THE VERY LONG ROAD TO REDEMPTION

AND A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

By the time I escaped my family’s endless descent into more toxicity, by being the first Wright ever to attend college, I knew what a reward was. A reward was a pair of bacon double cheeseburgers.

I also knew what comfort and love were. Those came in the form of downing whole pizzas with 6 toppings, or wolfing down enough giant burritos to feed four starving men.

When I realized my dad was perfectly content to ignore most of my mom’s obsessive compulsive and other damaging behavior, I salved my pain – and 40 work, 40 hours of study weeks – with newly-discovered sub shops and fatty food drive throughs open late night in downtown Akron.

It took me damn near a half century to figure out that I could confront pain and reward achievement – with something other than triple slices of cheesecake with a caloric content exceeding the recommended intake for all five work days.

I’m not all the way there. When even a hint of anxiety or depression enters my life, visions of iced brownies, XL orders of fried catfish and mountains of double buttered whipped potatoes dance in my head.

I’m an orphan now. Have been for nearly a year. Dad died of cancer a few years back and mom died in a nursing home April last year when COVID was ravaging her dementia care ward. They are at rest, maybe, freed from the demons that robbed them of much joy and burdened their two sons with shame, obesity, insecurity and mountains of unresolved issues.

I’m about as imperfect as they come. But I have a dynamite soulmate of a wife. I have a loving, if strained relationship with my only sibling.

And for the first time since I was a tiny boy, I’m eating right and exercising routinely.