Hangry

The noise was driving me crazy!  I tried to concentrate on my essay but the dog just wouldn’t stop barking!  Every single one of his yelps just seemed to pierce right through my aching head.  I couldn’t imagine what had set him off.  I had filled the food bowl just a few minutes earlier.  I didn’t hear anyone come to the door.  Maybe the dog just wanted to go outside and chase around the stray kitties and squirrels that roamed into the yard from time to time.  After a few more minutes of listening to the endless barking that dissolved into loud screeching howls that seared into my brain and shattered my equilibrium, I finally pushed myself away from my desk and stomped through the living room into the dining room.

“What is going on?”  I shouted out in general to our three small, hyper dogs.  Cowboy, our brown-and-white, spotted dachshund, was standing underneath the large, wooden dining room table.  He was staring into the kitchen as he continued to bark and howl.

“Cowboy,” I shouted to him, “stop it.  What’s wrong with you?”  I glanced into the kitchen and then started to laugh.  “Ah, Dog,” I sighed, “it’s okay.”  But I don’t think he was listening to me as he glared at Starburst and Friskie and continued to growl.

Yes, as usual, around 6 pm, I had filled the dogs’ double-sided, plastic bowl with their usual hard, dry, crunchy dog food.  Typically, Cowboy, the lone male dog, always had one side of the bowl to himself.  Our two female dogs, Friskie and Starburst, either shared the other side or took turns eating.  This night, however, the females decided to stage a mini, non-violent rebellion.  Friskie and Starburst each took a side of the bowl and refused to let Cowboy in between them.  I’m sure Cowboy was thinking “the little bitches” as he grew more upset and continued to howl and whimper.  “Cowboy, it’s okay,” I tried to soothe him.  “You can eat in just a minute.  Let the girls finish.”

But Cowboy wasn’t used to waiting.  He was hungry now and wanted the females out of his way.  But no matter how fierce Cowboy barked, the females refused to be intimidated.  They just continued to scoop the morsels into their mouths and chew happily, totally ignoring the demands of the only male currently in the house.  In an effort to defuse the situation, I walked over to the large, plastic, red bag in the corner of the kitchen and scooped out a handful of dog food.  I sat down on the floor and called Cowboy over to me as I held the food out to him.  Cowboy suddenly choked back a hearty bark and raced over to me.  He leaped up into my lap and started nibbling the food that I held in the palm of my right hand.  As he chewed, I gently scolded him, “Now, don’t you feel silly causing such a fuss?  I’m not going to let you starve.”  Cowboy continued to eat from my hand until the females had finished their meal.  Then he ran over to the bowl and feasted on the scraps that the female dogs had left for him.  He bobbed his head back and forth between both sides of the bowl as he quickly gobbled up the rest of the food as if he was afraid someone would suddenly take it away from him.

I sat on the floor and sighed as I watched Cowboy begin to lick at the bottom of the bowl.  I never knew before that dogs could get low blood sugar.  Cowboy has a big problem with hypoglycemia.  He gets “HANGRY”!  If the dog isn’t fed by 7 pm, he has a complete meltdown.  Cowboy will bark and cry.  He will run around the living room in circles.  He will jump at me and claw at my legs as I innocently walk by him.  His obnoxious behavior doesn’t stop until he finally gets food into his belly.  Once he has been fed, Cowboy will finally calm down, relax, and return to his normally affectionate self as he lovingly cuddles up on the couch with me or protectively sits under my chair in my room as I work on the computer.  Though Cowboy is the most outrageous, he is not the only one of our dogs that gets “hangry!”

