As a child in the early sixties I was forced to eat everything on my plate, like it or not. Any undesirable meals would be fed to the dog or stuffed in my mouth or pockets before the “May I be excused to use the bathroom,” spit and flush. Discovering an allergy to garlic mid-twenties was enlightening but would have been better sooner. At fourteen I was hospitalized because I had chronic stomach issues and the doctors didn’t know why. I was later put on lithium because they thought it was from nerves. My mother was Italian and used several bulbs of fresh garlic a week. It all made sense after eating that Cesar Salad out to dinner in Seacacus, New Jersey with Peter’s boss and his wife. I was sick doubled-over in pain for hours. It was then I started to realize garlic and I did not get along. Allergy was not considered. My father was allergic to onions and my mother never acknowledged it as an allergy. “It was in his mind,” she used to say. So I avoided fresh garlic and carried Tums with me like a person allergic to bees carried an Epi-pen, as downing a few Tums and chugging lots of water helped relieve the pain. Eating for me has been a lifetime focus in one way or another, sometimes good spending energy on eating healthy. It wasn’t always real in that I didn’t necessarily practice what preached. Currently it’s a struggle that I am aware of and work at every day.
It’s hard to understand a person that has been in distress most of their life. I am pretty sure that no one knew I had an eating problem. I did a good job of hiding it. After all, I am a pretty good cook. As a matter of fact, I was good at hiding a lot of things. It started as a young child. I was what my mother called a follower and went along with the flow of life. When my oldest brother sexually abused me and told me not to say anything to anyone about it, I didn’t. I understood that private things were kept hidden and not discussed. For a period of time I didn’t speak to anyone at all. Time moved on and I’ve been told time heals. I went through the motions of daily life and school. I pretended to fit in and made efforts to make friends and be social. It was not easy.