Monday, May 20, 2013

Food Demons 101

So, been thinking about that demon that popped up during the workshop.  How much I'd love to Whack-a-Mole his ass with Mjolnir back to whatever hole it crawled out of.  Except I'm pretty sure I have sent him back many times only to have him reappear.  Where did that little shit come from and how do I send him back - PERMANENTLY?

I spent a bit of time gently probing the edges of this particular thought and discovered a wealth of trash-tastic stuff.  Like black hole of my existance trash. 

Here are just a few of the things I stumbled upon:

I don't like to eat with people I do not know. 
I feel vulnerable when I eat.
I often feel tremendous angst around food and eating.
I hate food.
I love food.
I am completely disinterested in food.
I am afraid of food.
Food is the enemy.
Food is the only friend who always "gets" me.
I make better food choices with other people than I do alone.
My self-control around food is very small. 
Eating sometimes makes me sick to my stomach.  Thinking about eating ditto.

Those were just the things that cropped up in the first few minutes of probing.  I'm sure it's the tip of the proverbial iceburg under there.  Truthfully, touching even this tiny pinprick of junk made me queasy and I shut it down with a quickness. 

So over the next few weeks/months I will be blogging about my discoveries both big and small around the issue of food.  If you're not a fan of deep self-evaluation then you might wanna skip these next few months. 


Food and dinner have appeared in a very few pieces of writing previously, but they always whisper darkly at things best hidden.  Here is one from 2009

Many of my childhood memories have been lost. Jettisoned from a sinking soul to lighten the load and survive. Sometimes it comes back to me in dark moments flickering like the Bell and Howell projector in my elementary school, the sprockets catch and the movie stutters into motion. I am captive to this movie, a movie I wish I could unsee.

Opening scene : a 7 year old sitting in a neighbor’s kitchen chair, head down, face invisible thru the long brilliant curtain of auburn hair, watching as the long wisps and chunks of hair fall silently onto the cool checkered linoleum forming perfect ecliptic paths for her eyes to follow. She looks up and for a moment there is something feral in her eyes, but it is quickly shuttered behind vacant pupils. And the film slips.


A sturdily built athletic 8 year old child, sitting at a family dinner table. The dad is absent, so it must not be Sunday. She is wearing shorts and a cotton hand me down T-shirt advertising a local knothole team that she knows nothing about. Her chestnut hair is cut short, uncombed and to the casual observer looks no different from the other boys around the table. I catch her eyes. They are vacant. She is practicing being invisible trying to blend in with the predators who would destroy her. Hoping to pass for one of THEM.

As is customary, her mother is serving plates for all of them. She is so hungry she can hear her stomach, feel it gnawing at her backbone. Plate after plate is passed, the recipient destination carefully and quietly named by her mother. Each plate heaped with lasagna, corn and garlic bread. Her mouth waters in anticipation of her own plate which arrives, as always, with scant portions of everything and no possibilities of seconds. Her mother admonishes her to eat slowly. All the while encouraging her siblings to eatEatEAT. Dishing out seconds as they punish the silverware to shovel it in as quickly as possible. There is belching and hiccupping all around her, but it doesn’t quite drown out the growling of her still hungry belly.

The film ratchets forward and I see the same child, older now, who has learned to self-sufficiently forage quickly snatch a cookie from the jar.  She has learned to be stealthy because to be caught is to be punished and to go to bed hungry yet again. She will stuff it into her mouth later hiding in her bedroom to quell the hunger without even tasting its sweetness. 


How many times have a played out that same scenario - mindlessly stuffing cookies into my mouth.  Compelled by the demon to continue stuffing them in even though my stomach has long since been full.  Failing to taste their sweetness.  Failing to be nourished.  Just failing. 







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