A day in the life I suppose…
But the triggers. The triggers are daily. I really outdid
myself on dinner tonight: chicken strips, jo-jo’s, battered mushrooms and onion
rings…and it. Was. Amazing. I’m still pondering 4ths.
Violet would have none of it. She wanted cereal or chips, or
whatever was inside the cupboard she was pointing at while screaming until I
wondered if my ears could actually bleed from prolonged exposure to this
otherworldly screeching. Really the sheer emotional violence of her protest was
quite something to behold. Now, mind you, I had another one of my
reconstructive surgeries only 9 days ago…one of the liposuction/fat-injection
deals. Have I mentioned how excruciating liposuction is? Well it is and the
recovery time is a bitch. It takes forever, it leaves nerve-damage, and don’t
even get me started on the bruising.
So the protest became escalated to the point of having to
take her into her room, lie down with her in her bed and attempt to hold her
while she screamed it out. Now, I know she wasn’t starving. She was just being picky.
But let me tell you…holding a raging child screaming “I hungry, I HUNGRY” while
you are struggling not to allow further damage to your post-surgical
person…might just pull a trigger.
Have you ever been so hungry that you cried? I’m not talking
low-blood sugar or being out of the good stuff until food stamps come in a
week. I’m talking continuous barely eating so as not to run completely out
until your ribs show, your period stops and you are so exhausted from being
hungry all the time that some days you open the cupboard and weep. Yeah. That’s
hunger. I’ve cried over many things in my life. Some were really worthy of
tears, some were futile and wasted, but there is nothing so bitter as crying because
you’re hungry. That my friends, for me, is the bottom of the barrel. That is
the ultimate in humiliation and despair.
Thankfully since I’ve been a single mom, those tears have
not return. Let me be clear that I am NOT blaming my ex-husband for any of that
part. I’m choosing to chalk it up as just how the dice landed. For whatever
reason, it has turned out the way it has and I have not shed a tear of
starvation in quite some time. There have been plenty of other tears, of
course. In early July, I even broke. Yes, I broke. But it wasn’t hunger that
broke me and I have since rebuilt myself. As my daughter kicked and screamed
tonight because she was “hungry”. A trigger was pulled. And so in turn I am
choosing to pull that trigger AWAY. Away from me, away from my child. As long
as I have any power over her wellbeing she will never cry from genuine hunger
and I will never allow myself to starve to that point of sad desperation again.
Ever.
*Que Scarlet O’Hara*
Here is another trigger from today...
