Relationships. With food.

I love food.

I love the feeling of something activating your mind, your taste buds, your body, your everything. Every food item gives you different thoughts and memories and feelings. It might be a gross texture and make you gag, or it might be delightfully crunchy (my favourite), or so smooth, you can just slurp it up like Heaven. Some foods make you sleepy, some make you feel light and beautiful, and some leave you feeling silly and childish.

Filling up your tummy's desperate beckon for sustenance is a relief and an absolute joy! When you eat with someone you trust and care about, your mutual self-care and care for each other is a unique bonding experience. When your significant other takes you out for food and pays without question, he/she becomes your hero. Even more so if (s)he knows what you wanted or is craving the same item(s).

A dessert item is like that secret or very loud shared experience. It can be something you shamefully do alone, but feel so good about!

An appetizer- oh, boy. So disgustingly gluttonous , but if you have a tasty little treat to tide you over, you feel good, you feel excited, you feel relieved when it comes. Even a bowl of soup or a simple salad can make your eyes roll back, your eyebrows float, and your mouth salivate.

I love it for the faces someone makes after biting something truly horrific. They could get mad, but usually they just go wild and make all the faces and sounds you want to see and they truly feel. Somewhere inside themselves. There is no shyness when it comes to gross food; when you trust the people you're with. You might be more polite in mixed company... or not!

Every food you have ever eaten, you had at one point eaten for the first time. You may not remember it, but even your favourite food in the world, was once something new and strange, and maybe you didn't even like it.

My favourite food is peanut butter. Since I was a child, I would eat ridiculous, unhealthy amounts of peanut butter. Not on bread, not with crackers or jelly or celery or "fluff". Just peanut butter. Every time I taste a hint of it, I fall in love with it all over again. It is such a simple food, most people take it for granted. Not I. I savour every lick of my finger, every nibble of the knife, every last piece of peanut in thai peanut sauce. Crunchy peanut butter used to gross me out, however. As did pulp in orange juice. Now I just find it to be more peanut in my peanut butter. Nutty and messy and gooey and simply uncouth! Precisely how I would hope someone would describe me.

Not to mention french fries. My arch nemesis, my weak-point, my ab-killer. Who has the strength to only eat one french fry? Each fry, a new flavour, a new texture, a new chomp into oblivion. Children don't understand how lucky they are to have the right to say, "French fries. Just french fries." and this could be considered a picky child's improvement. Or a fair and "good enough" meal. For me? I'm just the carb guzzling, grease bather. Does this phase me? Not in the least. Just be aware of what I must endure in order to enjoy a french fry meal.

Although... I hate food.

I hate feeling like my food choices aren't good enough. That stupid 5, 10, 20 minutes of sitting and throwing mushed, mashed, crushed, cracked nutrition (or sometimes lacking) down my throat. It gets gross and boring and unpleasant. The stomachache and bloating and unpleasantness that seems to come all too fast and easily and unwanted. The inability to move or feel good about yourself for hours, days, weeks (if you experience IBS, you know what I mean.)

Not wanting to get fat so you can please the people you have no desire to please, yet feel the compulsion to satisfy. It's disgusting and ironic and not fun. To the point of contemplating anorexia or bulimia or just cutting of a limb. Say, the nose? As, I am not too content with mine. Water weight and muscle weight and hoping that my organs way 100+ lbs. It could be.

Watching how other women eat. Some eat so much and remain thin, we are bred to hate them, maybe devour them. The ones who eat too much and get fat and we ask, "Why do they keep eating?" but in the end, we wish we were comfortable enough in ourselves to eat like that and look like that without shame. Because there is no shame in looking like that! Unless, of course, you ask the models and actors and the rest of the list- all of which are known for their drug problems. Ah, where we find our heroes... genius. Or maybe we wonder how women eat so little and look the way they do. That one person who never seems to eat and yet, she weighs the weight of two of the skinny ladies combined. How frustrated she must be. Who does she blame at night when she looks in the mirror? I hope she is content, but what are the chances of that? It is people like me and you and us all, whether we know it or admit it or see or not. We are all part of it.

Of course, I happen to love a little something extra on a person. Or a lot extra. Or nothing extra! How do such beautiful creatures think such horrible things? Who or what gave us that idea? Of course, the media, the government, everything we see in the world. The things we cannot erase, the reason this way of thinking will never end, never cease, never be defeated. Self-love will only exist in the mind of the man or woman in denial.

Food which disappears so quickly after you buy it. Maybe it is just me, but I a so excited to eat the broccoli once I buy it. Every type of fruit I bought. I binge. I suffocate. I sit and sit and sit and struggle to move or breathe or think anything but, "Oy." Then it is gone and I wait several weeks before buying more. I starve meanwhile. That starvation! That ache! That nausea that accompanies it! I get it, stomach! Why not be like an alarm clock? Ache for a bit, then rest. Remind me again in 20 minutes or so. I assure you I will find food, stomach. Don't panic unless it's been more than a few days. Relax, stomach, you worry wart. I am going to take care of you and refuel. With what, though?!

Meat and dairy are bad. But I need the vitamins. I want the vegetables, but they upset my stomach. I need the vegetables, but they make me hurt. Meat and dairy make others hurt, they may animals suffer, they disgust me. I need the vitamins, but they are big and smell bad and make me gag. I need the vitamins but I don't want to suffer, so I seem to be okay without them. One day this will catch up with me.

Food is not simple. It's not simple.