Page 84 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
I was repeating the pattern.
I’d found my father in Mikey. Alcoholic. Physical. Emotional. He’d yell if he needed to. He’d call it like it is. He lived large. That meant I was gonna get hurt. He was going to hurt me. It was just a matter of time. He hadn’t been violent, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t gonna be.
Because that was what happened to me. The people who loved me, hurt me. The closer I let people in, the more they betrayed me.
I drove away from the Victorian house—the first place that had ever felt like a home—filled with light and animals and Mikey,God, Mikey, and stopped at the nearest 7-Eleven.
I was forsaking God this time, and I didn’t care. I anxiously paced the aisles, surrounded by bright lights and temptation everywhere. Five minutes later, I’d bought $75 worth of junk food and self-loathing and took it to a hotel room down the street. After I got the key card, I trudged up the stairs loaded down with a duffel bag full of memories and three bags of junk food.
Oreo cookies in two different flavors. Mexican Coke in the glass bottle with real sugar. Doritos. Funyuns. Takis. Fake food in colors manufactured by companies far away.
Throwing my duffel bag on the bed, I dumped out the food on the floor. I didn’t care anymore about organization, neatness, or being perfect.
I needed to escape. Now.
I didn’t want to feel my feelings. They were too complex and confusing to sort out and identify. All I knew was that they were extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t like them, and I didn’t like my thoughts.
Mikey had lied to me, even though he was supposedly Mr. Honest. He hadn’t told me the truth early enough. And worse, I’d fallen for him, but if he was just like my dad, I’d end up exactly like I was before. And I’d come too far not to change.
And, ironically, here I sat on the floor of the hotel room, surrounded by the bright, colorful packages that would have thrilled my childhood self. I ran my fingers over them. They crinkled.
The food I’d been eating with Mikey didn’t crinkle. With Mikey, my food didn’t come with ingredients lists because the food was mostly single-ingredient. Like an apple. There’s no label on an apple telling you its contents.
A law school professor joked once that Gatorade was healthier than water because you didn’t know what was in water, but you could read what was in Gatorade.
Same thing for the food I’d just bought.
I started organizing the packages, putting them in alphabetical order, because as much as I wanted to shove all the food in my face, I didn’t. If I ripped open one package, I was a goner. They were all going down. If I didn’t open them, I wouldn’t start. I wouldn’t take that first bite. It’s just like that first drink.
Oh, poor Mikey.
But no. He’d hurt me. He was too big, too loud. A man-mountain. He made me swear, and he loved it when I fought with him. He was too physical.
One slip by him, and I’d be back in the hell I’d just left. I loved myself far too much to get into a problem like that. There was no way I was turning into my mother.
I looked at the packages on the floor.
They weren’t real. Fake food. Fake ingredients. Nothing that would nourish my body or my soul.
Iwas real.
I mattered.
I needed to not do this. I needed to not hate myself. I needed to feel better.
Eating would make me feel worse.
I lay on my back in the hotel room, kicking and pushing the packages out of the way so I couldn’t grab them. I just needed to hang on while I rode out the urge to escape. Just love myself so hard that I got past it. It didn’t need to be this way. I didn’t need to undo all of the good I’d done over the past few months with Mikey.
I needed help.
Reaching for my phone, I dialed Monica. “I need help,” I whispered.
“What is it?”
“I broke up with Mikey.”
“Why?”
