sylphsighs

[sylphsighs]

one of the things that makes it hard not to have an eating disorder (the sort i have, with the endless cycles of restricting followed by bingeing) is that the psychoanalyzers are wrong when they say that food isn't love. food is love when the older girl on your school bus saves her leftover snacks for you on the ride home every day because she knows the cafeteria gave you a single hamburger bun with peanut butter to punish you for having an overdue lunch account. food is love when your abusive parents try to make it up to you with a happy meal. food is love when your mom suddenly gets in the holiday spirit and has fresh baked chocolate chip cookies waiting for you after school one afternoon in early december. food is love when a college boy rides his bike to bring a pizza over to your apartment, balancing the box on his handlebars the whole way. food is love every valentine's day and every anniversary dinner, food is love when the father of the girl you convinced to go to residential treatment for her own eating disorder takes you out for sushi and at the end of the meal looks you dead in the eyes and says, "thank you for saving my daughter." food is love when you scream your idiot lungs out and run away from your boyfriend during the worst argument you've ever had and two days later he hands you a steaming bowl of gyeran bap, the gooey egg yolk sinking deep into the warm rice because he loves you, this tastes like love, it really really does

[sylphsighs]

i saw a best-possible-timeline version of you the other day on the train. you looked healthy and loved. slender frame, glowy skin, tidy hair, smile lines around your eyes. you were holding a baby. there were no open seats so you were squatting down on the floor of the train with the baby. even though i was a bit far away, i got up in case you wanted to sit. you didn't see, but the woman directly next to you did. she made a show of generously offering you her seat before swooping over to take my now vacant one. i didn't mind not getting credit. you and the baby still got to sit down because of something i did, so the end result was the same. and i know he wasn't really you, but the freckles and the hawkish nose were yours. it made me want to throw up from missing you. i can't ever say i'm sorry to you because it's so embarrassing. but i am, i am sorry.