. For years we also lived with Babysitter, off and on. We rented a small room in her house. This was more economical than renting an apartment and much more convenient because my mother worked late hours.

This woman, Babysitter, was twenty years older than my mother. She was a domineering, opinionated, excessively strict religious fanatic. The religious group she belonged to did not believe in eating pork, so I was not allowed to eat pork. One time I got to go to visit my maternal grandfather and his second wife for a week. I got to fly in an airplane escorted by a kind flight attendant who showed me the cockpit and the friendly pilot gave me pilot’s wings to pin on my dress. I was about six years old at the time. It was all so exciting to me. Babysitter told me repeatedly that I had to refuse to eat any pork. If they tried to make me eat any, I was instructed to firmly say no. It was as if the safety and security of the world as we know it depended on this one thing. Now, mind you, this is not my mother’s belief system, but my babysitter’s! At my grandfather’s house they ate like typical American families. Their food was delicious, and I could have what I wanted to eat. I had a pretty good time except I was homesick for my mother. Growing up without any family around was excruciatingly painful for me, so this visit was a big deal. When I returned from the trip I was grilled about what they fed me. Not How was your flight? Did you have a good time? No, it was all about following her food restrictions. I was pleased and proud to let her know that I told them I could not eat any pork, so they gave me the best beef bacon and the most delicious beef ham in the world! It was so good! She should try it! She was livid. Of course, at the time I didn’t understand that what they gave me was pork. It is funny to me now, but what a lot of pressure to put on someone else’s child.

Babysitter’s religious group had many rules and restrictions, and what they didn’t restrict, she did. They seemed to be an unhappy miserable lot. It was forbidden to wear jewelry and makeup. Going to the movies was a sin, so was going to the roller-skating rink. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. We still went anyway, but my poor mother was severely scolded whenever Babysitter found out. She talked about Hell a lot. They were not Jewish, but they followed the Levitical law, so there was no shrimp, no lobster, no television after sunset on Friday, and so on. She told me that there had never been any dinosaurs. She said that they were made up to try to disprove the Bible. What about all the fossils? Fake. This made it confusing for me in school, but it didn’t take too long before I was able to see that she was wrong about so many things. The confusing part is that she also seemed to be right about a lot of things, too. Like whenever I got sick, she knew just what to do. And when I got the measles, she nursed me back to health. My mother had never had the measles before so Babysitter would not allow her to come in the room with me. That was a rough week. My mom brought a big box of new coloring books, crayons, and activities that I could do quietly in bed. She also let me borrow her gorgeous movie star sunglasses that I adored. I was supposed to be in a darkened room, so the fancy sunglasses made it a bit more fun. My mom brought the sparkle and meaning into my life. Babysitter seemed a bit more like a prison guard. If you happened to be at Babysitter’s house on Saturdays, you were going to go to her church. This made no sense at all because she didn’t go—she just took her mother and whatever kids were around and dropped us all off.

Most of my meals were eaten at her house, but on my mom’s one day off each week, we would often go out and try different restaurants, mostly fast-food places and diners. My favorite, of course, being a small child, was Jack in the Box. I thought nothing could get any better than hamburgers with secret sauce! The Sears store close to where we lived had a lunch counter and we would treat ourselves to sandwiches there from time to time. My mom got the barbeque roast beef and I got the egg salad…funny the things you remember. It was adjacent to their candy counter, so we usually each selected a favorite treat after our sandwiches. This may not sound like much, but when you are poor, this is a big deal. About once a week I got to have this special time with my mom, but that wasn’t enough. The rest of the time was at Babysitter’s house where her rules were to be adhered to at all times. You had to eat everything on your plate, and she filled the plates. There was little thought given regarding what she put on the plates. We were more like cattle to be herded in, fed, and led out to pasture—the back yard.

Babysitter and her mother also ran a boarding house for retired men in the big front house. The men ate first, then the kids. I don’t remember a lot about the lunch fare, except there was often canned soup that Babysitter would put a slice of torn up white bread into. It was truly gag-worthy, but often when I would ask to please have the bread on the side, she would let me. It was fine then. It was the gross soggy bread that made my gag reflex work overtime. I was at school for most lunches once I turned five, so not a lot of memories about that, but I do remember that Babysitter's mother would always cut the crust off my sandwich for school. She knew how much I disliked the hard, dry crusts. Saturdays were different. On Saturdays the men were on their own; only the kids got food there that day. It was kind of their day off-ish. They made pizza and French fries for lunch every Saturday. We always looked forward to that. The pizza came from a boxed mix and the fries were from frozen, but we enjoyed them just the same.

