the squibix family blog

If I am honest with myself, I will say that I hate food right now. I hate that I have to choose what to eat, every day, every hour, over and over and over again. Its the choices, the choices of choices, the choice between decision-making metrics of choices... unbearable.

For example, foods are usually safe and healthy if they're vegetables. But if I'm eating only vegetables then I'm not getting enough protein and I'll be hungry again in an hour. But if I eat some egg I'll have to have some bread with it, and bread makes me nauseous and bloated. And vegetables by themselves are boring. What about cheese, could I put some cheese up on there? Have I had any milk yet today? More than one serving and I become lactose intolerant.

So okay, let's say now I've ruled out bread and cheese. There are some cold carrots and turnips in the fridge, but I'm afraid that the sound of the microwave might wake everyone up. Maybe I can wait and make it till breakfast time. But what will I eat for breakfast? I could make a shake, fruit won't make me sick all day, but I threw up a shake last time and even if the cause was unrelated now a shake just looks like throw-up to me.

Cold cereal and almond milk sound appealing. They're just a pour away. But cereal is bread, and bread is poison, and the nausea will be so much worse in the middle of the night.

Maybe I should just wait until morning. But what will I eat then? Yesterday I had a vegetable curry for breakfast. But that's all gone now, and making another one will take an hour, and I just can't get excited for early morning squash soup with a side of roasted root vegetables.

But imagine I line up a day's worth of balanced meals: shake for breakfast, avocado on toast for a snack, rice and veggies for lunch, bean tortillas for dinner that Dan puts together while I lie down somewhere quiet. Then I still have to figure out what to feed the two children, two little baby birds with gaping beaks whose tastes and schedules are mutually exclusive from mine.

What's that Harvey/Zion? What am I eating? Well, I'm eating toast and avocado right now, but you already had your toast at breakfast so if you want a snack then it's time for you to have some fruit. We have melon and grapes and — no, a banana makes it harder for you to poop, have something else first. No, not a glass of milk, that's not a solution to that problem. Do you want a whole apple? Apple slices and honey? Stop screaming for milk. I'm putting the grapes on the table, you can eat them if you want. No sweetie, this is mama's snack. Okay you can have a tiny piece. Hey, that avocado is expensive, you can't just eat the bread and spit the green part on the floor!

Human being, what are you, most bizarre of animals, that feeding yourself makes you absolutely miserable?

I could blame the pregnancy, oh how I wish I could blame the pregnancy for everything. But my hatred of food choices far predates reproduction. The latter only makes the former much more intense.

For example, I am almost incapable of waiting in line for food and then following that up with actually purchasing food. The longer the line, the more health objections I raise to everything on the menu. So that, if I have to wait longer than two minutes before ordering, I convince myself to "just get a drink," and my family has sandwiches and enjoys the rest of their afternoon, while I crankily suggest we go home because I don't feel well.

The first time I noticed that food made me sick was my sophomore year of high school. I wanted to be thinner so I didn't eat anything all morning. Then at noon when I'd voraciously consume a sandwich, and my shrunken stomach would wake up all of a sudden, enzyme cannons blasting against the surprise attack. "Intruder! Intruder!" my gastric juices screamed. "How dare you come up in this skinny bitch. We'll fucking kill you!"

What is more socially acceptable these days? Worrying about food because it'll make you fat? Or worrying about food because it'll make you sick?

If only, then and now, I was able to apply reason to my problems. After all, a well-measured approach to sudden onset eating discomfort might be: calm down. Drink something warm. Eat something different in a half hour if you're still hungry. Not: invent more rules about more foods that are evil, slowly sweeping through the category of ALL FOODS, until absolutely nothing is safe to eat except that which costs even more money or takes even more time to prepare. Make your life about a quest for that magic food, one that is an oasis or fear-free calories in a vast desert already covered in manna.

And what then is a well-measured approach when I am awakened by hunger in the middle of the night? Calm down? Drink something warm? Go back to sleep - for the love of God why can't you ever just sleep when it's time for sleeping?

Oh right, because I was hungry...