I Eat

If you open my cupboards on this sunny tuesday afternoon, you will find an abundance of long haul, safety net foods.

We are talking tins, pastas, pulses, rice, the whole nine yards.

We've got protein bars, healthy snack bars, enough fruit, nuts and seeds to feed the pigeon population of Manchester (aside from the scalding danger of £150 fine of course)

In the freezer you will find meat, fish, veggies, leftovers, the same goes for the fridge.

Laden with jars, and tubs of essentials to ensure never a meal is lost, or missed, or yearned for.

Why?

Because I'm a chubby fucker?

No.

Because since holding down a job that I love, or any job, for that matter, and having ensured an income of some kind for myself, thats reliable, no matter how big or small, the one thing that will always be wherever I am is food.

This is not some fat girls neverland, where the cupboards buldge and strain under the weight of a tesco shop gone mad.

This is a scared little girls habit.

For as long as I remember, food has been a priority. Stashing it, stealing it, hiding it, keeping it longer than it should be kept, to the point of disgust.

Buying it, storing it, eating it.

When I was first adopted into the middle class land of the Cheshirite wonder couple, I began taking food from my plate at meal times and stashing it in strange places in my bedroom. Under the bed, in my knicker drawer, under the wardrobe where there was a little alcove.

Bits of sandwiches, satsumas, all of which would crinkle and rot and stink out the place.

My mother would follow the scent of sad foods fate and find green and scary looking bits and pieces dotted around the house.

She called it my most disgusting habit. Her favourite word was "slut" and it made me giggle up to my teenage years for the fact I thought she had misunderstood its meaning, alas, she soon came to apply it in both terms of "slovenly, slut," and "slutty mc slut pants, living the lesbian dream,"

Needless to say, my strange relationship with food has been a lifetime affair.

And there is a perfectly good reason for it.

Many times I self reflect and look at my behaviours and think "why the fuck did you do that?" "why did you say that?" and I'm left mind boggled with no bloody idea other than that, "it just happened"

But where food is concerned, it's really quite clear cut.

Pre-adoption I bounced around foster homes, some good, some bad, some where food was plentiful and wonderful and some where food was a punishment and a chore.

Before foster care, was life in London town or indeed up north, where food was the last priority on the list.

My brother and I were born into a turbulent and abusive family, where alcohol and drugs took precedent over the basic needs of a child, like food, water, cleanliness, hygiene.

My child court case records cite on so many pages the lack of sanitary care applied to us as children, and as its most relevant to this piece of writing - the complete malnutrition we suffered at the hands of two people who just didn't care.

Horrors upon these pages talk of abuse, physical, sexual, and the absolute absence of safety and basic childcare necessities.

Stories of bedsores, piss stained children, dirty bodies and matted hair, scantily dressed, if at all, empty fridges and cupboards, and social worker notes that even on paper sound horrified by the conditions we were so often found in.

I write "so often" as social services for some unknown reason let us go back, time and time again, the prospective mother had turned over a new leaf and decided she fancied another crack at having children, only to read three pages on, that I, for example, had been found in the care of my sexual predator of a father, who had a knife in his hands, and had the police talk him down from suicide and violence as I sat on his knee. I delightful read. Not quite Stephen King, but equally as harrowing.

Alas, the food.

Ah, the food.

Or lack of it.

By the time I was put into foster care, my brother was hooked up to a bunch of hospital machines to get him better, such was his malnurtition and bedsores from lying in his own filth, that we spent what felt like forever as a little girl, apart.

I was alone for the first time in my life. With strangers. And my only solace, was food.

The fact that there was food, was a marvel, a novelty, I was greedy.

When we were together again, we enjoyed our best friends forever relationship, Fran and Jay against the world, we had overcome such horror together, that nothing would stand in ur way, and we would do it all, together.

Cue, excellent foster parents, truly, the dream, and food, so plentiful. More than, love.

And an understanding of Fran the secret stasher.

I had the absolute pleasure of reconnecting with my foster parents a few years ago, and having thought often of my food habits, I asked freely : "if I had stashed food the same way with you, what would you have done?"

My beautiful foster mothers response? "Put a little lunch box under your bed with things in and change it as often as needed to make sure you knew there was always something there,"

THIS my friends.

FUCKING THIS.

This is the response of a loving mother.

Not "slut"

Not "disgusting"

Not fat shaming, behaviour shaming, undermining, belittling.

