I never suspected my cooking class would trigger my bulimia.
I guess maybe I should have, but it was never at the forefront of my mind when I was signing up for classes in the January of this past year. Currently, I am using that class as a GPA booster because I have an A everybody gets an A. But life still stares me in the face and says "*******" everyday my teacher who is crazy brings up food that sparks a memory. When we learned how to read food labels, I remembered how my parents drilled them into my six year-old brain. If sugar was listed in the first four ingredients, we could not eat the item. When we made Big Macs yes, we actually made them in class I always thought about how my sister and I were never allowed to eat McDonalds unless it was on my mom's schedule, and even then we were forced to get the smallest thing on the menu with the least amount of calories. Should we have objected to any of these strict dietary rules, we would be ridiculed on the spot. My dad made it a point to embarrass us and point out our food flaws in restaurants or, what I found to be even more humiliating, in front of my grandparents. I guess he thought shaming us out of our already established eating habits would work. News flash: it didn't.  It won't.  All it did was force me into a corner in which an eating disorder was the only option I saw fit. Once he found out? He got angry but did nothing to stop it. And I hadn't thought about my childhood in a good deal of time until this cooking class reminded me of it. Trying to enjoy any food at all now and have eating be a pleasant experience is difficult, but you can be **** sure I'll keep trying, regardless of my father's tirades.