Starburst also gets agitated if she isn’t fed by a certain time.  She doesn’t whine or cry, however.  She has a completely different approach.  Most evenings, I’ll suddenly hear a soft scratch-scratch-scratch on the closed door of my room.  It will stop for a temporary moment and then it will begin again.  Scratch-scratch-scratch.  When I finally have had enough, I will get up from my computer and open the door.  Starburst will be out in the hallway, jumping up and then spinning dizzily around in tiny circles on the hardwood floor.  She will suddenly come to a stop and woozily wobble for a moment before heaving a deep sigh and then running down the hallway.  She knows that this display gets my attention every time and I will follow her as she runs through the living room into the dining room and finally into the kitchen.  When I finally catch up to her, she will pick up the empty plastic food bowl in her mouth and fling it at me striking me on the  lower legs.  Seriously…this tiny, fluffy dog will continue to throw her bowl at my feet and legs until I finally take it away from her, fill it with dog food, and place it back down on the floor for her.

Thankfully, Friskie is much more patient.  She doesn’t get upset or irritated as she waits to be fed.  However, she is not completely drama free when it comes to food.  I made a horribly mistake with the dogs one night.  Just because I was feeling a little lonely, I decided to keep the dogs company while they were having dinner.  I watched all three dogs huddled around the food bowl and when Friskie was suddenly pushed out of the way by the two hangry dogs, I did the same thing for her that I did for Cowboy previously.  I scooped up a handful of food out of the bag and began to feed Friskie directly out of my hand.  It made me laugh to feel her small, sharp teeth nipping at my hand as she pulled the small tidbits of food from my palm.  Suddenly, I realized that the other two dogs had stopped eating.  They had raised their heads up out of the bowl and noticed that Friskie was getting special treatment.  Now, Cowboy and Starburst ran over and jumped onto my lap as I sat in the middle of the floor.  The bowl had been temporarily forgotten and all three dogs were now feeding out of my hand.  I was completely caught up in the moment.  It was funny and sweet and I couldn’t stop laughing as the dogs climbed all over me to get to the food.  It was a fun, bonding moment for all four of us.

Only there was just one small problem.  Friskie, especially, really enjoyed cuddling up to me and eating out of my hand.  When I put the food out for the dogs the following evening, Friskie refused to eat.  She stood a few feet away from the bowl and cried as she watched Starburst and Cowboy feast.

“Friskie, it’s okay,” I told her.  “Go on, eat.”  I reached over and nudged Starburst and Cowboy off to one side as I made room for Friskie at the bowl.  But the dog still refused to eat.  “Friskie, what’s wrong?”  I whispered to her.  “Aren’t you hungry?”  I reached out my hand to stroke back her long brown-and-white fur.  To my surprise, she suddenly turned her head and gave the palm of my hand a long, sticky lick.  I suddenly realized that Friskie refused to eat out of her bowl because she wanted to be handfed again!  I was a little surprised that the other dogs didn’t nip at my hand as I reached right into their bowl as they continued to feed.  I grabbed a handful of kibbles for Friskie and held it out to her.  Now, the dog danced around the kitchen on her four tiny paws in excitement before eating the food right out of my hand.  Like any nervous, first-time mother, I was relieved that she was at least eating.  I tried several times to discuss the situation with Friskie.  I told her that she was a big doggie now and needed to eat out of the big doggie bowl.  But she continued to refuse any food unless it was first resting in the palm of my hand.  I know that I was giving in to the dog’s demands but I wasn’t sure now how to break her of this dependency.  Okay, and yes, I’ll admit it, maybe I was a little co-dependent.  Now, I had to find a way of breaking us both of this addictive behavior.

Then one night, as Starburst and Cowboy were having dinner and Friskie was once more cuddled up to me, I reached over to the large food bag and pulled out some kibbles for her.  As the dog began to nibble from my hand, I began to think that the food was a little different this time.  The pieces felt smaller and of lighter weight.  I looked down at the morsels in my hand and found that the pieces were all shaped like little, brown fish…and that’s when I suddenly realized that I had accidently reached into the kitty food bag!

I stared at the small dog in my arms for a moment before I started to laugh.  “Friskie,” I screeched to her, “you just ate kitty food.  Oh my gosh, you ate kitty food!”  Friskie looked up at me for a moment with a horrified expression on her little face before she raised her furry paws up and started to rub her mouth and nose.  I stared at her for a moment as she now jumped away from me and began to roll around on the floor.  I leaned forward and began to rub her down as I said, “Oh, Friskie, you ate kitty food!  You are going to have kitty cooties.  You got kitty cooties!”  Friskie actually howled as she rolled around on her back for a little while longer.

