Times like these, it's difficult to remember how grown ups eat.
I read lots of books.
I am reading a book a week for school right now, and some of them are the type of fiction where the author describes the daily routines of the characters. They are grounded in reality. They wash dishes, forget to pick up the mail, eat breakfast too quickly, and find holes in their cardigans.
In the other kinds of books, nobody remembers to eat, everybody is too busy doing epic things, every word is a mysterious box that must be opened and its contents examined before moving on. There is no room for such frivolities as hair washing and toast. Each syllable has a purpose, a drive, and a subtext. Under every sentence a buried treasure waits.
I want my life to be like the second type of book, full of spectacle, art, and brilliance, but all too often it lolls along in the first type.
I do things like forget to eat until two in the afternoon, and then stuff my face ravenously with pumpkin spice hersheys kisses, which I think are revolting, and would never ordinarily eat except that there is very little in the house right now, and unless I want to cover a slab of bread in cream cheese and maple syrup.
Actually...
that sounds quite nice.
I'll be right back.
Times like these my rapacity terrifies me.
I feel as though I could eat the entire world and want seconds.
There is no pizza big enough, no ice cream container bottomless enough, no quantity of food satisfies me. I seek the binge like a drug addled boyfriend. I want to sink against something bigger and more fucked up than I am, blame it for all of my problems and then shrug off the obvious solutions.
I want to hit my stride, the peak of the binge where I'm halfway between hungry, full, and stuffed motionless, suspended between satiety and action, furiously snuffling for the next thing to devour.
It's confusing, because I use words like 'should' and 'ought to' to describe my feelings of satisfaction.
___________'should' be enough.
___________'ought to' satisfy me.
But it doesn't.
I'm not starving anymore, not ravenous, aching with hunger, but just feeling comfortable isn't good enough. Why is that? Fear? The "well I've fucked it up so far, might as well go down like a prize fighter"mentality? Is it some terrible, internalized female inadequacy that holds me hostage and pries my fingers from around the novel and presses them around the handle of the fridge instead?
I wish I had the answers.
But that's not what this blog is for. I'm not here to tell you I've got it figured out because I don't.
I know that I am sitting here, and the roster of things I could be shoveling into my face is running through my head faster than a digital menu flashing across a screen at the movies.
I could finish the bag of hershey's kisses,
finish the box of almond cookies,
finish the cream cheese with however many slices of bread it takes,
pour the maple syrup over something, anything, pretend it's dessert, pretend it's a cake, soak my fingers in sugar and milk and cram whatever it is down my throat and into my stomach and pray that it's enough to silence the rumble throughout my being that cries for more more more!
More happiness!
More sleep!
More free time!
More adventures!
More indulgences!
All of the things that I don't have time for because of work, grad school, extra work, dogs, husbands, friends, and siblings getting ready to move overseas.
For all of the reasons i say, "someday i'll give myself enough", I feel I never am full, never not hungry, always lifting the clock like a plate to see if there's a crumb of time left for me.
Always shaking the book and running my sticky fingers through the cracks in the spine to see if there's an extra word left, just one more, the right one, that finally gets the rumble to quiet.
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