Biting
Something that preoccupies me a great deal is wondering if my experience of life and the world is anything like the way other people experience it. Am I like anyone else? Does the skin they’re in make things so very different? And if it does, why? Especially if it’s a person with a problem, I wonder what about their situation means they have that problem when I don’t. Are things really that much harder for them? Or am I just not as sensitive to whatever it is they’re dealing with? Maybe I struggle with empathy- or maybe I’m doing my best to develop some more.
I’ve been reading a comic a person wrote in the process of recovering from an eating disorder. Given some of my personal preoccupations with body image, you’d think I’d be able to relate at least a little bit. But, surprisingly or not, I’m finding very little of that. Unfortunately I find that’s usually the way of things when I hear about the experiences of people who are supposedly dealing with similar mental betes noirs to mine. I mean, I guess there’s nothing like seeing somebody who’s truly sick to drive home that you’re actually pretty damn okay. But even the struggles I do experience just don’t seem to line up.
Yes, I care very much about staying fit and thin. But I don’t know HOW people do that, though. Like, I don’t think I could do anorexia if I wanted to. I’ve always wondered what hunger feels like for other people, because it SCREAMS in me. When it sets in, it just begins wailing in my head, so loud and insistent as to drown out all other thought. If I let it go long enough, it gets to the point where it BITES into me, like jaws snapping into the meat of my guts and just holding there. I CANNOT ignore it, even when I want to. It’s been that way since I was a little kid, even before I had any sense of worrying about what I eat, just this insistent ravenousness. I don’t know if hunger is just a different experience for others, but I have no idea how anyone could ignore that screaming and biting.
And I take so much pleasure in food. I love it so much, in so many ways. I love looking at it, smelling it, choosing it, touching it, hearing about it, talking about it, preparing it, cooking it, laying it out, serving it, sharing it, EATING IT, sometimes EATING IT until I’m ready to burst because I can’t get enough of the joy. I want you to send me pictures of the dinner you just cooked. I want you to tell me about the fabulous meals you ate on your vacation. I want to discuss how you cook this and what you made when you prepared it like that. Food means joy to me, joy and safety and strength and security and creativity and hope for the future and LOVE, the most primal act of love one human being can do for another. I get teary-eyed thinking of how much of human connection is forged through food. If I cook for you, I am loving you in the most fundamental way I know how.
And just as sharp as the screaming and biting is? So too is the joy of not only soothing it, but of leaving a feeling of full contentment in its place. Maybe that is what keeps me healthy this way. Maybe this love makes it so I don’t develop a problem.
More on this another time.
I’ve been reading a comic a person wrote in the process of recovering from an eating disorder. Given some of my personal preoccupations with body image, you’d think I’d be able to relate at least a little bit. But, surprisingly or not, I’m finding very little of that. Unfortunately I find that’s usually the way of things when I hear about the experiences of people who are supposedly dealing with similar mental betes noirs to mine. I mean, I guess there’s nothing like seeing somebody who’s truly sick to drive home that you’re actually pretty damn okay. But even the struggles I do experience just don’t seem to line up.
Yes, I care very much about staying fit and thin. But I don’t know HOW people do that, though. Like, I don’t think I could do anorexia if I wanted to. I’ve always wondered what hunger feels like for other people, because it SCREAMS in me. When it sets in, it just begins wailing in my head, so loud and insistent as to drown out all other thought. If I let it go long enough, it gets to the point where it BITES into me, like jaws snapping into the meat of my guts and just holding there. I CANNOT ignore it, even when I want to. It’s been that way since I was a little kid, even before I had any sense of worrying about what I eat, just this insistent ravenousness. I don’t know if hunger is just a different experience for others, but I have no idea how anyone could ignore that screaming and biting.
And I take so much pleasure in food. I love it so much, in so many ways. I love looking at it, smelling it, choosing it, touching it, hearing about it, talking about it, preparing it, cooking it, laying it out, serving it, sharing it, EATING IT, sometimes EATING IT until I’m ready to burst because I can’t get enough of the joy. I want you to send me pictures of the dinner you just cooked. I want you to tell me about the fabulous meals you ate on your vacation. I want to discuss how you cook this and what you made when you prepared it like that. Food means joy to me, joy and safety and strength and security and creativity and hope for the future and LOVE, the most primal act of love one human being can do for another. I get teary-eyed thinking of how much of human connection is forged through food. If I cook for you, I am loving you in the most fundamental way I know how.
And just as sharp as the screaming and biting is? So too is the joy of not only soothing it, but of leaving a feeling of full contentment in its place. Maybe that is what keeps me healthy this way. Maybe this love makes it so I don’t develop a problem.
More on this another time.