Finally, Friskie sat up in front of me with her little tail wagging and her tongue hanging off to the side as she panted.  She looked closely at me as if she was asking “Why?” and then she ran to the round plastic water bowl and buried her face in the cool fluid.  She quickly lapped up the water until the bowl was empty.  Even though she eventually forgave me for “kittygate,”  Friskie never begged to eat out of my hand again.  She now, once more, fights for her place at the food bowl with the other two dogs.

The dogs don’t have perfect manners.  One day, I came home from work and was a little hangry myself.  I decided to snack on a bag of Marshmallow Mateys.  I love eating dry cereal right out of the bag.  I settled down onto the couch in the living room, turned on the TV to watch Judge Judy, and ripped open my bag of cereal.  But as I put the first sugary piece into my mouth, I suddenly felt as if I was being watched.  I looked down and noticed that all three dogs were lined up directly in front of me.  All three dogs stared menacingly up at me as if I was cheating them at a card game.  What was going on?  Why would all three dogs be staring suspiciously at me?  I followed their sight line and realized that the dogs were staring at the red plastic bag that was sitting on my lap.  Oh, my gosh, it looked just like their dog food bag!  Did the dogs honestly think I was stealing their dog food?

“No, no, it’s okay,” I tried to tell them.  “This is not yours.  This is people food.”

But I know that they weren’t listening to me as all three of the dogs started to whine and beg.  This was really unusual.  Our dogs usually let the family eat in peace.  My sister-in-law, Mary, who actually owns the dogs, had trained them not to beg at the table.  But it didn’t help when the dogs assumed I was holding their dog food bag.  Did the dogs honestly think I was helping myself to their food?

“No, dogs,” I tried to tell them, “people food.  It may be in a package that looks like dog food, but it really is people food.  It’s for me, okay?”

But the dogs didn’t trusting me.  They now began to sit up and then jumped up and down.  “No,” I told them as I shook my head at their annoying behavior.  “I’m not going to feed you.  I can’t feed you cereal.”

Now, the dogs started barking loudly as they demanded to be fed, but I didn’t want to share.  I decided just to ignore them and that worked for a little while…

…Until I unexpectedly dropped a golden, round, chunky piece of cereal on the carpet.  I quickly leaned down to pick it up but before I could reach it, Cowboy suddenly sprung forward and grabbed the piece up into his mouth.  He quickly chewed it up and swallowed it down.

Dang!  But there was nothing I could do about it now.  But then the situation became worse.  I suddenly noticed that Friskie and Starburst had grown very quiet as they turned to look at each other.  Then, as they turned to stare back up at me, I knew then exactly what they were thinking.  “Well,” the thought seemed to pass between all of us, “you feed him.”

“It was an accident,” I tried to tell Friskie and Starburst.  “I didn’t mean to feed Cowboy.  I just dropped a piece.”

But that didn’t seem to matter.  It just didn’t seem fair to Friskie and Starburst.  Cowboy got a piece and they didn’t.  I groaned as I listened to them whimper and noticed that they stared at Cowboy with hostility.  Now, to help calm the situation, I took a deep breath and reached into the cereal bag.  “Alright,” I sighed as I held a sugary morsel out to each of them, “just don’t tell your momma.”  Momma, of course, referred to my sister-in-law, who would probably be very unhappy with our self-indulgent behavior this afternoon.  Friskie and Starburst jumped excitedly forward and gobbled up the cereal.  Then they began to swirl excitedly around the room.  They don’t usually get sugar and now it seemed to make them extremely happy.  I started to laugh and all of us were so happy, I couldn’t resist.  I snuck another piece of cereal to each of the dogs.  The dogs went a little crazy as they danced around the living room in excitement.  Oh, great, I thought.  I just sent all of three dogs on a sugar high!  “Okay, okay, dogs,” I sighed now.  “Calm down.  It’s okay.”  They were “sugar giddy” for a few minutes before they finally crashed down on the brown and gold carpeting and drifted off to sleep.

