1-2-3-4-5-6...

...and on until I catch myself and stop counting. It is a compulsion that I have, and it only surfaces when I'm swallowing liquids. I count the gulps. It only lasts a few beats, but, for some odd reason, which perhaps I'll discover here, I do nothing to fight the compulsion. When I do catch myself and stop, it is most often with a chuckle, as in, "It's amazing how this habit got rooted so deeply in me."

Luckily, I know how it took root. It was (seemingly) indelibly imprinted on me around the time I was six years old. That was an even tougher year than the ones preceding it. From the time I was about four and a half until six, I found it almost impossible to keep food down, and promptly vomited after each meal. When I was finally weaned from this behavior, it was done by filling a book with columns of little sticky stars; one for each meal, and, at first, another for each hour I was able to keep my meal down.

So many stars in a row and I'd get a toy. It was then that I began counting the number of swallows that I kept down. Apparently, the compulsive counting of food swallows has faded away over 45+ years, but this is not so with liquids.

My relationship with food was a reflection of a number of things. One was being witness to meal after meal being prepared by my mother. At the time she was bitterly disappointed by life, in seething rages much of the time, and, while cooking, would be expressing her pain incessantly and aloud. It was all coming in to me. Being rather sensitive, I would absorb the anger that came through her whenever I was around her, but during those meal prep times while I was in the kitchen doing my homework, I could sense that the food I would be eating absorbed it as well.

Paradoxically, the impulse to vomit provided me a dependable source of comfort. I would usually go right to the kitchen sink after eating, or the bathroom if I could make it, and while I vomited, my mother would come to my side and put her hand on my shoulder to comfort me. She was touch-phobic, and in years of scanning my memories to find evidence to the contrary, I've come to the conclusion that that was the only way I could get her to touch or physically comfort me.

At around six years old, another thing had begun to happen. Though my mother was not physically abusive with me outside of the occasional swat on the ass, in second grade I started getting beatings in school by a twisted nun, who, as it turned out, was only the first of many twisted nuns to follow.

1957 was the year when IQ tests became the rage in Brooklyn, and I had the misfortune of scoring third highest in the Catholic school I was attending. I would imagine, living in the home I lived in, I didn't pick up too much of a desire to excel at anything, for the majority of my energy was being spent in surviving. The nuns felt they had the right, if not obligation, to beat the "laziness" out of me.

Basically, I was quite the wreck on all levels. My mother carted me from doctor to doctor to find out what was wrong with me. She was on an incessant quest to correct the things wrong with my being. This was a significant part of my early years, and I, literally, carry the scars with me.

Next: Seeking solid ground.