What do I get from food?

It has occurred to me several times that so many of my happiest and most visceral memories involve food in some way. I suspect that's the reason that I don't want to forego food at all - it brings back all these happy memories for me. I wonder how it's related to the fact that I'm a hoarder - I hang on to lotions and pens that have "special" meaning to me, and then they go to waste. Whenever I go back to London I have to stop at muji and paperchase to stock up on pens, even though I have about 3000 pens with ink evaporating as we speak. In the same way, I need to go to Boots and stock up on lotion that brings back a "London smell" to me, even though I currently have 6 tubs of untouched Boots body butter. It's the same with food. I need to go to sainsbury's and get muller rice and trifles and volvic fruity and sugar-laden water, and all these tastes that I associate with London - it's like a trip isn't complete without at least five cadbury bars.

But then I make the same excuses to eat all the time. It's always a "special occasion" that justifies my excess. It's either a holiday, or getting ready for a holiday, or voting day, or arbor day, or Obama winning a primary, etc etc etc. Why do I need to have food to have a happy celebration? Where does that come from?

Sometimes I think about when I was little. It's no secret to most people who know me that I had a kind of crappy childhood - oh, I was always loved (that's the line my mom uses on me to assuage her guilt - "but you were always loved!" and I was - perhaps too much). There was a lot of fighting, and screaming, and mental health issues that went untreated for years. I remember fighting with my mom when I was very small - only about three. It's my contention that three year olds don't know how to fight and need to be taught it by, oh...an adult, perhaps?

Anyway, that aside, one of my happiest memories is eating tastykakes with my mom. Sometimes it would be after we'd fight. I remember one time when I was about 4, and she said that she wanted to stop fighting with me, and then we had a snickers bar. How could you not associate chocolate with goodness then?

The thing is, I'm not around fighting or screaming or violence any longer, and there's no reason why I have to keep eating food to remind me of happy times. I can have the London memories in my head - I don't need the fat on my waistline to remind me of Soho Square. I can celebrate Obama winning another primary without it involving brownies and ice cream. Besides which, all of that is just a distraction from the Happy Memories anyway.

Yes, food can be a big part of celebrations, but it shouldn't be the thing that happiness revolves around.