Foodie Fears

What is it about food that tempts us to relinquish control? To savor or to scarf. It lets you fall to pieces or it can put you back together again. It can be the stale meals of the every day life alone or it can be warm and heavy goodness of meal cooked where you called home. It's an addiction and a necessity all at once. No other sensory infused act can be described quite the same.

I have been thinking about food often. Partly because I'm usually alone when I eat now that I live away from my friends and family and partly because eating has become burdensome and complex. When you're alone all evening, or in some cases all day, you only have yourself to find entertain. After a while the TV is terrible, reading is too sedentary and going out again for a tedious task sounds ridiculous. Instead, you make food, eat snacks and serve yourself more than your regular portions of muffins or cookies or what have you. Why? To pass time. To stimulate you senses. To have somewhere to walk to. And to make you feel full so maybe you won't feel lonely.

Being lonely is a bit stigmatized as it seems to point to the bearer of loneliness a big sign that says OUTCAST. Loneliness comes in all forms, from left out to without friends. But admitting that you're lonely seems to say that you've been by yourself and rest assured, you are just as boring as you thought you would be. I don't say that with any sort of a sourness or sadness, but aren't we all bored with ourselves from time to time? Isn't it our interactions that give us our spark and our chance to shine? Our shared laughs become our private giggles at home and the smiles that pop on our face during the work day without reason. It's other people that make us luminous.

Even when are interactions with others are fitful, angry, anxious or irritable. It still ignites our senses and stirs our thoughts and emotions. No matter what, after speaking with someone there is always something to think about.

When you're at home alone you're left with yourself and your fizzly sparks. And trust me, they get really fizzly after a while. So you eat, you think about how you would like to be able to cook or rather you would like to be able to enjoy cooking and therefore cook. Instead, (and by YOU I mean I) I make "Just Add Water" muffins and chicken that I probably won't eat because I'm so god awful tired of chicken I could be happy with PB&J. (Which, by the way, I had tonight and it's not as satisfying with raspberry jam. Mistakes can be made even in old standbys.)

Tonight, I tried to make it different. I read instead of watching TV. Although, futons make for miserable reading couches and there really is no comfortable way to read when you spine is in a "C' shape. And guess what? No unnecessary jamming of food down my lonely old throat. Just a mediocre PB&Jam that got halfway eaten, a fiberone bar for chocolate, a bit of dark chocolate because a fiberone doesn't count and a whole lot of milk.

So far so good, fellow eaters. I'm just hoping I make it all the way to bed without eating a whole pot of rice and seventeen snack packs. I make no promises.