There were usually many different foods available for dinner, which they called supper. Always a main meat dish, some type of potatoes, a variety of vegetables, bread and a simple dessert. I happened to dislike green beans. They were simply detestable to me, and they were usually canned, which is the worst green bean of all. She would put a serving of everything on my plate, and I couldn’t leave the table till the plate was clean and all green beans were gone. I started hiding the green beans under my plate. If you place green beans just under the rim of a dinner plate, you can have quite a large circle of them by the time you are done. Babysitter’s mother ran the boarding house, and she usually cleared the dishes. She never told on me about the great green bean caper—I appreciated that. One evening, as I was leaving the table with my green bean circle safely hidden from view under my plate, Babysitter unexpectedly came in and cleared the plates. I tried, but I didn’t even make it out of the kitchen. She grabbed me and pushed me against the refrigerator, screaming at me, and she forced those horrid green beans in my mouth. Tearfully I tried to choke them down. I was distraught. Her explosive rage was frightening. I never told my mother about the incident because I thought that I was bad for not eating the green beans. She never told my mother either, for obvious reasons. It’s unclear exactly what Babysitter screeched at me that evening, but it was devastating to a quiet, introverted kid who tried so hard to avoid her wrath.

Because I was usually such a compliant child, I was not spanked that I remember, but the same cannot be said for most of the other children there. After lunch was naptime, whether you were tired or not. Because we lived there, I had my own bed in a separate area next to the napping room. About four or more children on one big bed and two more in a small bed in one room is not conducive to getting much sleep. There were a few giggles and a little talking, but if she came back in the room and the kids were not asleep, they would each get a spanking. Their tears flowed as they cried themselves to sleep. I witnessed this many times over the years. Nap times are great. Children need adequate rest. I had nap time in kindergarten, too, but no one was hit for being unable to get to sleep in the middle of the day. The young kids at Babysitter’s were spanked for many infractions. One time I remember her being angry about something, and I was ordered to go to the side of the house and break off a switch for a kid to be spanked. I vividly remember standing outside looking at the branches and trying to figure out which would hurt less, the thinner switch or the thicker ones. At first I thought the thinner one would be less painful, but with the thicker one she might not hit as hard. I was rescued from this horrific detail, hopefully saving some other poor soul, because my mom returned to pick me up to go somewhere before the switch had been selected. She had random anger issues. There were days when she would ignore minor infractions, other days, she would explode. She could also be critical, demeaning, and verbally abusive, but that was mainly to adults. It was definitely within earshot of the kids.

Babysitter and her mother owned a fairly large property that had a big house in the front, a medium sized house in the middle, and a guest house in the back. As I mentioned, they ran a boarding house for elderly men. They provided three meals a day, six days a week. They even provided maid service for them, cleaning their rooms each week. They charged a fair amount of money for this. The men got their basic needs met in a clean environment, not too expensive, and it was a decent livelihood for the women. Now these two women rarely ever spent any of the money they earned. I do remember watching Babysitter calculating to the penny her tithes for the church, but rarely did they buy anything but food and their one known vice: a popular cola drink that was only purchased for themselves. Having lived through the depression, they knew the value of a dollar…of a penny!

For some unknown reason Babysitter’s mother always seemed to think that the people in the apartment building across the alley from their houses threw away valuables. She had a pretty good view of the large trash dumpster from her kitchen window. There were a couple of times when she would call me in and have me go with her over to that giant dumpster and hoist me up and into it with all the trash. I recently found out that my mother never knew about this. She was fairly horrified when I told her about it. I would have to hold up things that looked like they were possibly more than just garbage for Babysitter’s mother to see. I don’t think I could even see over the dumpster very well once I was inside. There was never any marvelous treasure inside that bin, but I do recall some old clothes from time to time. One time there was a woman’s orange and black top in there that Babysitter washed and reconstructed into a decently cute witch costume for me to wear for Halloween. I’m sure that by this time my mom could have bought me a costume, she had before, but Babysitter said there was no sense in throwing away good money when we already had something for free. She also always cut my hair. Short. No matter how much my mother asked her not to. She said that it was always getting in my face and that I couldn’t see. Headbands, barrettes, ponytail holders, bobby pins, all items made for just that purpose. I hated having short hair.

