Chayma Charifi

Content warning: This column contains depictions of an eating disorder that may be upsetting for some readers. 

My favorite breakfast item, believe it or not, isn’t sourdough bread with an avocado base or a sunny side up egg with a feta cheese crumble. It is Chick-fil-A’s Spicy Chicken Biscuit. Before her, though, was the Original Chicken Biscuit—AKA, Ms. Original, my first love.

I met her in the morning. I was sitting behind a grimey desk, booger stains on the corner dry enough to make me question whether or not they were from a culprit from last afternoon’s class or if they were mine from 15 minutes ago. Yum.

Not as yum as Ms. Original, though.

I’m not a morning person. Coffee wasn’t enough to resolve my pre-teen violent chronic exhaustion and bitterness. But all of my pre-teen angst dissipated when she—Ms. Original, not one of the girls from school—called my name. It was in the sound of a sizzle. Maybe I was the only one who heard it, because I was the only one who turned my head before she came in. She rolled over in a red insulated bag, at the hands of pretty girls who I didn’t understand and was intimidated by.

What they say about love at first sight is true. Ms. Original activated all of my senses, though, so it was more like love at first sight of her tender breast, sound of her sizzle, touch of her buttermilk biscuit and smell of her savory protein.

I had nothing to my name other than a wad of wet cash from my snow cone job at Snowden Grove park and the old coins I stole from the back of my parents’ bedside drawer, but when the girls asked my classmates, “Do any of y’all want a chicken biscuit?” I sacrificed four dollars like they weren’t my last. I had to have her, my Ms. Original.

At the time, a $4 chicken biscuit was blind robbery. Call me a Stockholm victim, because I was willing to pay any price. I stayed loyal. Every morning, I found a way to rescue her from the girls’ clutches. And when the girls didn’t show up, I prayed for the opportunity to consume her the next day.

Seeing those girls became the best part of my day, because it was one step closer to being with Ms. Original. And eventually, even in Ms. Original’s absence, I found myself turning my head in anticipation of the girls’ “good morning, y’all” instead of Ms. Original’s sizzle and smell of her savory breast.

When Ms. Original and I met is around the time I began developing an eating disorder.

What started as unbalanced eating turned stress-induced binging became a cycle of forcing myself to ignore Ms. Original’s sizzle in pursuit of the thinness that I thought would satiate me more than her deliciousness. She was no longer the reason for my excitement in the initially dreary mornings; she became the reason for all that was wrong for me. Her savory breast became too much oil that would give me high cholesterol. Her flakey buttermilk biscuit was one more carb to abstain from for a more favorable number on the scale. I no longer had a go-to favorite breakfast item. I didn’t allow myself to. No one could replace her, so when I left her, I had no one—in food or in  people.

I tried to replace her with apple slices and boiled eggs or peanut butter on a single measly slice of uber-thin, whole wheat bread—but it wasn’t the same. Eventually, when the sun set on days marked by starvation, the wolves of my nighttime binges howled, beckoning the Ms. Originals I hid in my drawers to find me.

I romanced her in secret, in the corners of my bedroom, followed by coldly throwing her wrapper under my mattress in a fit of rage.

The initial almost Pavlov’s dogs-esque joy I’d experienced at seeing her deliverers turned into the closest thing I’d experienced to hate. It had nothing to do with them, but where they initially triggered joy, they now triggered shame and its projection. They, like Ms. Original, were victims of my projection, projecting the shame I felt about my body onto harmless foods and innocent food deliverers.

I’m working on finding balance, of not seeing foods as good or bad, people as good or bad. Foods and people are not good or bad, they just are what they are—with one’s perceived pros being another’s perceived cons.

One is not bad because they are too sweet for you or too sour, too much or too little. They are just not your preference.

I felt a lot of shame about disliking things, foods and people. I wanted to eat the “healthy” things, befriend or date “good” people, be “good” instead of “bad.”

In my pursuit of seeing the world in a healthier way, I find myself back in middle school, youthfully rediscovering what I like and dislike. This time, I’ll make an effort to invite all that I love without hesitation. Life is too short to miss out on the Ms. Originals of the world and their savory buttermilk and sizzle.