the anatomy of a freak II

i suppose at the root of every problem, exists a family. something to give rise to such a devil child must stem from somewhere, and what better place than to start than childhood? the time when one is most vulnerable, most impressionable, and most scared. stability at at childhood can be an illusion, especially when you look at how many dysfunctional people are mass reproducing at an attempt to smother us with lunatics, but i digress: your's truly had a tumultuous childhood, which in turn helps label me more a 'freak' than you may have realized thus far.

maybe it was the fact that i grew up in a immigrant/refuge household. i was always different than most the other kids. sure i had a few who had the same growing pains, but we were grossly out numbered and didn't realize each other's plight. that growing up in such a household, where responsibility is shared amongst 3 older siblings and parents equally puts a strain on a living relationship. i remember having a sweatshop in my basement as a child, my whole family bent over sewing machines hours and hours at a time. my brother and sisters would come home from school and start sewing away. the younger sister had a particular talent with it, even though it was the older one who went on to design clothing for a living. the brother was always confused as to why he had to slave over mounds of cloth while his friends were able to go out and play.

he and the younger sister always agreed about one thing; they hated sewing and resented missing out on their childhood, even to this day [let it go assholes].

i just watched and ate cheese and butter and shit like that. all the hardships flew right by me, but hey, you can't expect a 4 or 5 year old to do hard labor. i mean, does this look like asia?

but we progressed. one of the sewing machines is in my room, maybe it was the lucky one, i haven't a clue. but from the house/sweatshop on bingham st, we move 2 blocks over to c st, where yet another form of labor was put on my family; a small corner grocery store, run and owned by the pham family. welcome to p&h corner grocery.

but this is where my dilemma comes in; because it's a family run business, it requires a great deal of work and dedication to make it a success. needless to say, success became something uttered quite often when referring to my family, as all the hard, back breaking work paid off.. for the most part. i've written a bible about my family's start with the sweatshop, the start with the store, and left out everything since their exodus from the motherland, and i've yet talk about me.. except for the whole cheese and butter thing.

so, to shorten things; family profited from the store, oldest sister graduated penn state and now designs clothes for adidas, younger sister graduated temple pharm and who's highschool sweatheart turned husband is a dollar store mogul in az, and the brother graduated villanova and is ceo of his own media design firm.

and where do i lay? somewhere in between hobo and college dropout. and before i run off on another tangent, you may wonder where i lay back in the days of p&h. you may remember me saying something about cheese and butter, which may lead you to believe i was an overweight child. however, you'd be wrong; i was a grossly overweight child, with enough love handles and double chins for victims of a downed boeing 747 to latch on to. and the store? that didn't help much, being as i was living in junkfood valhalla.

but thank god i grew out of that stage. i weighed in at almost 120lb. when i was 10. that's insane to weigh that much when you haven't even grown past 5', because some said i was growing out faster than i was growing up.

but the root of the weight-loss came not only from dieting, but it came from an unprecedented level of stress up to that point in my life..