Ever since that moment, I have vowed to never again interfere with the dogs’ eating habits.  Life has returned to normal.  Cowboy still is grouchy when he is hangry; Starburst continued to throw her bowl at my legs; Friskie still wants to be “puppied” but is learning to eat like a grown up dog.

I will admit, though, from time to time, I will still walk into the kitchen while they are eating.  I will grab small pieces of food from their bowl.  They don’t nip at me, I think, because  they know what I have planned.  I hold the food out to them, and the dogs nip the morsels out of my fingertips.  The dogs chew the food, swallow it down, and smile (yes, I swear, they smile) up at me and wag their tails.  It makes me feel needed.  It makes me feel loved.

Gosh, I needed to stop being so co-dependent….

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Eating Disorders

Of all of my household chores, I hate going to the grocery store the most.  For me, grocery shopping is a tedious, agonizing, and stressful experience.  I usually don’t go to the store until I have absolutely nothing edible left in my kitchen.  I will gladly dust the furniture, mop the floors, and scrub the toilets, but I normally have to psyche myself up to go grocery shopping.  I actually don’t “shop.”  I refuse to walk up and down every aisle and look at all the shelves packed full of cans, small boxes, and plastic bags.  I basically race through a limited number of aisles and only grab the items I absolutely need.  I usually refuse to use a large shopping cart.  I limit myself to one of the handheld baskets.  Once that is full, I’m done even if I did forget the bread, milk, or eggs.  It’s too late…the basket is already full…time to go.  I drag myself through the grocery-shopping task while I internally whine and complain like a bored four-year-old child.  Believe me, I whined all around the grocery store last Monday as I picked up a few staple foods.  Promising myself that I would be in and out of the store within fifteen minutes, I walked in the door, grabbed a small basket, and started to race for the bread section.  I grabbed a loaf of wheat bread and then headed towards the produce department.  After grabbing a few apples and bananas, I added fresh broccoli and a bag of baby carrots to the basket.  Due to the close proximity, I decided to dash over to the Health and Beauty/Pharmacy section next to grab some shower gel.  I just needed to grab the shower gel, shampoo, maybe a box of crackers…and I would be finished.  Another successful grocery shopping adventure completed.

However, something unexpected suddenly brought me to a complete stop…

I reached up to grab a bottle of shower gel and as I pulled it from the shelf, I saw a small square box fall to the floor and land between my feet.  I bent down quickly and picked it up.  I was shocked at what I now held in my hands.  It was a small, thin cardboard box of laxatives.  The box, however, was empty.  The container had been opened and the laxatives had been removed.  I looked quickly around the shelves but didn’t see the actual product anywhere.  I sighed heavily as I stared at the empty box.  I knew exactly what this meant.  The behavior of stealing laxatives from stores is a known habit of anorexics.  Believe me, I know….

Now, I never reached the point where I actually stole laxatives from grocery stores.  However, I do admit that my unhealthy habit began by pilfering laxatives from my mother’s medicine cabinet.  I started out by just taking two a day.  I didn’t think Mom would notice if just two small squares were missing from the pack.  However, after a few months, the routine became worse.  I began to take the whole box out of the cabinet and hide it in the top drawer of my dresser.  At the beginning, I carefully rationed out the small chocolaty squares.  At this point, I was taking about six laxative squares a day.  It wasn’t until I moved into my own apartment that my actions began to get a little weird.  Some days when I even asked myself how I had reached this point as I made a meal out of a full box of laxatives.  I would eat the entire box in one setting.  I would ask myself how I came to have this behavior.

This is what I can say: I was a fat child who was teased and ridiculed a lot by my friends, siblings, and classmates.  My mother continually put me on diets by secretly giving me smaller portions of food.  I never really noticed that she was cutting back on my dietary intake.  Her system seemed to work, though.  I remember glowing with pride at the age of twelve when several of my friends commented on my surprising weight loss.

