Food

The bell rings and all the students head towards the exit. Me, Alison and Dylan make our way through the crowd and we get out. We walk home and in the meantime we talk about our afternoon programs and especially for the weekend.

The nice thing about my friends is that despite being together they never put me aside and they don't give each other much effusions in front of me. They have their time to be alone but they also find the time to be with me and that is why they are the best.

"I don't want to study philosophy," Dylan complains, snorting.

"You have to do it. I'm sorry dude" I make fun of it, even if I understand it: philosophy is beautiful but it is heavy and, sometimes, boring. Dylan glares at me and punches me in the arm and I pretend I'm hurt.

"Hey! No violence with me around," Alison says, slapping him on the back of the head and laughing. We keep joking until we come to a crossroads. They go to the right while I continue straight after saying goodbye.

As soon as I get home, I open the door and immediately feel a good smell coming from the kitchen. I walk in and I see my mother taking a baking pan of lasagna out of the oven and my mouth is watering as soon as I see it. I greet her from the door because I don't want her to get burned and immediately I run to my room where I throw the backpack on the bed. I go to the bathroom and I wash my hands and then I go down the stairs and go to the kitchen. I hear the door of the house open and my brother George enters in the kitchen, throwing the backpack anywhere. Mom and I look at him badly and he rolls his eyes.

"After I take him to the room, now I'm hungry" he justifies.

I hate when people mess up, especially when they don't put it back. Do you know that feeling when you work so hard to keep the house in order but then, it comes that person who doesn't care and messes up? Here it is, that's what my brothers do every time and I hate them when they do that. I'm not a freak of order, but I like to see everything in its place. However, the thing that irritates me the most, is my father who never gets angry with either of them, while if my sister accidentally leaves something out of place, he freaks out, as if he were ordered. My father is the classic incoherent parent who tells you what you shouldn't do, but that thing it's what he does. For example, smoking: he smokes and drinks but he tells us not to.

George washes his hands in the sink then he sits down next to me. Mom does the dishes and then she sits down with us and asks us how school went, what we did ... And we obviously answer with the usual "nothing". Dad is at work, he is a lawyer and he is more in the office than at home and, even if it is bad to say, I prefer it to be like this. I prefer not to see it sometimes, because I feel free and not judged.

I have a special relationship with the food. Since I was a child I ate a lot and I liked everything, but then, suddenly, I started to get a lot of doubts about my body, despite I was thin. I started not to eat so much, I avoided pasta, bread, sweets and all carbohydrates. I invented excuses, or I didn't eat for a whole day. I thought about the day I shouldn't eat and all the excuses to say. I often felt guilty if I ate too much, I counted calories, and did a lot of workout. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but it was stronger than me and I couldn't get out of it. At every mistake I punished myself with fasting and sport and it shouldn't be like that. Dylan and Alison told me I had to eat more, in fact I was always tired and in a bad mood: I treated everyone badly, even my younger cousins ​​whom I adored and adore so much. I was weighing myself all the time and, despite knowing that I was underweight, I kept doing this. It all started by mistake: once I skipped lunch and I made the huge mistake of weighing myself. Seeing that the weight on the scale went down, more and more, I continued for a while telling myself that once I reached a certain weight I would start again eating normally, without exaggerating. It wasn't like that. All the happiness and light-heartedness with which I ate and enjoyed food were gone and in its place there were feelings of guilt. After some time, however, I regained weight, thanks to my friends and my family who insisted on letting me eat, even though I hadn't said anything to them. I would be a liar saying that I have completely moved on, I would be a liar saying that I always eat now, I would be it if I said that I don't feel guilty sometimes. I have always thought that foodborne illnesses were bad and that I would never fall into it but I don't know why I did it.

I never induced myself vomiting, it always sucked to me so I used the fasting technique. Alison told me I was a fool, that I had to eat and once she said to me "a part of me hopes that once you feel bad and that you get scared, so you will start eating". I didn't take it, on the contrary, she was right and I knew it very well, but I didn't listen to her or my body. I always had a fast metabolism, I ate a lot but I didn't get fat, I was fine. But then, I don't even know why, I found myself in that vicious circle of "no carbohydrates, no sugars and less than a thousand calories a day". I still miss that light-heartedness, but it's gone now and I don't know if it will come back one day. A part of me, perhaps, hoped to have a flat belly like the models, but I knew it was not possible and now, unfortunately, there is a part of me that makes me fall back into that circle. So it's not entirely true that I moved on as I still sometimes feel guilty and I don't eat.

Returning to the lasagne that I love so much and to my brother who is eating a third slice, I don't even want to finish my first slice but I have to say they are very good.

"Dad's not coming home tonight because he has to work on a really big deal, so I was thinking about getting pizza for dinner, what do you think?"

And here's my awesome guilt coming back ...

"Okay," George says while he continues to eat. And part of me would really like to have that relationship with food that he has right now.