The Cookie Monster  − 9 May, 2008

Another blog about food...it's always on my mind.

My mom would buy cookies when I was little but not very often because it wasn't good for us. I thought it was way good and would devore an entire row of Oreos or Chips Ahoy in one setting. I never could get enough.

When I started babysitting and had a bit more money, I would buy myself the cookies I coveted. I would buy them at the depanneur and they would cost me a lot more than if I bought them at the grocery store. It was a fix I needed and the word "fix" is quite right. I felt better when I ate, it would fix me. Then I would feel like I was a pig. It wouldn't be a row of cookies I would eat but two or three or the whole box.

I would hide the food in my room in a drawer. I don't know why I was so ashamed of the stuff I bought but I usually hid it. And food was what I was most ashamed about. It wasn't just cookies, it was chocolate bars, chips, whatever.

Weird thing is I wasn't big. I was slim. I did a lot of biking and walking. I was anxious, a lot. I hated my family, hated my sister, was not at ease with my friends. I didn't like school except for the classes where I was with a guy I had a crush on.

Then I moved out and then eventually, I moved in with my boyfriend. I would bake the cookies. It made me feel like I was in the zone. I don't know how I did it but I would bake multiple batches of cookies and I wouldn't lose one. Cookies are good for a couple of days when you keep them in a box, a couple of months in the freezer. I gave them away, ate a lot and my boyfriend too. Baking helped me not to think.

I was bigger then and my mom would call me Cookie Monster, a character I always liked. I was fascinated by the huge blue monster devouring cookies like his life depended on it.

I became sick, stopped baking and eating, lost a huge amount of weight. It took years before I started baking cookies, breads, cakes again. By then I was single and I would lose a certain amount of it because I wouldn't freeze it or I would forget I had baked something.

I know now that I was binge eating. Now I eat a lot but different things all through the day and I think it's out of boredom, to calm my anxiety or dull my emotions. So I bake cookies when I feel like I want a fix. Sometimes having to bake it makes me change my mind.

I bring only two cookies at work and more veggies or fruits so I get the right portions of fruits and vegetables.

I try to give away what I bake so I won't have it all just there ready to be eaten by me, the Cookie Monster.