June 4th, 2012: As a kid, I remember the feelings and dreams when school ended each year. I remember thinking about all the grandiose plans I would develop as the days led up to the end – all the fun I would have, and guess what, all the good food I would eat. Yes, all the good food…
These were the days long before an eating disorder, long before I had any other thoughts about food except what’s for breakfast, when’s lunch, when and what’s for dinner, and do I have Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for after swimming. One of my favorite things was going to my grandparent’s house in Anaconda, MT in the summer. Here they would spoil the shit out of me and encourage me to eat, eat, eat!
We might go to the Embassy restaurant at the west end of town where I once at 10 pieces of chicken. We would go Barclay’s steakhouse where I would eat a full-cut tenderloin steak, more as an act of inhalation than eating. We would go to Peppermint Patty’s for breakfast where I would have a breakfast of steak, eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, pancakes, and toast. This was when I was like 8!
I ate 9 hotdogs on camping/fishing trip to Clark Canyon Reservoir one time. I only remember this because there is photo proof of each one as I roasted it over the fire, and then a photo of after it was cooked and I was eating it. I once had a taco eating contest with my brother’s friend Jim Weber right around 8 years old. I ate 9 tacos. One morning he and I had a pancake eating contest, and I ate 9 full-size pancakes. My oldest brother and I would have cereal-eating contests. I could finish a box of Cap ‘n’ Crunch faster than he could, and he was 13 years older than me. The roof of my mouth would be scratched and abraded and fucked up all day. Oh, those were the days – the lazy days of summer, stuffing my face.
I got up this morning and weighed 261 pounds. This made me happy, I’ve lost two more pounds. Then I went and made my self a bowl of oatmeal that I could fit in a small coffee cup. My idea of an eating contest has turned 180 degrees around.
June 4th, 2020: The eating disorder follows me all year, and just changes face depending on the season, which brings with it changes in amount of sunlight, changes in temperature, and changes in what falls from the clouds as precipitation. I remember days when I didn’t have to wonder if I was eating too much. I just remember eating until I was stuffed. My only worry was whether mom was gonna make something I liked or something I just had to tolerate. Mom was a good cook – but there were some things I especially liked, things like tacos, Swedish pancakes, chicken pot pie.
We didn’t have ready-made snacks and treats too often in the house, they just didn’t last that long. Sometimes I wonder if not having something makes you want it so much more that when you do get too have it, you just founder on it. I won’t even ever take a sip of beer because I know, without doubt, that I couldn’t handle the moderation. This is such a tricky concept, and honestly, I haven’t figured it out all the way, though I think about it a lot.
I’ve seen kids who never get any candy at home go ape-shit on it when they get it at as a treat at school. Then there are kids who could take it or leave it because it’s available any time they want at home. What’s the deal? You only want something when you can’t have it?
The complexity of the manifestation here isn’t limited to humans. My German-Shepherd dog Dallas, before we brought home his sister GSD Chenga, could be left a bowl of dry food that he would eat throughout the day. Chenga’s a pig dog, though, and will eat her whole bowl and once and then go eat his, too. Now Dallas has to be a pig too, because if he doesn’t slam his, she will. I don’t know if it’s exactly the same as with humans, but it makes me think.
I’m thinking and thinking on this one, and therefore, will write more later because the act of writing helps me straighten my thoughts.
