My Writing Assignment

I could tell you everything in my kitchen cupboards and refrigerator in less than five minutes. From the bags of frozen chicken, the popsicles to the refried beans in the cupboard and 5 cans of Star Kist tuna, I am a savant of food. I know how much mayonnaise is left in the jar and that there are only 2 hot chocolate K cups in the drawer.

There is the plastic container with the expired cottage cheese and single Key Lime Yogurt I never ate. The strawberries still in the container that aren't washed or cut.

The sour cream is watery and the roast chicken is bland.

And I'm starving.

I eat. Chicken and potatoes. A diet Coke. I think about cookies. Popcorn. I'm full but I crave more. I want sweet. I want salty. Maybe juice. Maybe a cookie. Maybe any of the endless cans of fruit or instant puddings or what else there can be.

I'm 66 years old and still standing in the same Seattle kitchen that I stood in at age 15. The summer I could no longer hold in the pain. The summer a part of me died that little bit and I did anything I could to not let it be all of me.

I was she and she stood in that kitchen with a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a knife. How many peanut butter sandwiches were made and consumed during that time? How many times did that knife smear peanut butter across bread as a way to keep it from knicking against an artery and ending all the sorrow?

41 years later and still living the same hunger. The same need. I'm an actress trapped in a role where the curtain never goes down.

I'm as bound to this moment as a hostage trapped in a basement wrapped in rope and duct tape and no chance of escape.

This hunger defines me. As happy as I am, as happy as I can be and yet the yawning emptiness always is there.

I'm not alone this time. At 15 there was me and I had to survive with just myself and my strength. I had to be a loving parent, a best friend, a rock in the chaos and pain. Nobody would do it for me.

Carolyn and Lea, Mollie and Lori are here now. My family grows with women who understand how hard it is and who remind me that I am not 15 years old. I am not doing this by myself. I am bound to others with the ties of love and found family.

Survival was peanut butter and wonder bread back when I was unmoored. Right now my belly is full and the dishes are washed. My brain thinks of the strawberries and Icees but I don't move. My cat sits next to me and winds her tail around my arm. She reminds me that I'm tethered to this life, this moment and we will survive.

Cravings bind me to the past. Joy allows me to live in this moment instead. I'm grateful to both because I've survived. Peanut butter sandwiches saved my life a long time ago. Now the women who love me keep me safe.