Hey Google, Define Sweetness
When I was a child, my mother kept a box of Starburst candies on the medicine cabinet’s top shelf next to a bottle of Tums. My sister and I were not allowed to steal the candies. But on several occasions, when no one was looking, I would grab the step stool, quietly leap onto the countertop, and snatch a handful of the fruity-flavored squares.
I hid the wrappers under couch cushions and stuffed them beneath wads of toilet paper in the bathroom trashcans. I made a secret out of my insatiable desire for sugar, and this skill of sneaking away sweets came in handy in a way I’d never imagined.
I was bullied quite regularly in elementary school. My classmates, jealous of my teacher’s pet and honor student status, would trip me in the halls, steal my books, tug at my clothes, or make fun of the Indian food my mom would pack in my lunch box. Some kids were worse than others, and while a single insult felt like stepping barefoot on a dead bee, dealing with the swarm of ridicule day in and day out was equivalent to landing face-first on a mound of fire ants.
I kept stealing sweets, but eventually, I stopped eating them. On the playground pavement, chalk-lined with hopscotch games and tally marks, I traded my bullies Starbursts for a safe day at school. This was one of the first times that I realized what food could buy me. I continued to shrug off warnings from my mother about diabetes and cavities because she never stopped bringing home the sweets that I needed for school.
My relationship with sugar only got more painful when I developed an eating disorder. It was the day I became hospitalized for my Bulimia and saw the look of hurt on my mother’s face that it occurred to me that her love language was through buying and making food for me. I never took the time to fully realize how my compulsive and dysfunctional rejection and manipulation of food would crack open her heart like an Oreo cookie breaking into halves.
But this idea of using food to buy unconditional love and the sweet feeling of safety is something that I inherited from my parents. I love my mother and father, but my bond with them is sprinkled with resentment, grief, and generational trauma. Our fights, silent treatments, and pinprick secrets would be followed with an “I’m sorry” ice cream pint or a “Hey, let me buy you dinner at your favorite burger place.”
Food was how we communicated.
Food was where we served our love on the table—the sweet and savory pleas for reassurance and security.
“Do you hate me?” cried the frosted cupcakes.
“Are we okay?” asked the bag of potato chips.
When all else failed, food was the only path lit up for us to make our way back to each other.
My journey and relationship with food, specifically sweets, have been complex and convoluted. Due to this, I tend to approach my recovery by pushing a plate full of inertia and shame towards it. I don’t want to take help from a nutritionist. I don't want to follow a meal plan. I don’t care about staying on top of my blood work appointments. In the moments when I am weighed down by apathy, I try to remember the child standing on the school playground pavement with Starburst treats melting in their sweaty palms.
Now, decades later, the trail that those desperate exchanges laid out led me from the elementary school playground to a psychiatrist’s office, where I was diagnosed with prediabetes. This immediately woke me up and urgently drew back the curtain on my relationship with food and my family history in a way the hospitalization surprisingly didn’t. I remember pulling out my phone right after the appointment and frantically typing questions on my touchscreen keyboard, asking Google if I was going to be okay.
Today, I am walking along a yellow brick road. In the distance, I can see intimating hurdles such as relearning the definition of sweetness, changing my idea of self-compassion, and knowing that there is only so much that Starburst treats can buy.
Just like my parents did their best for me, I am trying to do the best for myself, even if there is no guarantee that it will be enough.