Unfortunately, though, mom’s method didn’t always work.  My weight continued to yo-yo until I was in high school and reached my all time high of 150 pounds.  Did the weight fall back off again?  No, this time, it just seemed to sit on my body like a 50-pound fleshy ball and chain.  I was unpopular in high school, depressed, and stressed, and the fat seemed to take full advantage.  I just couldn’t seem to shake the weight off.

Once I graduated from high school and started working my first job, I decided that something needed to be done.  I was tired of being bullied and tormented over my size.  I was tired of looking at pictures of myself and seeing fat rolls and multiple chins.  I was tired of not being able to wear the beautiful, frilly dresses that my sisters were wearing.  I was still trapped in large, unfashionable, ugly tents that seemed to just enhance my large size.

Besides the constant jokes about my bulk, there was a deeper, darker reason why weight loss had become so important to me.  Like most young women who are molested at an early age, I thought all of the incidents were my fault.  I needed to be punished.  What better way to punish myself than to take away the very thing I needed to survive.  I had no right to food.  I had no right to eat.  I not only needed to be punished, but I also wanted to make sure that I did not develop breasts or hips.  I needed to destroy my very feminine sexuality in order to survive…something needed to be done…something very DRASTICALLY needed to change…

I started trying to make myself throw up after every meal and snack.  I would kneel over the toilet in the bathroom with my finger down my throat trying to force the nasty food to work itself back up and out of my body.  I was only successful with this activity a few times.  Though I really wanted to vomit and clear my system of all the junk I had just shoved into it, puking was just disgusting to me.  I couldn’t stand the aftertaste of the bile and the way it seemed to coat my teeth and tongue even after I would brush and use mouthwash.  I seemed to have a mental block that stopped me from throwing up everything I ate.  That didn’t stop me though from spending many hours sitting in the bathroom with a spoon shoved down my throat.  Without much success, I realized there had to be a better way.

That’s when I discovered laxatives.  Laxatives would certainly be an easier avenue to weight loss, I reasoned.  All I had to do was eat a few small squares of chocolate and all the nasty food with its hideous little calories would come flooding out of my body.  What could be easier than that?  But it wasn’t so easy.  Many times I would miss important lecture information in my college classes or time at work because I could not leave the bathroom.  The constant laxative use created endless diarrhea, gas, and severe stomach cramps…but if I was losing weight, if I was losing a lot of disgusting fat, wouldn’t that be healthy, too?  I reasoned.  Besides, my body would now be flat-chested without hips or a bottom…and I would be safe.  The weight loss absolutely needed to happen and I was willing to go to any lengths to protect myself from the teasing and the agony of molestation.

Laxatives, I began to realize, were not enough.  Maybe I needed to stop the food from even entering my body.  I began to practice the ole “chew and spit” routine.  For all of my meals, I would place a small plate of food and an empty cup on the table.  I would place the food into my mouth, chew for a moment and then, instead of swallowing, I would spit the chewed food into the cup.  I perfected this custom.  Take a bite, chew, spit, wipe my mouth, take a bite, chew, spit, wipe my mouth, take a bite…

However, I wasn’t losing weight as quickly as I had hoped.  Maybe I just wasn’t moving around enough.  I became fanatical about exercising.  I would exercise for two hours every day…running, walking, jogging, endless calisthenics.

Ugh….it just wasn’t working!  I was 5’6” and still weighted 110 pounds.  A 110 pounds!  Really?  I couldn’t believe it.  I would cry every time I stepped on the scale which I did every two to three hours.  I wanted to be a hundred pounds.  My mother was an attractive woman.  She was small and delicate.  She was barely 5 foot and weighed around 89 pounds.  Everyone seemed to think her tiny size was cute and adorable.  I thought she was beautiful.  I wanted to be cute and beautiful just like my mother.  Not even considering our height difference, I believed that for me to be attractive, I had to be less than 100 pounds.  The last ten pounds that hung around my body and stopped me from reaching my goal caused endless stress and anger in me.  What was I going to do?  I had to lose those last 10 pounds in order to be loved.  I had to reach that goal.

