Who Eats Pasta with a Spoon?

“You have got to be kidding me.”

            “Every last bit of it.”

            She stared down at the thick, cheese-stuffed noodles, the dripping cream sauce, the long strips of vegetables, and the fat chicken chunks poking throughout. Her stomach churned at sight of the overflowing mound on her plate.

            “This is more than I can eat in a day.”

            “I’m eating just as much.”

            “You’re twice as big as me.”

            It wasn’t a pile of salmon, egg whites, or fruit. That she could manage. The vegetables were dosed in butter and salt. It wasn’t even healthy food.

            He had had enough of her only scooping herself two spoonfuls every meal, enough of her burning more calories than she ate, enough of her ribcage getting more prominent by the day.

            After conquering a fourth of the plate, her stomach was already feeling more than satisfied. Satisfied was not exactly the right word when she could feel its contents spinning. Occupied, maybe. Maybe worse.

            She tried to keep going, but her fork fell right back down. “I just don’t see the point of wasted calories.”

            “Nothing is wasted calories if it will bulk you up!”

She really wasn’t a picky eater. She had just seen food in a different way from most people. And it wasn’t as if she was a total health freak. She would never consider chocolate or sourdough bread as wasted calories. Not when they were so delightful. But food had to be better than average for her to eat with no second thoughts and limitations because every time she took a bite, it was a risk.

He put another scoop on her plate. “If you stop again, I am just going to keep scooping.”

She considered punching him in the face. More imagined than considered. He thought this was helping her. He thought she needed it. She loved him for that, even though it was ridiculous. It was really making everything worse.

            She didn’t understand how pleasant it was to lean back with a full belly after dinner, to rummage through his mom’s baked goods and try a little bit of everything, to sit at the dinner table for hours with his family and chatting all the while with his mouth half full.

            He didn’t understand how much she wished she could pick and taste any yummy-looking thing in her wake, grab another spoonful of his mom’s mashed potatoes, lounge around in full-stomached ecstasy after a long coursey meal.

            He also didn’t understand the burning through her throat, the headaches after big meals, the acid seeping up her esophagus, and the horrible gagging of dumping your insides out.

            What, then, was the point of putting anything in?