My delighful mother could never grasp the roots of my strange food addiction, despite having read, seen and heard the full horrific accounts of my beginnings, my mother, my dirty pig of a father, and despite being a woman of the law, she lacked the basic empathy that would have made her a decent comrade and confidante.

We were never meant to be friends, or understand one another, because she was too preoccupied with perfect as opposed to perversion.

I sit now, at 33, writing at my kitchen table, aware, that at my weight, being obsese, as per the bmi scale, that something has gone horribly wrong.

And I know it.

That my relationship and dependence on the security and comfort of food, my one true best friend, is as devastating to my health, as my addiction to cocaine was.

At least with cocaine I was thinner!

I eat when I am happy.

I eat when I am sad.

I eat when I lack purpose.

I eat.

Because it is a huge part of who I am.

I didn't engage with my parents growing up, I was too troubled, and they were too focused on their own priorities and specificities of raising a child should be.

My brother was a clean slate, and recovered brilliantly, slotting into the perfect family ideal with issue and this remains true to this day.

He doesn't have the same toxicity for food, or anything else for that matter, becasuse he was shaped by a family that I do believe genuinely love him, for who he is, because he is theirs.

I am not.

I am many things.

Drastically successful despite hurdles.

Drastically regretful and consumed by ghosts.

Desperately apologetic for all the shit that has come to pass.

And still, entangled in the fatty wonders of the world.

I could eat and eat until I feel sick.

And I have.

Filling a literal void.

An emotional one.

I didn't know how to build relationships for a long time, so my relationship and longest lasting to date, is that of me and Mcdonalds, or Mcvities.

When I was homeless, food was paramount. A sandwich here, a tin of cold beans there, and when I was living in the depths of depravity in a brothel, the McDonalds burgers given to me by the delightful Italian pimp Steve for doing "a good job" were literally heaven.

I once lost my temper with Sarahs father, well and truly lost my temper. I was enraged.

We sat at a McDonalds drive through and he ordered a multitude of things willy nilly, ate them without pause or thought or thanks and I thought, you ungrateful prick.

I watched him eat two double cheeseburgers in mere minutes and I thought "do you know how many hand jobs I would have had to give to get two fucking cheeseburgers?"

The gratitude I would have felt to be allowed to eat.

Locked in a dodgy warehouse in North London surrounded by sleazy men and Eastern European women who would sooner kill you for your burger than praise you for a good weeks work!

And I thought, am I wrong? Is this irrational?

How do people treat food with such fickle nature?

Such disregard and lack of appreciation?

Now I am settled, I am home, I safe, I am stable, I am loved.

I cook with love, and adoration for all that I do, that I share.

My favourite time of the month is when I do the big online food shop, this is my task and honour, and mine alone, I stock the house with things I know Sarah loves, that I love, that we will cook together and I admit, yes, lately, the big online shop has been so much better for us.

Less Turnocks teacakes and much more lettuce. This is good.

Slowly but surely, I am moving away from my dependence.

I have had outrageously sad times of late, manically depressing moments, mental health has taken hold of me, stress has savaged and ravaged me, but my inclination to eat it all has faded.

I make better choices, but the relationship is still there.

Now I choose calorie deficit and less gross foods.

As opposed to lurching from one extreme diet to the next.

I used to favour the maple syrup diet, obsessed, truly.

It was brothers 18th and I knew my parents would berate me if I came home from Uni fat, and I had been living the ladette life of lesbianism, ciders, snakebites and pints a plenty.

So two weeks before returning home, knowing there was a size 14 Karen Millen dress that required my attention, I hit the maple syrup diet, dropped two dress sizes, wore the fuck out of the little black number, wowed everyone and then was back in Wales in boxers, baggy jeans and pizza boxes before you could say boo to a goose.

The yo-yo of "what will mummy and daddy think"

And we all know how wonderful tactile my father is when it comes to fat Fran. If the man can't muster a compliment on my wedding day, I'm pretty sure dropped to a size 10 won't make any difference.

Now is the time.

Now is the only time.

I am getting older.

And if I have hopes of a long, happy, healthy marraige and life with my wife and our future plans, I am going to have to breakup with my one true love, not Sarah of course, food!

I'm sorry McDonalds, and KFC, your profit margins are about to dip, because for the sake of my family and my own happiness, it's time we took a break.

Truly,

It's not you, it's me.