Peanut Butter and Flies

I remember when I was in elementary school and a boy at my school convinced me that there were flies in the peanut butter of my sandwich that I was about to eat. He worked at it for days, got other kids to tell me the same thing, and sitting in that elementary school cafeteria I became scared to eat that peanut butter. Not because I was scared of the energy content or what would happen to my body after I ate it, but because I was scared that there were flies.

In the mornings, before going to school, I would check that I could not see fly legs in my peanut butter. I never found any. I convinced myself that there was some invisible fly piece that I couldn’t see but all of a sudden I knew about it. Once I knew it existed I was unable to get that thought out of my brain.

This was the first time that I was scared of some invisible thing inside of my food, but it wouldn’t be the last. Years later I would become scared of the calories in my food. It would be a similar story, someone would tell me that the energy content in that same peanut butter was a problem. They would take time to convince me, bring other people in to tell me the same thing, but this time I didn’t have an elementary school cafeteria to mark this confusion and terror of some unknown hiding in my food. In the mornings I would no longer check for fly legs but I would check for calorie content. Only this time, I found it. It was laid out in front of me, often in big bold letters on the back of the container, giving me some sort of warning. Once I knew about this new terror hiding in my sandwich I was unable to get that thought out of my brain.

Unlike the invisible flies in my sandwich this new terror felt tangible. Real. Consequential. Everyone seemed to know about the danger that was associated with the number on the side of the package that contained my peanut butter. They seemed to be just as concerned about it as I was. This time the terror that hid in my food wasn’t just in the peanut butter, it was everywhere. I couldn’t escape it, these numbers were on the TV, in the gym, at every meal. They accompanied every cup of coffee I drank and every dinner with friends. They took over my life.

More specifically, the anxiety that they would ruin my life is what took over my life. Suddenly I found myself worried about how many I could have in a day and my google searches consisted of questions like “how many calories are to many?” “Is this number okay?” “What happens if you have more than xxxx number in a day?” My notebooks, where I should have been learning and expanding my knowledge were filled with lists of foods and the number of invisible terrors that existed within them. Moving my body, where I was once able to find peace and escape from life, became its own form of torture. The joy I had found at one point was overtaken with numbers floating around in my head.

The joy was gone. The flies in the peanut butter in the elementary school cafeteria turned into calories in a burger on a first date. Terrifying.

This terror weighed over me for years, the weight of some number measuring some unseeable substance in my food ruled my life.

One day, when I was still in elementary school, I told one of our family friends that I was worried about eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich because of the flies that I could never find but I knew existed. She told me that it was okay, that those boys were mean, that I was not in fact at risk of eating a fly leg or worse, an entire fly. It took some convincing that she was right, and I would occasionally stir up the peanut butter just to make sure she was right. She was, I still have yet to find a fly in my peanut butter.

One day, as an adult I told someone that the numbers on the packages telling my how much energy existed inside of my food ruled my life even though I could not see them. She told me that it was okay, that I was okay, that these numbers didn’t have to rule my life and that I was no longer alone in trying to get my life back. It took some convincing that she was right, I would occasionally find myself back Googling some question about some number and what the bearing should be on my life. But she was right, and I was okay, and these numbers were okay, and they didn’t need to rule over my life anymore because they were just that. Numbers. Their meaning changed with time, they no longer seemed scary or anxiety inducing, they seemed like an old friend who was waiting to see me after a big fight. A new ally in this fight to win my life back from the invisible things that hid in my food and tried to take over my life.

- Cambria