It’s starting to drive me crazy, we’re an “ingredient household,” where everything has to vegan, everything has to be gluten free, everything has to be 100% healthy, nothing can have more than 100mg of salt or sugar, if one ingredient is unhealthy, it’s a no. I barely look forward to meals because all it’s gonna be is salad, don’t get me wrong, I like salad, but it’s all she makes. She lets me make my own dinners, but all we have is weird vegan food that only tastes good drowned in salt.

My mom is heavily convinced that humans only need fruits and vegetables to survive, and believes everything else will cause cancer and make you die at the age of 25. I remember when I told her I’m sick of eating like this, and she got mad, telling me she doesn’t care, and that “she can’t wait to visit me in the hospital when I’m dying from not eating like this when I’m in my twenty’s.” I’ve offered to buy my own food and prep it, yet she still refuses saying “I’m not allowing that cancer under my roof!” The cancer is literally like a carton of eggs or a cheese stick.

I almost always feel hungry, my mom acts surprised at that. “I made such a huge salad for dinner! You’re not hungry, you’re just bored!” No, I am hungry because lettuce and tomatoes does not fill anyone up. Almost every time I’m at a grocery store with just friends, I go crazy and end up buying massive party size bags of chips, huge bags of beef jerky or cheese, occasionally pepperoni, and eat it all in one sitting. I’ve eaten it to the point to where I felt like I’d throw up, but didn’t care and kept going. If I throw up I don’t tell her because she’ll find out, if I feel sick I don’t tell her because she’ll find out.

If my mom finds out I ate something that doesn’t follow her criteria, she goes into a weird panic, a “you have to diet for two months now to counteract the egg you just ate! If we don’t, you’ll develop cancer and die at 25! Do you want that?!?”

I hate having food cravings that I cannot fulfill, I’ve been nonstop fantasizing about a ham sandwich, and it will never fucking happen with her. Another food I’ve been craving is chicken soup, yet again it’s not happening. I’m moving out for college in July, and the first things I plan to do are buying a huge bag of pepperoni and eating in one sitting, and finding places with good chicken soup. Heck, I plan on having that ham sandwich I’ve been fantasizing about for every lunch.

She refuses to believe she’s being delusional about this, claiming her weird cult guy on the internet knows what he’s talking about. Yes mom, I’m sure someone who claims his best friend is a ghost knows exactly what he’s talking about. Sometimes I would rather just starve myself to death to show her that her stupid diet does nothing, but she’d believe that I died from a piece of bacon I ate 15 years ago.