Reservations

I feel so much hunger.

It calls when I am unsettled, lost, unmoored from stability or creativity.

I had a sex dream about Pete Davidson.

I know it is here.

In Chicago, briefly, I felt happy.  I felt secure.  I was not famished.

I went with my daughter’s dad to see Kanye West.   Normally, I love to eat Chicago. This time, I was in a creative euphoria. Our bodies touched during Bound 2.  Once, I thought I would walk down the aisle to that song.  There is something powerful about leaving home, existing elsewhere, finding a version of yourself outside of the day-to-day.  For a moment, every dream inside of myself felt possible.  

I ate cold fries and a soggy patty melt from a dive restaurant with a name said three times fast; you would have sworn it was a slur.  The grease was tangible. My body knew it was bad for me.  I gave up after a few bird-like bites because I didn’t need it. I knew what real need was.

I felt light for a moment.  My jeans got looser. I let them fall down my hip bones, threatening to come undone.  I have always felt the most desirable with a rack of ribs protruding. In these moments, I know I have the most control.

We are not in Chicago today. I know I am lost.

I return to a habit I formed at a very young age, when I was taught that food was control, punishment, comfort. I learned there is no feeling I cannot eat.

Insecurity demands sugar.
Fear is salty.
Sadness is baked: thick, oozing with filling.
Happiness is satiated.
But we aren’t here to visit her.

Existing is hard.  

I sit in my bed.  Restless. Doesn’t everything taste better when you are eating where you lie? I feel the tug of insecurity.  My career has altered and brought me into chaos and small spaces.  I live inside a retail space for ten to fourteen hours a day, with dark walls and fluorescent lighting. No one asks me about my day or how I am doing.  No one offers to help me clean up the messes other people made.  I made my bed today.  But now I want to rut inside of it.  I will need things with crumbs or foods that stain.  I once woke up thinking I had bled out, but it was gummy bears streaking my skin like the sure signs of blood poisoning.

Chips are good, candy is better. If you eat chips quickly, they form a thick coating on your teeth.  A bite into a candy bar will take the sediment with it in a slurry of thick caramel and chocolate.  You can alternate.  Build the destruction, then tear it down.

Diet soda must accompany the ritual.  I can harm myself with food.  I cannot harm myself with calories in every sip. Fake sugar has a tang, an aftertaste you become immune to.  Sometimes I think I am like this aftertaste.  You stop realizing how bad it is when you overconsume.

I often feel sad.

Sobriety removed the dark cloak of depression that kept me unable to move. For a while, the freedom of this alone gave me momentum.  Now, I have returned to a tired existence where I perform the same act: work, cook, clean, think about work, try to sleep, wake up for work.  I haven’t found time for creativity in weeks.  I get constant work texts and have to move around parts of other people’s lives to keep a business from collapsing.  Everything in corporate America feels urgent, except self-care.

I had great potential once.  I think this fact makes it all hurt more.  So I look for sweets lying around the house; I eat donuts at gas stations with that particular staleness and thick frosting, an almost plastic packaging around unreal dough. These aren’t made by hand in any kitchen with love.  They are processed, packaged, and used to placate the hunger of a million on-the-move people who spend money they don’t have to get to work at jobs they don’t want.  

It is October.  My insurance went up.  So did my pay.  My pay doesn't come close to the insurance increase, so after 16 years of hard work, I make less than I did the previous year.  I just worked 96 hours over 8 days.  On seven of those days, I woke up at 2:45 AM to start the day.  I felt the cognitive decline.  I told a woman to have a good idea instead of a good day.  At night, knowing I could sleep maybe three to four hours, feeling like I am failing my children because I can neither be present nor provide for them independently, fearing the impact on my mental and physical health from doing a job that doesn't truly help anyone, the well of loneliness building to a crescendo, I ate.  

You won’t find fear on the menu, but it is packaged all the same.  In every snack bar, bag of chips, and gummy candy packed with artificial dyes.  This is my full course meal. Fear of the past. Fear in the present. Fear for the future. Back to back, hands go into packaging and race toward my mouth. I chew.

Is happiness on the menu?

Happiness is the feeling of putting a fork down, of not needing to eat more because your body knows when to stop.  Food is a race when your body stops being a reliable narrator.

I am very fortunate. I have never known true food scarcity.  Binge eating is a disease of the blessed.  There is food on my table, food at my feet, food behind my headboard, lying in wait.  

You will not find a restaurant advertising uncertainty and fear, insecurity and sadness.  

I make my own reservations.