Constant Craving Redux

 I had decided I would wait until I could get to Ottolenghi for my cake. And in the meantime, when I’m in Covent Garden this week, I’d try Prinsesstarta from the Swedish bakery my (Swedish) friend recommends.

And yet the need is still there: for cream, for cake, for frosting, for too-fullness, for… I don’t know. Maybe the certainty that comes with a binge? That shrinking of the world, that excuse not to do anything much but get through the day, that acceptance of crappy things because I feel that is all I deserve, or because I’m too defeated to ask for more?

Life feels scary and filled with uncertainty at the moment. Bingeing is – to paraphrase the director of the treatment center I went to – “shit but it’s warm.”

I left dinner tonight with a friend where I couldn’t eat almost anything on the menu – something that’s never happened to me before, but I was allergic to one ingredient that happened to be in everything, including sauces. But I had a margherita pizza (their normal pizzas have my allergen – bell pepper – in the sauce) and a piece of my friend’s halloumi cheese (which was in the dish I originally wanted but that they wouldn’t make without peppers.) And I was thinking about dessert, which she didn’t want, and we aren’t good enough friends that I felt comfortable enough to get anyway.

I could feel myself detaching slightly from the conversation, slightly impatient, slightly thinking about where I could go for something afterward. I kept bringing myself back around. (For the record, I had gotten some fairly destabilizing news just before dinner; in fact had been a couple of minutes late because I was on the phone.) I could tell I wasn’t desperate – something that’s never happened before – just kind of seeking.

We said goodbye at the Tube, which normally I wouldn’t be taking three stops, but it was too cold and icy to walk the half hour home. Which maybe was lucky. I watched her recede down Parsons Green Lane and turned back to the Coop. I saw Dunkin Donuts, thought about the aching sweetness of a jam doughnut, and then remembered that the last time I’d had Dunkin Donuts I’d decided it was just too sweet. I wandered the aisles and there wasn’t anything that fitted the brief of what I wanted and – here’s the kicker – I just did not want to binge. I didn’t want to feel the way I would feel; didn’t want to wake up tomorrow and have to try to recover.

I bought myself a Cadbury Crème Egg – something I have eyed up several times but haven’t had yet this year – and came home and had my evening snack anyway. Prinsesstarta tomorrow. Ottolenghi… as soon as it stops snowing.