She most definitely wanted to be the boss. She was the bossiest, most controlling person I ever met in my entire life. If you valued your sanity and wanted to keep your head attached, you never went to her house on Saturdays. She was in full-out preacher mode on Saturdays and would hit you with both barrels. Attractive young women were her victim of choice. Unfortunately, my mom fit into that category, and I had to listen to many unkind things said by Babysitter to my mother. Once she made her wear a washcloth tucked into her top because a tiny bit of cleavage showed. All the criticisms and negativity created so much confusion in me, along with a lot of hurt, angry feelings. My mom was great! She was amazing and wonderful and worked so hard. She was fun. She was loving. She was also beautiful…none of which could ever be said about Babysitter. It isn’t that she was old. It is more that she could be so mean and was full of jealousy and anger, and that is what made her unattractive.

For as much as I disliked the mean things that Babysitter did from time to time, and the horrible way she frequently spoke about people, I was also strangely attached to her. In truth, I also loved her in spite of her numerous faults and frequent lack of judgement. Her house had been my home for most of my young life. She had even seemed pretty nice when I was really little. It wasn’t all bad. There were many times when she had a few minutes to sit down and talk to me and try to give me advice about life. It is just too bad that her views were so limited and negative. On rare occasions she took us on outings. We went for drives a few times and got to drive across a bridge and see the ships. Once we all went to the beach. There was no sunscreen or beach umbrella, and I got the worst sunburn of my life. It was terribly painful for days and days. She made a little dirt playground in the backyard with a small swing set and a kind of depression-era looking playhouse utilizing the existing exterior corner fencing, one additional wall and a flat roof that she added with leftover material from a roofing project, basically scraps. It became the schoolhouse and since I was the oldest kid there, I was the teacher. I used my allowance to buy school supplies for everyone. That was my favorite activity to play. Babysitter also installed a little drinking fountain for all of us kids to use. That drinking fountain helped to cut down the amount of foot traffic in and out of the house on hot summer days and significantly reduced the number of dirty glasses to wash.

Sometimes we had a little bit of fun together. I got to help her with grocery shopping most weeks and we would open a package of cookies to snack on. And not the huge package of cheap, tasteless, dry cookies she bought for the kids she babysat, no, these were the good cookies that got put up on the high shelf. Did I mention that she was a plus size woman? There are a lot of bags to carry in when you are feeding about twenty people three meals a day, six to seven days per week, and I got to help with that, too. Oh, and I also got to be pulled out of bed during the night from time to time when she wanted to track down her poor alcoholic husband in some bar. It is unclear why she made me go, but I suspect that she just didn’t want to be alone. She left me alone in the car in the dark alley of course…bars are no place for children.

On a warm summer day, we were taking one of the kids to catch his bus home. This was the first and last time she agreed to do that. I was about eight or maybe even nine by now, and while we waited for his bus to arrive, she handed me money and had me and another kid, who was about five, go into the drug store and get ice cream cones for everyone. We were excited about this—getting ice cream and having the privilege of going into the store by ourselves. When we came out, the car was gone. Nowhere in sight at all. Now in my mind I knew she wouldn’t abandon us, but my eyes told me that is precisely what she had done. I kept trying to reason with myself and say maybe she was made to drive around the block because she was parked in a no parking zone, so I counted how long I thought that would take. No, she had ample time to drive around blocks and blocks. We stood just outside the store for a long time, melted ice cream running down our hands, arms, and legs, then tears streaming down our faces, first the five-year-old, then me. Kindly passersby would look at us and offer help. We just stood there shaking our heads. We didn’t eat the ice cream. It must have been about twenty to thirty minutes or so before she drove up—a lifetime to little kids. Apparently the other kid’s bus had arrived, but he missed getting on it, so she chased after the bus till it stopped long enough for her to put him on. It took several stops before she got him safely on the bus. I vaguely remember a few negative comments about how silly we were to stand there crying, and that we should have eaten the ice cream and not wasted it and let it make such a mess all over the place. Things happen. That was an accident, but poor judgement contributed to the incident. Safety and security issues, food issues, continual criticism of others, negativity, no autonomy whatsoever...if you tried your best to raise insecure kids with various issues, this might be just the plan to follow.

