The Missing Ingredient Is Consistency: Why I Eat The Same Meals Every Day

How does the butt of every fat joke, the roundest kid at recess, the portliest of the portly overcome an addiction to fast food?

The look I maintain from eating the same thing every day

I’m twelve years old, addicted, and it’s my mom’s fault.

Judge her not too harshly; she just doesn’t know any better.

It’s dinnertime, which is to say the time she pulls in from working her staggering twelve-hour day.

The garage, directly beside the living room, opens and rattles the cheap frames full of yard-sale paintings decorating our walls. The disjointed bay window, both the Calico Cat’s and mom’s favorite part of the house, tremble slightly. The cat disappears behind the couch that looks like a tarp with rainwater collecting in the middle.

I’m alone, of course; no one to watch me since dad left. And like one of Pavlov’s dogs, the moment I hear the rusty metal creaking and cracking, I bolt to the welcome.

No, “hi, mom,” no, “how was your day?,” no, “it’s so nice to see you.” Not even a smile.

My heart flutters, and my hands begin to sweat. The smell hits me and cancels my hearing. If mom is talking, I do not know. It smells like … well, it smells like…