Food tastes like failure.
I don’t savour beautiful textures and flavours. I never mindfully and sensuously nibble delicacies, inhaling aromas and luxuriating in the tantalising sensations on my tastebuds. When I eat, I scoff food down like a starving woman fighting a horde of ravenous dogs, scratching around for the last morsel on a carcass. Washed down with guilt and loathing and fear, and an overwhelming sense of failure – I’ve done it again. I’ve eaten food I didn’t want, in a manner I didn’t like. I’ve failed myself. Food tastes like failure. Day in and day out – I eat failure or I don’t eat at all.
And that failure is an emotion so powerful it’s almost tangible – I could reach out and touch it. Food tastes like failure and failure is a feeling.
But that’s a lie.