filling the belly

I feel as if I never really got to relax and be a KID, where I had the full support of somebody older and wiser than me and got to just do kid things without worrying about the so-called 'grownups'. I suppose all this would have made sense to me sooner if I'd been the kid of a single mom, or an orphan, or had some more obviously non-standard upbringing.

But given that I was raised pretty much middle class (after the first 7 years of endless moving and having no money, dad got established rather quickly and was able to 'climb the ladder' in a fairly short time), it wasn't easy to see where the predators lurked. I nominally had parents - a father and a mother, there were people whose physical bodies occupied those niches in my life.

And I lived in a middle class house with a middle class roof over my head. Though when I left for college I was still sleeping in the same half of a twin bunkbed that I'd slept in when I was 6 years old, and my dresser was a cardboard one that somebody'd bought cheap years before, and my clothes were still, often as not, purchased second hand - I have to say that I resent the stinginess which, now, years later, allows mom to live in unthinking comfort, but cost me a lot as a kid. I always felt like I deserved nothing, no matter how hard I worked or tried to 'do things right' - I was never rewarded, not verbally and not in the tangible ways parents often 'praise' their children for a job well done.

No WONDER there's a hollow place in my belly that seems like it can't ever be filled.