two comments

here are two comments i posted on another person's blog. when reading them together it gives a different picture to reading them separately. especially the food thing...

i am odd about my mum's death. she died in 2000 from alzheimers. when i was 8 i left her to live with my dad and my stepmum. i felt physical pain and would not eat any food my stepmum made. she left out catering packs of instant mashed potato that i went down and made after everyone else was in bed. i would not wear any clothes except those my mum had bought me. eventually it got impossible as i grew out of them and they were taken away and replaced with new ones. when my mum died i expected to be hit with a hammer of grief but i wasn't. i think it had already happened both to the 8 year old me and more mildly to the adult who watched the vibrant, beautiful mother she had once been degenerate into dementia.

and the second one:

my stepmum is polish and grew up during the war. she came from what is now lithuania. she saw things as a child that we could not begin to imagine. they were placed in camps and then came here as refugees. the legacy of being starved has made her hoard food, like a lot of poles. when they came to the uk her mother developed throat cancer and died a very painful death. my stepmum nursed her and looked after the family's lodgers, as well as studying to be a doctor. then she had my two sisters. she took me on when i was 8 and very wild and challenging. she worked as a child psychiatrist specialising in children who were victims of abuse. she is still a remarkably positive person in spite of all this. i would never have become a lawyer if it hadn't been for her influence and encouragement. it makes me furious when the right-wing press rant on about asylum seekers being spongers. my stepmum has changed many lives for the better through her work and her life. the country was lucky she came here.

my stepmum made me lunch last week. we talked about life and the past. she told me of how, when she and my dad were splitting up, when i was 16, and he was refusing to deal with selling the house, she had decided she was not paying any more of his bills. she said "i was just going to take the three of you up to newcastle [where her dad lived] and stop paying the mortgage." it is hard to explain the effect of this. i was utterly hellish at this time. i was totally out of control in a whole load of ways and very hostile towards her. yet she would still have taken me rather than left me. that means a lot.