Taking Out The Trash

When my family lived in San Angelo and I was six or seven years old, one of my chores was to take out the trash. Every few days, I would drag the bags out to the fenced in area in the alleyway behind our house, and drop them in the cans for the weekly garbage pick up. One time, I tried to try my aim by throwing a bag into one of the cans from a few steps back. Not surprisingly, I missed, and trash went just about everywhere except in the can. I remember looking at the big mess on the ground and facing that moment of choice, where I could clean it up or just say, “Forget it”. I chose the latter. I figured, nobody else ever went back there anyway. Nobody would know.

I came back out a few days later and saw that the garbage man had picked up most of the trash. The whole area around the cans was pretty clean. Since no harm had been done, I decided to test my aim again and hauled the bag I was carrying toward the cans. Yep, you guessed it: I missed. Maybe it was because I was frustrated, or maybe just lazy, but I decided a second time to leave the mess scattered all over the ground.

The same thing happened the next several times I carried out the trash, but after that first instance, the garbage man stopped cleaning up after me. Within a few weeks, close to a foot of trash was piled up inside the enclosed fence, while the cans themselves stayed empty. A nasty heap of kitchen scraps, cigarette butts and litter was now baking in the West Texas sun and starting to cause a stench. But, it took at least a month before anyone in my family discovered my dirty little secret.

Facing Reality

Looking back, I recognize how I allowed this pattern to start by walking away from the mess I created that very first time - and the fear and guilt that I swallowed for weeks after as I continued to let the mess to build while worrying that it would be discovered. What started as an accident turned into an act of defiance and denial, then a source of shame and anxiety, and eventually the cause of hopelessness. I had let things get so out of hand that the trash was now a stinking heap of decomposing muck, which I didn’t think I could ever clean up. Neither the fear of my father’s belt nor the shame of seeing the trash week after week was enough to overcome the feeling of hopelessness and the belief that I was helpless to make things right. Truth was, the trash was also so nasty, I just didn’t want to touch it. I was now caught in a cycle, and continued to pile more and more garbage onto my personal trash heap.

I don’t remember exactly how my secret was found out -I guess my father finally walked back to the alley and saw what I had done. But, I remember being at a total loss when it came to answering the question, “Why?” I honestly couldn’t say. I didn’t know why I did it in the first place, why I chose to continue, or why I couldn’t fix it. All I knew at that point was that I was in fear and shame, and that I felt dirty and lazy. I had disappointed my father for no good reason. At that very moment, I was simply frozen.

Finding the Right Tool

After my dad discovered the miniature landfill behind our house, he went to the garage and got out a large shovel. Being a young kid, I was amazed at the sight - I didn’t want to touch the trash, because it was so nasty, but I had never considered getting the right tool. My father climbed knee-deep into the pile and shoveled the trash into the cans, while I held them open, standing in the muck right next to him. The shame and dirtiness and hopelessness I had experienced all those weeks disappeared within a matter of minutes. I had a clean start. The only question was, could I now keep this space clean, or would I let it get dirty like that again?

More powerful than the sense of relief at seeing the trash cleaned up was the realization that it was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. In this case, my father - someone smarter and stronger than me - got in there with me and helped me clean it up. Today, I carry that lesson with me whenever I find I have gotten myself into a big old mess. I have to remember to turn to a power greater than myself and ask for help, or else I allow the opportunity for denial, shame and fear to keep me frozen.

Choosing to Live Cleanly

If you ask an obese person why they are choosing to be obese, they will tell you they don’t have a choice. But for most of us, there was that same moment of decision, triggered by an innocent mistake - finishing the rest of the cake in the middle of the night, polishing off your kid’s Halloween candy, ordering a large pizza when you’re eating alone. Everybody makes mistakes, and they can usually be fixed. But, rather than admit we blew it and clean up our mess early on, so many of us choose to shrug it off, and become trapped in a cycle of laziness, guilt and fear. At a certain point, we find ourselves knee-deep in the muck, wallowing in feelings of hopelessness and convinced that we are powerless to change our situation.

Having weight loss surgery gave me a clean start. Just like when my dad came to my rescue, I had to ask a surgeon to bring the right tools and help me clean up the mess I had created. I asked him to dig into 400 pounds of fat, and cut away the garbage. Now, that my body has returned to its normal, healthy size, it’s up to me to keep living clean. I recognize that I am incapable of doing this by myself, and that I need to turn to a higher power to stay on the straight and narrow.

And for this, I am very grateful