difficult relationships (with a lot of things.)

I've been called "fat" pretty much my entire life by my peers. I was taught through assimilation of meaning that to be fat was not just a statement of fact, but an insult and also to imply that I was unattractive, undesirable, and not worth knowing. The irony of this of course being that while yes, I have fat, I was not exactly obese until I was probably a senior in high school.  I was not, however, rail thin nor under-developed much to my chagrin.  Puberty decided to "gift" me as early as eleven, and just went crazy from there. My mother and my sister were on the opposite side of the spectrum, and also cared a lot more about their presentation than I ever did. Rather than even try to fit into the box that was expected of me at an early age, I chose to ignore it altogether.  The words and implications hurt, but if it was decided that I was not worth knowing, what was the point of trying to convince other people otherwise? It lead to a lonely life.

In addition to the hurt that came with being labelled fat was the fact that we were poor.  Not so poor that my parents couldn't afford drugs and alcohol, but definitely poor enough that we would eat unhealthy meals because they were cheap to obtain and took less time to make. Frozen dinners, instant noodles, 80/20 hamburger helper, hot dogs, sandwiches with just cheese and lunch meat or peanut butter and jelly, ad nauseum. BJ stopped cooking for us the moment I showed any interest in feeding myself, unless he was making Steak or Porkchops and Potatoes. My sister and I both were in the reduced lunch program. I ate whatever I could, whenever I could, until I felt full. It just became the way of it.

Wasting food meant wasting money.  We were not allowed to throw food away, and we were expected to eat the leftovers before making anything new. At my maternal grandparents house, we were not allowed to leave the table until we cleaned our plate, even if we "didn't like" what was being served. I have distinct memories of holding my nose closed in order to swallow the things I was made to eat. My sister once vomited. Things changed a little after that, but not by much.

When I graduated high school and started spending my own money on groceries and cooking, it brought a kind of freedom with it. I found that I actually liked peas—something I was not given access to during growing up because my mother hated them so much.  I enjoyed cabbage and spinach, both cooked and raw.  I developed a taste for things and if I didn't enjoy something, I didn't shame myself for trying.  I had taken classes to learn how to stretch my budget on meal planning when I had been in high school, something I was grateful for because unfortunately, uncooked food came with its own hidden price: time to prepare, a time limit on how long it remained fresh, and ultimately a loss if I didn't prepare it in time.  If my food rotted before I got it into my mouth, I stopped buying that food in order to keep from losing the money.

I found new ways to cook and prepare things that my limited exposure in childhood hadn't even presented to me, and suddenly a lot of the things I had hated as a child stopped being so "disgusting." I kept that in my mind to eventually share when and if I ever had a child in my care, but my self-imposed prerequisites before having my own children (or even fostering/adopting) never came to fruition.  The closest I came to that was my niblings but...that's a different topic.

As I had mentioned previously, my parents spent a considerable amount of their earned income on drugs and alcohol, or pursuing flights of fancy.  Drinking in public with friends occasionally ran up tabs, especially when BJ went on his "gigs." Having two children probably didn't help, because suddenly there were two other humans that needed clothing, food, entertainment, and soforth.  My mother was a bartender or waitress at any given point in time who never pursued any advanced careers or education; BJ, my biological father in title only, never kept a job longer than a year before getting terminated or the business going bankrupt and if it didn't line up with his "practice" and "gigs" for his "band," then he didn't bother applying for or keeping the job. My mother, without much choice in the matter, sometimes had two or more jobs just to keep the bills paid, which left BJ in charge of "raising" and "caring" for us.

BJ had never wanted children. Rather, he said he wanted them "after he got famous" — a reality that was never going to be attainable, because our family did not live in the places where being "discovered" by labels and talent scouts happened. We lived in the Portland metro area for the first 10 years of my life. That aside, both of my parents liked to party to some degree. BJ did crack, marijuana, probably MDMAs considering he was in the "club" scene. My mother drank herself drunk every single night, smoked cigarettes whenever she had the time, and interspersed that with pot when there was enough to spare. Most of our lives were paid for with credit cards and since minimum payments were required every month, employment required a certain percentage, et cetera. My parents often made "too much money" for government assistance like food stamps, but "not enough" to pay for things like extra curricular or enrichment activities for myself and my sister. Vacations didn't exist. Music lessons were pretty much nil except for choir and only if I could get myself to and from my own performances, but forget "field trips" to out of state competitions. Sports were out of the question, because we couldn't "afford" insurance. 

Any and all culturing of my personhood came from myself. The only real activities I could pursue were books from the library, so I learned everything I could when I wasn't reading fiction or doing homework. I resented alcohol and marijuana because my parents' misuse represented poor interpersonal relationships, lack of meaningful time spent, pursuit of worldly things, all of it. It was easy to associate alcoholism and "potheads" with a culture of personality types that I ultimately came to hate and have no desire to involve myself in; and while you can't overdose from marijuana the same way you can get alcohol poisoning, you can neglect your children because you're too busy getting too high to function.

I'll never forget the time BJ asked me to ask my high school boyfriend to pee in a cup for him so he could try and get a job he'd applied for. It felt like the worst kind of line to cross.

I'll never forget my mother promising me she wasn't smoking pot anymore, only to walk in on her "taking a toke" and then berating me for being angry with her for lying, saying that she was "the adult" and I was "the child" and it "wasn't [my] job" to tell her what to do and how to behave. Of course the next year my 11-year-old sister got pregnant with her first child, but what did I know about how to be responsible?

I couldn't wait to get away from my family, and to stay gone as soon as it was possible. If I met a person in the wild who turned out to be an alcoholic or a pothead, I could simply choose not to associate with them anymore rather than be forced to spend most of my life unable to escape their toxicity. I didn't hide my distaste for the activities, but some of the people that later became my friends and disagreed with my opinions felt the need to hide or lie about their usage to me under the pretense of not wanting to "upset me" or for me to "get the wrong idea" about them.

Understand that I do not care one way or another about "occasional" drinking or even marijuana use. I care about being lied to and disrespected. I care about my home, my safe space, being made to trigger childhood memories of neglect and abuse. I care about my money being spent on recreational drug use that takes away from experiencing joys or self-indulgences I can pursue when I want to do them and at my discretion. 

Two of my past roommates blatantly hid and lied to me about their addictions after it was too late to back out of a signed lease. The friction it caused was long-lasting and ultimately contributed to the overall disintegration of the relationships. A person I dated was deep enough in the culture that I eventually couldn't even keep interest, nevermind that their libido was absolute garbage. 

Apparently my relationship with food, however, is shitty enough that it's been brought up with four different people I've lived with. I am apparently a "food sniper" because I am mindful of leftover food (homecooked or take-away) potentially spoiling and asking if I can eat it if there's no interest in it being eaten. I am also a "bitch" because I "look down my nose" at people who are "picky eaters" about things like brands of macaroni and cheese, or eating the same food more than one day in a row, or because they would rather have unseasoned food. Oh, and I'm also lumping people together over their "casual" drug use and assuming "wrong" things about them.

Yep. Now I'm the asshole.

So that's fun.

I forgot to post something I was grateful for in the last post, and I'm having trouble finding something to be grateful for this time as well. The desire to feel "thankful" and "grateful" for things when I'm in a bad mood is nonexistent.

Yesterday, I was grateful for a few friends who tried to cheer me up (and mostly succeeded). Today I'm grateful that my spouse was happy with the pants and underwear I bought on his behalf, even though we fought three times and I really don't even want to talk to him right now. At some point he's going to ask me to make dinner and my appetite is gone. I mostly just want to be alone.