No man(or woman) can truly love me before surviving at least one of my gastronomical explosions.

The following foods are not supposed to enter my mouth: red meat, dried apricots, rich foods or foods heavy in cheese, spicy food, mayonnaise, certain seafoods and fried food.

All this really means is my stomach is constantly torture-tested. Because while my stomach may be a very sensitive piece of machinery, I have a foolish love affair with food. I will eat roast beef that has been slowly cooking for hours tenderly marinating in it’s own juices until it crumbles and dissolves in your mouth. Then endure locking myself in the bathroom for three hours. I refuse to let my stomach rule my appetite. Because I crave what I can’t have. Like any normal human being, tell me I can’t have something and I want it more than my own soul.

There is only one food that causes more than immense physical discomfort – dried apricots. Something in the dried apricots makes my throat close up and my skin break out in hives. In response to that assault on my favorite food, I buy them secretly and shovel handfuls into my mouth. Living in the moment of the wonderfulness of them. Lingering on their texture and their sweetness. Shortly after, I plant myself on the toilet with some benadryl.

This is the way I have survived. Because I love food, no I adore food, but if my stomach had it’s way I would only eat salads, chicken, ground turkey and the blandest of flavors. Spicy foods are the only ones I really avoid mostly because that’s one my mouth agrees with. However when someone around me eats spicy foods I live vicariously through them.

“How does it taste?” I ask doe-eyed.

“Good.”

“What does it taste like?”

“It’s hot.”

“Yeah? That sounds yummy.”

“Do you want some?”

“No.”

And so it goes. It’s always like that. I ask about food but I love more describing foods to other people or cooking the foods myself and then not eating it. Look what I created, please eat it and describe it to me.

I’m sitting here after eating some succulent red meat that was slow smoked and laden with rich spices. It was still pink in the middle, which is a double no-no for my belly. Usually I eat two chewable Pepto Bismals before sitting to a red meat dinner or any meal outside of one I prepared myself. However, I have started to try and convince my stomach it can handle this through sheer will power and telekinesis. After dinner with my boyfriend’s family, we went swimming. There was a panicked look in my eyes and I curled up to my boyfriend and whispered lovingly in his ear:

“Take me home, now.”

He took it to mean something else until he looked in my eyes and saw my fear.

“You’re going to be sick aren’t you?” I half expected him to click his tongue like an angry mom as I nodded my head ‘yes.’

During the rush home I panicked and yelled at him. He handled it wrong and yelled back.

And this led to me bounding out of the car angry and rushed. The rest of the night was filled with various trips to the bathroom. I would emerge a little pale and upon plopping down on the couch for recovery I’d have to jump back up and give my offering at the porcelain alter.

Every major relationship has had to deal with this part of me at some point. There is not a man I’ve loved that didn’t see panic in my eyes as my nails dug deep into their arms and I screamed through clenched teeth “Hurry.”

One night, on my honeymoon in Kauai, the worst landed on my recent husband’s head. We had opted to do a boat tour of the Na Pali Coast. With it’s waterfalls cascading into the Pacific, sheer ocean cliffs and deep blue seas we were in heaven. Hawaiian mountain goats navigated the sheer rock faces. We watched the sunset over the island of Ni’ihau. Spinner dolphins at one point swam along the side of the boat with us. Fish followed and eagerly awaited stale bread as rewards. It was, to say the least, perfectly beautiful. Then they spread out some pupus a little bit of nourishment because for whatever reason salt water makes you hungry. The pupus were these almost sushi rolls with loaded cream cheese and salmon. There were alfalfa sprouts and capers and I ate a little bit of every variation.

About an hour before the tour was up, the cramps began. Locking myself in the bathroom of a ship is not the most fun I’ve ever had. But once we got off the boat after several trips to the bathroom on the boat, and a million prayers to no one in particular to take away the pain, my husband had to stop four or five more times before reaching the safe haven of where we were staying. Of course I screamed and bellowed the whole time. I was completely panic-stricken and at one point had an anxiety attack. I measured the time between the gas stations or fast food joints we passed. I tried not to let myself get out of control but I broke down. I would have been completely content to not leave the toilets’ side for several hours. Even if it was the one toilet I stopped at with the roach crawling across the floor to another dead roach. The same bathroom had a wet floor, broken doors and dead daddy long legs dancing in the slight breeze by the toilet paper. I would have stayed, just to have the comfort of the toilet. Just because it helped to ease the pain in my guts. It was horrible but my man at the time graciously took it. I called it his initiation into the marriage.

Food and I will never understand one another. It’s like a relationship where the couple always fights and they should break up but they never do. Instead, they make social situations awkward for everyone. I am madly, passionately and desperately in love with food and I send my poor stomach on appetite adventures. But my belly always comes back beaten and broken and it takes a day or two of nursing and rehabilitation to get it back on its feet. Food however takes pleasure in my pain and revels in my defeat. Food is the cold-hearted, smug bastard in the relationship and my tummy is the stupid, besotted one that takes the abuse as long as we can be together. As long as we can be together.

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