During our shopping excursions Babysitter taught me that you could save a lot of money if you shopped using the various grocery store advertisements from the local newspaper. She would peruse the ads and make her list of what to get from where. She would also use coupons to save even more money. We would usually go to three different stores to get the best deals on everything she needed. During the times that my mother and I had our own place, we would go grocery shopping, too. From my mom I learned that it is important to look after other people, too. One day we were leaving the store with our grocery cart full of bags of food and necessities when an elderly lady humbly approached us and asked if she could borrow a little money. She said she still had several more days before her check arrived and she had no more food at home and she was hungry. Instead of just handing her the meager amount of money she asked for my mom took her back inside the store and we shopped again asking her what she needed. She kept saying we were doing too much for her, but my mom knew all too well what it was like to go hungry. We went up and down the aisles getting much more than the few items she asked for. When my mom asked her if there was anything else she needed, she asked if it would be okay to get a stick of oleo. Oleo? I never heard of that before. It turns out that oleo is another name for margarine. My mom put a package of oleo in the cart as well. I learned several things that day: the existence of oleo, to help others whenever you are able to, and to be thankful when you are in a position to be able to offer help to others. My mom wasn’t sharing out of her abundance but sharing with her kind and tender heart. There were far too many bags for the lady to carry home by herself, so we put all of her bags in our car and drove her home. After we helped her get her bags inside, she had us wait a moment and then she brought out her small underlined and note-filled Bible and gave it to us. My mom didn’t want to take it, but she insisted. She said we richly blessed her. I think we were the ones who were blessed.

When I was almost two years old, my mom started working for a married couple who owned a couple of small businesses. She worked for them for a number of years. They became a part of our lives and members of our ragtag family. Boss Man was hilariously funny. He loved to pull pranks on people. Boss Lady was a large woman, well, short, but quite round. She seemed to be unhappy most of the time. She was a hardworking, shrewd businesswoman, and I don’t recall ever seeing her smile…not ever. She had been married previously and had one daughter. That was her only child. When Boss Lady’s daughter was a young woman, just a few years older than my mother, she and her husband and their two little girls were tragically killed by a drunk driver. Boss Lady was devastated. Some pain lasts forever. This happened when I was quite young. They were atheists and strangely enough, belonged to a nudist colony (which I never knew about until I was a teenager). In every way possible they were the opposite of Babysitter. I didn’t see them often when I was very young, but as I got older, I did spend more time with them. Boss Lady taught me how to play card games. Games with cards or dice were forbidden at Babysitter’s house, even Monopoly, so I didn’t know how to play any card games, let alone Blackjack, Gin Rummy, and Bullshit! Boss Man taught me how to play Liar’s Poker and he taught me how to drive when I was ten years old in his old VW Bug that he bought to tinker around with. There was quite an interesting dichotomy at play here. On the one hand, there was the seemingly “holy” Babysitter who could be mean sometimes and seemed a bit evil at times with the things she said, and then there was Boss Couple who were “evil” according to Babysitter, but seemed pretty nice most of the time, and were always nice to me. My mom was in the middle, not perfect but always trying to do her best, and always kind to everyone.

