Peanut Butter

Peanut Butter. Before wilderness it was just something I ate with jelly. During wilderness it was considered gold and was something all of us girls looked forward to getting for the weeks rations.

Wilderness was where I was sent to because a normal 16 year old girls doesn’t have sex with a 2 year long boyfriend. I was picked up in the middle of the night, dragged to wilderness, stripped searched and given a tarp, which carried everything I would need to survive. Of the things included: powdered food (cheese, milk, butter), dried beans, 2 pieces of fruit, flour, brown sugar, raisins, granola and rice, and the glorious peanut butter which would be replenished weekly. I was quite disgusted and really didn’t think I would use an entire jar of that stuff in a week, or any of the others. I had only planned to stay the minimum of three weeks, not the 9 weeks I had no idea I was going to reside.

Three days into the journey of hell, I realized this shit was really the shit. It was a staple of existence. We rationed it carefully knowing it had to last a week. We sat like cave men watching the other girls, hyenas ready to attack if they came near. We licked every inch of the jar we could savoring every last bit. No one would trade anything for peanut butter, not even granola that was almost to the top of the favorite list. Every week they would hand out bags of food and every one of us would take the peanut butter out first and sit back and take pleasure in the first bite of the new jar.

Now years and years later, when I eat peanut butter it reminds me of how valuable it used to be to me. Usually when I eat, I do just that and move on, but when I eat peanut butter I appreciate it, letting it take me back to the wilderness days, where heaven came in a jar to the desert of hell.