I freakin' love this.
And, before I forget....Julie, Thinker...I love that you're in here doing this journey with us. For me, it's about eating healthier, living healthier...whether that's 5 lbs. or 500. Honestly, if someone came in here and said, hey I struggle with food issues in the other direction and I really want to eat healthier and
gain some weight....I'd be thrilled to have them.
Anyway...for me, food has always been that emotional solace, that comfort, that pleasure that didn't exist in any other form in my home growing up.
My mother is naturally thin (and has had Crohn's disease her whole life...which has also kept her thin). My sister is naturally athletic, hyperactive, has Crohn's also...and has never seemed to care about food beyond it being fuel. Neither could understand me (the other side of the genetic tree)....naturally round and curvy and anything but athletic.
Growing up, I was neglected more than I was abused...although the abuse was there at the hands of my sister. Most of the time, from about age 8...I was home alone. At 11 I ran away from home, gone for 2 days and 2 nights...and came home to discover that my mother had not realized I was gone. I often felt that I would be noticed most if I died and rotted on the floor....mostly because of the smell.
I learned to cook by age 10, out of self-defense...and then used it as a way to win approval. They might not appreciate me...but I made a pretty damn incredible chocolate chip cookie from scratch (and still do). I had (and still have) a 1940s edition Betty Crocker cookbook that I use all the time. I cook the old way...from scratch...and self-taught.
If they weren't around....I'd eat it all myself.
If I was locked out for hours while my mother entertained her "friends"...I would check the payphone coin returns and find returnable bottles (or steal them...I knew how and where) to take back to the corner store....buying candy bars and stuffing myself until I felt sick.
Food was the single thing I could count on. Always. And it became tied up in everything I did. I used food to celebrate, to socialize, to comfort....every situation called for food.
When I was diagnosed with diabetes, it felt like a betrayal and I went into a pretty deep depression. It's still something I struggle with...the "it's not fair" feeling that others can eat what I cannot. The feeling that my longest and most enduring source of pleasure is also the thing that will make me go blind or lose my feet...or kill me.
I still love food. I love to go out to brunch....or to dinner...to slice into a perfect steak covered in sauteed mushrooms....a smokin' hot baked potato filled with real butter and sour cream....fresh bread still warm from the oven...really incredible dark chocolate. It's like sex...sometimes better....and always there and available.
It still depresses me that, to be healthy, to live long enough to see my son become a grown man....I cannot eat many of the things I most enjoy.
But that's the truth...and that's what I need to reconcile myself to...and find ways to live with that I
can live with.
It's a journey.