One day when I was six years old, Boss Man had me run errands with him all morning long. For an unknown reason he told me I didn’t need to wear my shoes, and that I should just run around and enjoy the warm summer day with bare feet. That’s what summer days are made for, he said. This was new. We walked on dirt, blacktop, sand, gravel—just about any messy place you can think of. I was used to confinement and rigidity, so this was maybe a refreshing change. Then we returned to Boss Couple’s house and he asked me to run in and find Boss Lady, so of course, that is what I did. I ran all through the house looking for her, and once I found her and she looked at me and looked at the carpet, she went ballistic. I could hear Boss Man, who was still outside, laughing his fool head off on the front porch. Diabolical. Unbeknownst to me, Boss Lady had rented a carpet cleaning machine and spent all morning cleaning the carpets of their home. My six-year-old footprints were imprinted everywhere on their damp carpet. He thought it was quite hilarious, she was furious, and I was curious as to just why he thought this was so funny. I found it perplexing. My mom said that he was just like a big kid who didn’t want to grow up. Maybe it was funny in a meanspirited sort of way, but I didn’t appreciate being put in the middle of their squabbles, and I’m pretty sure he was the one who had to scrub and scrub to get out my filthy, greasy footprints from nearly every room in the house…who had the last laugh? I had a hard time trusting him after that for quite a while, after all, I was the one standing there while she screamed bloody murder. I got over it pretty quickly because I did care about him, but I never listened to him again about going barefoot! He was a unique person. He’d give you the shirt off his back. I suppose he could be called rebellious, but he was in his 50s. Just who was he rebelling against? He was definitely not a rule follower. He marched to the beat of his own drum, but instead of a drum, he had bagpipes!

A few years later he bought a small airplane that he kept in their backyard. He was able to take off from their yard as their property went back pretty far. They had about five acres I think, and it led out to a lake. He needed a doctor to sign his medical form so he could get his pilot’s license. Just in case he didn’t pass the physical, he didn’t want the doctor to know his real name. When he filled out the new patient form for the doctor, he said his name was Harry. Harry Keister. Where the form asked for his spouse’s name, he filled in “Lotta”. The doctor, who just happened to be my family doctor, was a pretty smart guy and he also had a sense of humor—he was the best doctor ever. Once Boss Man passed his physical and told the doctor his real name, Doctor said that he was sorry, but he was on the Aeronautical Board of Physicians and would have to report him for this attempt to get a license under a false name! Boss Man nearly fainted dead away and it was Doctor who got the last laugh here! They both enjoyed the whole thing. He was quite a character. For all their quirks, Boss Couple did care about us; Boss Man cared the most. They even legally adopted my mom which was to make things better for us if they died. Sadly, Boss Man developed brain cancer and died when I was thirteen, and Boss Lady eventually moved far away, remarried, and I only saw her once after that. I really missed Boss Man.

My mother remarried when I was five years old. He was just twenty-two. Women seemed to find him attractive and charming. We had a nice apartment, and it had a swimming pool. He didn’t like my toys. He didn’t like me. He wanted me to stay at Babysitter’s house so they could be alone. My mother said no, I belonged with her. He hated when she showed me any attention or bought anything for me. I remember that he took all the lids off my Play-doh canisters so the compound dried out overnight. He blamed me for it and threw them away. My mom bought me fancy plastic high-heeled dress up shoes. Oh, how I had wanted them for what seemed to be a very long time. They looked like my mom’s pretty shoes except they were made out of pink plastic and came from the grocery store. They were an inexpensive toy, but I was thrilled with them. He made fun of them then tried to put them on his feet and stomped and crushed them; he threw those away, too. When my mom did the laundry, which was in the apartment complex but a few doors down, he would turn off all the lights and say, “Bears, bears, bears are going to come and get you” in a deep, gruff, terrifying voice while scratching the walls with his fingernails. I would try to hide somewhere safe but couldn’t figure out just where that might be. I remember running into my bedroom and shutting the door and trying to hide in the closet, terrified. Some may think that maybe he was just playing. No. It was deliberate and cruel. He was a terribly cruel young man. He only did mean things during the moments when my mom was not around. He delighted in terrorizing me. As I said, I was barely five years old, almost ready to start kindergarten. I would say he was probably a psychopath, but most five-year-olds are not qualified to make diagnoses.

Writing about this time is difficult for me. I must admit I’ve been fighting off the impulse to eat something, maybe everything. Instead, I just keep writing. I know I am not hungry for food. I am dealing with gut-wrenching memories from my past. It’s triggering.

