Sometimes when I am laying in bed, a tortilla with cheese and salsa hovers over me. I watch myself from a small distance and hope I don�t eat it. I follow myself down the hall and hope I am not going to eat the tortilla. Then I watch myself eat. Eat. Eat. Cry. Sleep.
I am short and I have an incredibly petite frame. This is a recipe for chubby. When I look back at the photos of myself from about age 12 on, I am always astounded. I am rotund. I have cellulite. I am a pig. I am disgusted and humiliated when I flip through the pictures. I ate compulsively and I didn�t realize how big I had become. I was borderline overweight, easily. I don�t have to look at a chart to see it.
I only really identify with chubby people. Thin people are like aliens to me. Even though technically I know I am thin since I am technically underweight, I�m still chubby in my mind. I go out drinking with my fat friends and narrow my eyes and secretly hate the skinny girls at the bar. It doesn�t occur to me that my fat friends might be doing the same thing to me, because I am one of them. Somehow, no matter how much weight I lose, I don�t lose my membership to the Chub Cub.
Sometimes I feel like food is a hoodwink. The restaurant industry is full of tricksters. They want us to believe that food is really fantastic and irresistible and will satisfy and gratify. I feel jaded. I know that the deep dish pizza on the commercial will taste good, but it won�t taste as good as they say it will. When I give in and eat the deep dish pizza I feel raped. I feel used and fat and full of shit. Calories sour cuisine.
What is hunger? Is it physical? Psychosomatic? What is the difference between �Damn I�m hungry� and �Damn I could go for some chips and hummus right now�? I don�t think many people understand hunger, really. Hunger is not a growling tummy. Hunger is not a rolling ache in your abdomen. When you wake up in the morning and you feel as though your soul was sucked out of you with a giant hypodermic needle while you were sleeping, that�s hunger. Then it�s ok to eat. Only then.
