Junk on Junk on Junk

Let me run you down on what I eat every day at Brooklyn College. I guarantee it, you can catch me on campus with this almost without fail, practically set your watch to it. I’ll head down to the cafeteria, and first thing I’ll do is likely grab a soda. It’s usually a pick between ginger ale, root beer, and orange soda, more often the former two. The ginger ale because it usually helps, even marginally, to calm my stomach, which I need almost every day, again, without fail. The problem with them is that you can’t often find a good read on the dates for the ginger ale, and that’s a bit of a problem because our school’s cafe has a bit of a history of unsanitary conditions, and leaving food and drink past its expiration. Hence the root beer, it almost always has a completely legible date. If I’m feeling lucky I’ll grab a croissant from down there as well, as they’re really the only prepackaged thing that has a reliable record of not being spoiled or already opened (yes, I have experienced both with other stuff, the cookies and muffins and such, it’s not pretty). All this hinges on if I’m not too anxious that day. If I am, my paranoia about what they do down there might drive me to just leave campus and go to the Starbucks a block away, get a tea or a hot chocolate, and a light snack. Once I was so worried about what they might do at the Starbucks that I walked all the way to the Dunkin Donuts a few blocks out of the way just because I know they are careful about how they make food there.

Hell, that’s just if we’re talking about my lunch, which again, during the past week I repeated my nervously laid down routine without fail. Breakfast is a possibility, not a guarantee. It depends on, again, my stomach, which is usually guided by my mood, my anxiety. If I’m lucky I won’t feel like my stomach wants to gnaw itself out of me like a chestburster, and I’ll have a decent breakfast. That has varied meanings, though. That could mean undereating, such as just taking a snack sized Milky Way for the road. It might mean overeating, which is usually taking, eggs, whatever deli meat might be in the fridge, mayo, butter, toasted bread of some kind, and enough assorted trimmings, from mushrooms, to cole slaw, to turn what was going to be just a simple, toasted sandwich into an abomination. Seriously, I once had roast beef, Tofurky, vegan cheese, regular cheese, cole slaw, vegan mayo, mushrooms, peppers, Mac and Cheese, and some meat loaf, fried inside of a tortilla in butter. It was a high point in my creativity and a low point in my feelings about my ability to control myself, especially since I have a particular problem with cholesterol, thanks ever so much genetics! And don’t get me started on my speed! I’ve scarfed down monstrosities like that in only a few bites. It’s guaranteed heartburn: if the food doesn’t kill me, my urge to overeat will.

Dinner is usually the same as breakfast: no guarantee I’ll have it, every guarantee that if I do I’ll stuff myself with a plethora of things that will likely kill me slower than the perilous predicament of the poor person placed in “The Pit and the Pendulum.” I cannot tell you why that last sentence had so much alliteration, except perhaps because I’m a glutton for pretentious writing conventions as well. Maybe because I’m anxious still and I’m trying to intersperse through what I’m pretty sure is crappy writing just a little bit of levity so as to maybe distract you from what hot, crispy garbage this is.

What I’m trying to drive at is, well, I want you guys to learn from me. I’m stuck in what is, quite honestly, what I know to be a horrible viscious cycle. I get anxious or depressed and so I eat poorly, which only helps to reinforce how I feel, which only helps to perpetuate my behavior. I can say I have some excuses, most of them monetary in nature, some having to do with having to be very paranoid about what I eat, but I also know a lot of it is about what’s already in me. I have some stuff I have to work out, but I’m taking out a lot of the issues on myself and my arteries. It’s unhealthy, it’s tiring, and also occasionally delicious in ways that will make you hate yourself, both immediately and long after. Seriously, I say this after having had only two meals today, both of them were hot dogs with beans on them, one on which I put Thousand Island dressing. It tasted amazing and I only have two regrets: that I didn’t put a fried egg on them, and that I still have the urge to do so, despite every sense of self preservation telling me not to.

Seriously guys, don’t stress eat, or stress starve. It’s not fun in the long run, it just adds more to the anxiety. Take good care of yourselves, because there’s always good reason to, whether it be for something or someone. Life is a rich banquet, savor the courses. Don’t skip it or put it all down the hatch in one gulp. You’ll thank yourself later for having taken the time to to chew and actually get a good taste. You might find yourself liking the food more than just the feeling of filling some void inside.

Ain’t I just a ball of sunshine, folks? Ending on such a happy note, someone call the “Good Morning America” cast and tell them to drink drain cleaner! I’m the new splatterfest of rainbows and kitten hugs this world is getting every morning. Just as soon as I have my morning Milky Way.

– Mike R.