I don't want to eat food, I just want to feel better

I know I am a crier. I always have been.

“Stop being so sensitive” was a constant litany of pleas I heard growing up.

But sensitive is always what I’ve been. I feel the thrumming of my feelings just underneath the surface of my skin. Skin that has been told it needs to toughen up. Toughen up especially if it’s going to face rejection over and over. Toughen up especially if you want to be an artist.

But I like my thin skin. I am like a lizard in the sun with iridescent colors shimmering in the light. I am alive because I feel so deeply.

But sometimes I feel too deeply and I want it to go away. I don’t want to feel the feelings that hurt.
I want the deep sadness, the sensation that I get plunged into suddenly in the middle of the day, or when I walk into the house in the dark night, quiet except for a skittering roach, or when I live the same moments again and again without the exciting sizzle of deja vu, I want it to disappear. I want to feel lighter. I want to feel hopeful. I want to feel better.

I want to be happy.

So I turn to food.

I relish food. I love Italian food: tomato sauce rich with garlic and olive oil, fresh pizza with basil and mozzarella, steaming plates of pasta and crusts of bread. I love Newman’s O’s: the most beautiful organic knockoff version of Oreos in existence. I love sweet potatoes and eggs. I love oatmeal sprinkled with cinnamon and dark chocolate. I love Thai food. I love sushi.

But when I turn to food when I want to feel better it is not because I am ready to ecstatically savor my favorite food. It is because I want to hide. It is because I know that something sweet, something salty, something with layers of oil will cover up my craving for happiness in the moment. Cover up my hope to feel joyful and alive. Cover it up quickly and make me feel satisfied, even though it is not what I really want.
Cover it up in the most sneaky way of making me feel like it is making me happy.
Until the food is gone and the echoing pit in my stomach is still there. Begging for something more.

And when I turn to food to make me feel better it is usually not an insanely perfect piece of pizza.
It is anything.

Anything for the instant gratification of eating since the things I feel I am missing in my life are not things I can order online, find in a cabinet, or rummage up from the fridge.

The relationship with food is strange. It seems like you are either pals with food, like a neighbor you really like but don’t talk to every day, or you have a terrifyingly dramatic relationship. A relationship that ping pongs back and forth between obsession and denial. That goes from devouring everything in front of you to refusing to consider the joy that could come from it.

I’d love to be neighbors with food. I feel like it would mean I have my own life, but they’re still in it. They’re vital to the world I live in, their presence makes me feel pleased, but the things that make me happy, those are other things. The things I really want. The things that live in my own house.

with joy and confetti,

Alexa