I had to stop eating.

I would “fast” for a two or three days at a time.  I called it “fasting” when the truth is I just refused to eat.  When I did decide to eat, I would feast at the “Sam’s Club Buffet.”  My mother had given me one of her Sam’s Club membership cards.  On days that I thought I deserved to eat, I would go into Sam’s Club and partake from their sample carts.  One piece of each sample would go into my body.  That would be my food intake on a good day.

I was no longer living at my parent’s home, so I don’t think Mom exactly knew what I was doing, but she did seem to worry about me.  “If you get any smaller…” she would say as she whacked me on my non-existent rear end even though I believed I could feel my glut muscles jiggling endlessly from her gentle slap.  Mom began bringing food to my apartment every couple of days.  She would bring over bread, milk, eggs, bacon, lunchmeats, crackers, and soup.  The food would sit in my refrigerator and cabinets for a few days while I furiously exercise and swallowed laxatives to lose a few pounds.  If my weight remained the same, I would package up all of the food in trash bags and throw it into the dumpster.  Actually, I think I threw away the food regardless…I still had not reached the goal of a hundred pounds.

Friends, relatives, and even strangers began to make weird and unusual comments to me.  I could never figure out what they meant.  For example, one afternoon, I had gone into a video store to rent some DVDs.  I selected two DVDs and placed them on the front counter.  I thought the DVDs were two dollars each so I casually laid out four dollars on the countertop.  The heavyset, female clerk looked at the money for a moment and then picked up two of the bills.  “These are just a dollar each,” she said cheerily.  But then as she handed me back the money, she looked me up and down and then sneered, “Now, I guess you can go buy yourself a sandwich.”  I grabbed my money and the DVDs and walked out of the store in a daze.  Why would she say that to me?  I wondered.  In my mind, I assumed she was commenting that I was fat and would now have money for more food.  I cried all the way home.

One day, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while.  We chatted happily for a few minutes before he suddenly said to me, “Well, you seem in a much better mood.  Are you eating now?”  I stared at him in completely confusion.  Honestly, he was not the only person who would ask me that question.  Am I eating now?  Of course, I was eating!  I had the Sam’s Club Buffet a few days a week.  Plus, I would choke down a few pieces of fruit and vegetables whenever I couldn’t stop from giving in to my hunger pangs…and then, I would exercise for two hours while crying and cussing myself for giving into my weakness.

I realize now my behavior was odd and terrifying and it didn’t stop there.  I would develop endless panic and anxiety attacks.  I would have days when I wouldn’t stop crying for hours.  I would be short tempered and cruel.  It wouldn’t take much for someone to suddenly be ripped apart by my viciously snapping tongue and rolling eyes over some minor, unimportant action.  I had read once in a book on eating disorders, that many anorexics and bulimics develop OCD habits and anxiety due to the lack of nutrients and fluids getting to the brain.  Maybe that’s where my OCD habits began…I don’t know…that couldn’t be right though…because at the time I was developing anxiety and OCD habits, I was still snacking on fruits and vegetables occasionally.  I certainly didn’t have an eating disorder.  In fact, I believed at the time I couldn’t stop overeating… and that lead to more punishment.  There would be additional exercising.  I allowed the numbers on the scale to tell me if I could eat or not.  If the numbers were low, I could have an additional broccoli floret.  If the numbers were high, not a single bit of food would go into my body.  Unfortunately, I also allowed the scale to regulate my moods.  If the numbers were low, I was going to have a great day.  If the numbers were high, I was going to have a horrible day.  I’m writing “numbers” because I would weigh myself multiple times throughout the day.  I actually weighed myself any time I saw a scale…at home, at the gym, in a friend’s bathroom…I would carefully analyze the numbers and determine if it was going to be a good or bad day.

