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Malnutrition started early for me. With a distracted mother, I often went unfed. As a child, I hungered for things like Pizza Hut Supreme, which I saw on a TV commercial. The oily, crisp brown crust, thick cheese that hung like a garland from the smiling mouth to the greasy slice. Such an indulgence must surely be happiness. I wanted a taste. I closed in on the tube, pressed my palms against the screen. An electrostatic hiss ran down my arm. "Get your fingers off my set," my mother yelled from the kitchen.The woman next door called me "sliver"—not because I was thin, although I was—but because she invited me over for a piece of pie once. The Dutch crumble topping made with brown sugar, molasses, and butter made my eyes water. "A small piece, please.""If your mother's having trouble again, you can always come here." She looked as if she might lock the door and never let me leave, her own eyes so sad and hungry.My stomach turned. I backed out of her kitchen and ran home. Only when I was safely seated next to my mother, asleep on the couch, did I realize I had taken the neighbor's fork.
I have a tendency to grip too tightly—forks, people, relationships. The night my boyfriend Jeff broke up with me, he blurted, "I'm not happy. I need you to move out. I'm not in love with you anymore."
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Lately, I've been reading what it means to forgive. One expert, from The Forgiveness Movement, said it's more than just letting go of a past transgression; it's realizing that what you think happened to you never really did.I thought some boyfriends concluded that I was crazy, but in truth, I never gave them a chance to know me, never spoke about my mother. I thought Jeff threw me out like trash, but a year later, he called and said he regretted everything.
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