I am weird about food.
It’s kind of laziness but… extreme. I hate cooking and food preparation. To the extent I will cry and have a panic attack about it. I would rather go to sleep hungry than cook or prepare anything – and I have done, many times. I have spent days not eating because it’s easier than facing the kitchen.
It probably started at home, when I was young – my mum is a very good cook and she made all our meals for us growing up. Sometimes, I would try to make something – but whenever I did, she’d come into the kitchen and tell me that she’d have done something differently, or I should have done this, or I should do that. She was only trying to help, with her many years of experience, but I took it as criticism and I felt like I wasn’t able to experiment or get things wrong. My dad, who never cooks, is very critical about food and will always comment if something is overcooked or not right. He’s not the sort to appreciate the effort, only comment on the results. I could only cook if I knew I was going to do it perfectly and, well, I didn’t know how. I know that’s a pathetic reason to get stressed about food, but that’s how it was.
Then I started uni. I lived in halls, and we had a very, very tiny shared kitchen between 8 people. I didn’t want to be ‘caught’ cooking there, because it would be spatially awkward, and also I was struggling a lot with social anxiety at the time. So I would buy a pack of biscuits, or a bag of crisps or chocolate, and eat it by myself in my room. I didn’t eat anything that had to be prepped in the kitchen or that had to be stored in the fridge. Literally, for about 2 months, I ate a £1 bag of chocolate for my daily food. It was cheap and ‘safe’ (away from the kitchen) and the sugar gave me a sugar hit every day. Occasionally I did eat fruit, too, but that was more expensive than the chocolate. I did get constipated from this though. We had a very tiny bathroom that I also couldn’t go in (I had toilet anxiety too and couldn’t bear the thought of anyone ‘hearing’ me or waiting for me to finish), so I used to go to the public bathrooms that were nearby.
It was not a very good time for me.
In second and third year uni, I shared a house with friends. The kitchen in second year was tiny, so I also avoided cooking there. In third year it was much bigger, but two of my housemates LOVED cooking and would spend hours cooking magnificent meals. I, with no cooking experience whatsoever, could barely cobble together a very simple pasta dish. I didn’t want them to judge me, so I would cook early or late, trying to avoid when they were in the kitchen.
The only time that I really had time to myself to experiment in the kitchen was when I lived with my (now ex-)boyfriend in London. He was as useless at cooking as I was, so everything we cooked was new for us and we learned together. Our expectations were low and we enjoyed the cooking process.
When we split up, I had to move to another flat with a tiny, shared kitchen. My housemate didn’t understand my need for space, so sometimes when I was cooking something, she would squeeze into the kitchen around me and start making her own dinner. It made me feel really stressed and claustrophobic. I pretty soon gave up making anything, except when she wasn’t there.
I got a new boyfriend and he loves cooking. When he came over to my flat, I expected him to cook – or else we’d eat nothing. I wasn’t prepared to go into the kitchen and do anything. On days he didn’t come around, I’d eat a packet of crisps for dinner.
Fast forward to now. I live with that boyfriend. I feel like everything he cooks is amazing, so I don’t want to cook for him, because I know what I do will be shit. I spend a lot of time at home on my own, and I won’t even make myself a sandwich. I just eat chocolate bars and crisps. Sometimes a whole cake. I used to be able to at least put pizza in the oven, or cook pasta, but I won’t even do that now. Being in the kitchen is just something that highlights my failure and ridiculousness. I want to go to cooking lessons but my social anxiety is too much for me to attend them. Plus I don’t have any money to pay for them.
So, with all that in mind, I’m pretty pleased with myself today. My boyfriend has gone out, so I went to the shop to get ingredients for a risotto… and I made it! I don’t know why, I guess I just had a lot of time to kill today and wanted to really push myself.
Yeah, it’s not a great risotto. But still. It’s food, that I cooked, that I’m now eating (it’s edible, at least).
My Honest Recovery 