Preparing For The Climb

I call it Everest – others might call it the number on my scale this morning.  So I suppose I should tell you how I reached the summit. I probably ate a lot, that didn’t help.

So yesterday I talked about how it started. Hmm…. This topic might take a couple of blog posts.  We’ll call today “preparation”. Every climber needs gear and tools to get up there right? Mine were self-protection mechanisms. Some way to shelter me from the fucking chaos. Utter chaos.

I didn’t have a childhood, let’s be honest. I had what I considered one absent parent and one that turned a blind eye. I lived life scared. There’s only so many times you get the shit kicked out of you before you become numb. I cried, I bled, and I was hungry.  That was life back then.  Always waiting for the next put down, psychotic rage episode, scream, hit the head, a day with no food. I was 9 years old plotting how I was going to kill her in her sleep.  The only thing that kept me doing it was fear of juvenile detention. Is this starting to sound like an episode of ID Discovery?

When I was 10, I came from school one random day and found everything that was in my bedroom out on the lawn. Stepmom walked outside and told me that I was being kicked out and I was no longer welcome. I sat out there for hours it seemed. It was winter and dead cold, I remember that.

That was the last night I spent in that home. I went to live my Grandma until my mom could take me that summer. I went from hell to a frying pan.

Life was better I must admit, but I was still scared. They were decent grandparents, but my Grandfather was just as physical as my father and stepmother. That six-month period was an interesting time. I was home schooled and once a week my father would drive the 20 miles to drop off my homework.  I wasn’t allowed to back and see the brothers, but they did come every now and then to visit me. I was gaining weight – rapidly. Grandma could cook a meal let me tell you. My eating wasn’t monitored anymore. There was no lock on the pantry like it was before. I was exposed to…………… chocolate ((laughing)).  I was still waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking into the kitchen. It was weird because I wasn’t hungry. That habit was clearly cemented, whether I knew it or not.

I was exposed to very early views on conservatism;  my Grandmother was a strong member of the Republican Party. I also learned interesting things like why Martin Luther King was a horrible BLACK man. The Mormons (which was the faith I was born into) believed at one time that the color of your skin was a punishment from God…. “Sons of Cain”.    They had denounced it before I was born, but my grandmother was a card-carrying believer in the “Sons of Cain”.   One of those lovely doctrines Mormons would love to forget, or pretend it didn’t exist, but I remember it. I lived it, Bean There.  Took a long time to remove those twisted views from my head too. Kids are like sponges.

So… this new world was different and I was eating.  Aside from the occasional scream or stick beating from Grandfather, life was………….. ehh………… better.  Food became my very best friend. It would never let me down. It wouldn’t yell at me, punish me, and wholly shit did it feel great to eat when I wanted too.

I was a caged animal let out to pasture. Pork and Bean was born. 

I didn’t light it but I had to fight it.