One day the three of us were out at the pool. I did not know how to swim yet, so I splashed around the steps. I was only allowed to play by the shallow end. My mother didn’t know how to swim; she still doesn’t. The telephone rang. Now there are two things that I know my mother loves in this world, me and the telephone. She went running inside the apartment to answer the call. This was before cell phones, cordless phones, or even answering machines. Stepfather took this opportunity to teach me to swim by grabbing me, running down to the forbidden deep end, and jumping into the pool using all his might as he pushed me down into the deep water. I still remember it to this day. He forced me to the bottom of the pool, and my feet touched the rough bottom of the deep end. I remember walking most of the way back to the shallow end. When my mother came out, I was gasping for air, bobbing up and down in the water as I was trying to make it to the steps. I now wanted to stay at Babysitter’s house, too. I don’t know exactly what lies he told, but I’m sure I was blamed for not following the rules about staying by the steps. I said nothing. When my mom bought me a little red wagon, he offered to put it together for me. That was surprising. He did, then he put me in it and took me to the blacktop covered alley by our apartment. He pulled the wagon, running, then turned the corner sharply causing me to fly out of the wagon and tumble onto the rough blacktop. I was a bloody mess. When my mom saw this she knew it had to have been intentional. She didn’t believe his lies anymore. She kicked him out. It was years before I told her about all of the terrorism. I don’t know why. Kids often do not talk about the things done to them. Years later I learned he got fired from his job for abusive behavior; he had been a police officer. That came as no surprise to me. Their marriage only lasted a matter of a few months, but its impact has lasted decades.

My mother worked hard trying to improve herself during all of this. Although she had passed the GED, her counselor advised her to take classes at the community college and get her high school diploma. She did that, then she also got her AA degree. She got better jobs and life became a bit easier for us. She went on to eventually earn a B.A. degree. There is no person I have ever met in this world that I have greater respect and admiration for than my mother. She had so many struggles throughout her life and she met each one head on. She took care of us both and tried to make sure we had what we needed. She couldn’t fix what she never knew about. We essentially grew up together, for she was little more than a child when she had me. We survived.

Growing up was pretty rough. Not counting infancy, I only got to see my father one time. It was during the summer I turned ten years old. My mother flew us across the country back to where we both had been born and I got to see that I really did have family. I always felt so alone. They had a big family reunion while I was there, and it was so fun. I think that my family filled up the entire huge park! I also stayed the night at my dad’s house. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t write to me or send me a birthday card, maybe a little gift at Christmas, but I didn’t. I mainly played with my sweet, adorable half-sister who I thought was the luckiest girl in the world. She had a lovely home with a beautiful bedroom of her own, both parents, a brother, good food, lots of family, and lots of love. She seemed genuinely happy to have a big sister and that helped me to feel included. My dad did have me sit on his lap and he tried to talk to me. I don’t remember exactly what he said, then he gave me a small green transistor radio. I was feeling apprehensive in this new role of daughter. I didn’t know what to say. He was a complete stranger to me. It was awkward. I was just a ten-year-old kid. Sadly, the following year, my father was killed in an industrial accident. I was never able to see him again. As a young child I didn’t know how to say I forgive you for not ever being there for me when I needed you. I forgive you for not sending the child support to my mom and we struggled for years. I forgive you for all of the pain that your childish mistakes caused. Basically, I forgive you and want you to be a dad to me. I think he was awkwardly trying to explain his mistakes to me back then when I was sitting on his lap. Maybe he was a bit of an introvert, too. Forgive everyone.

When I was in high school my mother married the man who became a real father to me. He was a good person, fair, honest, and hardworking. He said that I deserved to have a father, so he adopted me. They have been married now for over forty years. The horrible stress of growing up under difficult circumstances was now behind me. With the added stability of my new dad, life became a bit easier. Here is the key: love. Surviving growing up poor in a tough environment, through many adversities, was made possible by having my mother’s love. She always tried so hard to give us a better life, and she made sure I always knew she loved me more than anything. No one ever tried harder. There are scars. There was pain. But we survived.

There were many other difficulties endured during my childhood that I have chosen not to discuss. Life can be very hurtful, stressful. Hopefully we learn from our experiences, both the good and the bad. There have been psychological studies about what contributes to eating disorders. One study I looked at recently talked about a correlation between women who dealt with abuse as children and an increase in eating disorders and obesity. I would say that it is likely that the stress and abuse I endured as a child have contributed to my eating disorder.

There are also studies dealing with genetics and obesity that address the issue of passing obesity from one generation to another. I am not a geneticist, but in my situation, both of my biological parents were within a normal range as far as their weight is concerned. I was never overweight as a child, either. My weight gain began when I was an adult under too much stress, and I did not have the tools to deal with the added stressors in my life.