Twenty years later, two things still continue to determine my food intake: 1) my current weight and 2) the kind of day I’m having.  If my weight is down and I’m enjoying my life, I will eat.  Yes, I am eating now.  I eat regular meals.  No more Sam’s Club Buffets.  My life is better and, as I’ve grown older, I feel better about myself.  My laxative use is under control.  Though I still feel the urge to use laxatives for weight control, I haven’t eaten any of the little chocolate squares in over a year.  My anxiety attacks and OCD continue to be a problem no matter what or how I eat.  I wonder sometimes if I’ve done lasting, permanent damage to myself.  My digestive track is a complicated mess.  I have to be careful with gastric reflux.  I still feel bile rising up in my throat with many of the things I eat or drink.  I’m usually sick to my stomach and suffer from sharp abdominal pain.  My hair turned prematurely gray and has thinned.  I’m just so thrilled it didn’t all fall out.

However, I still cannot stand to look at, touch, prepare, or shop for food.  Seeing pictures of people’s food posted on Facebook makes me gag and I immediately have to delete the post.  I don’t like anyone to touch or talk about my food.  Grocery stores are still a nightmare for me.  I can’t stand to look at all of that food and think that I will be eating some of it.  I can’t put one single item in my basket without fully reading the nutrition label and checking the calorie and fat intake.

One day last year, I ventured into a local grocery store thinking my food issues were all behind me.  I was really feeling good and healthy as I filled up a shopping cart (not a just basket!) with fruits and vegetables and other non-fat, threatening foods.  As I waited in the checkout lane, an elderly woman standing behind me suddenly commented, “You are moving awfully slow putting your things on the counter.  Here let me do it.”  She suddenly reached into my cart and grabbed a few of my yogurt cups and bread.  “No, stop!”  I told her as I took the items from her hands.  “Please, stop!”  She looked at me for a moment as if I was crazy before moving to the next checkout lane.  And God, maybe I am crazy.  I could not bring myself to buy and eat the food the woman had touched.  I had to set the food far off on the other side of the counter, refusing to let those items near my other groceries.

One day, I was on my lunch break at work.  I had purchased a ham and cheese sandwich from the grocery store next door.  I sat on an outside bench at my workplace to consume the sandwich.  I don’t like to be in the break room where my coworkers can watch me eat.  As I started to nibble on the sandwich, an elderly gentleman and his wife walked by me.  The man looked at me for a moment before saying, “Are we in time for lunch?”  He chuckled and then said, “What are you eating?  Do you have more for us?  What is it?”  I had no response other than to stand up and throw the sandwich in the nearest trashcan.  I couldn’t eat anything for the rest of the day.

I cannot discuss food.  I don’t want to talk about what I eat.  If I go to a banquet or a luncheon, I cringe whenever anyone ask me what was served.  I just can’t find the words to talk about food.  I don’t want to tell people what I had for lunch.  I don’t want to discuss what I will have for dinner.  Yes, I am eating now but please don’t ask me what my favorite foods are.  I don’t want to talk about it.

But I will say this…my life has gotten better.  I am more comfortable in my body now than I have ever been.  I do eat good meals now, though I still go to the gym five times a week and check the food labels on all products before I buy them.  I enjoy my life so I’m beginning to enjoy some favorite foods.  But please don’t ask me what they are.  I really can’t talk about food without feeling nauseous.

Now, I slowly placed the empty laxative box back on the shelf and grabbed the rest of my groceries while drifting through the store on autopilot.  I know I have to eat.  I do want to stay alive.  I just still can’t appreciate food.  Feeling anxious, I quickly grabbed the rest of the items I needed and headed up to the register.  I didn’t feel any relief until I had paid for my things and left the store.  Once I was home and all the groceries were hidden away in the cabinets and out of my view, I was finally able to take deep breaths again.\

…Oh, and whoever stole the laxatives and left behind the empty carton….Please know you are not alone…So many of us know how you feel…please reach out to someone…I continue to pray for you…