Nicholas Good

Susan Bleyle

English 1101

3 September 2026

Narrative essay (Growing up Not Understanding Food)

Throughout my life I have always had an issue with food. The taste was horrible, and the feeling of slime in my mouth, goo that felt so out of place I couldn't stomach it even if it tasted fine, I could barely taste it. My stomach would also hurt from just eating, any amount of food had the random chance of making me unable to continue eating, I had no explanation and still don't to this day why this happens. The primary problem growing up with this is my taste buds. Foods with any type of bitterness to them taste horrible to me. Makes me taste like a wave of bitter disgust, even if I try to drink coffee filled to the brim with sugar and milk the after taste when the actual coffee grounds hit my mouth and throat like a burst of white bitterness. I could not stomach that. Trying to force myself to eat things always leaves me extremely nauseous till this day. 

My childhood wasn’t too affected by this, or I just don't remember, but I will say. Pickles SUCK. My parents forced me to eat a pickle when I was around 7 or 8. Instantly vomited. Moving I ended up living with only my dad. My mom and step-dad out of the picture home cooked meals were now obsolete. From the age of 10 I started having to survive solely on T.V dinners.

Middle-school, you know when teachers bring free treats to class? Every single time it was always chocolate. Which is bitter, so the first real issue I was hit with was, feeling completely out of place. Everyone was eating their gifts, maybe it was a birthday today, or the teacher made cookies for everyone, but I couldn't join or bond with them. All I could do was watch. This separated me from the other kids around me. Though sometimes the teachers would remember and bring a pity candy like skittles for me, they were quite nice. My intake with food would usually end up being 1 to 2 meals a day, T.V dinners and maybe the school lunches. Which is give or take 400-500 calories. I was a very weak kid, extremely skinny and toned like a vampire. Due to my lack of intake and issues not recognized till later I was also left with a high lack of energy so school work was quite difficult to focus on. 

Explaining exactly how it felt to be abnormal is quite difficult in words. I was a very quiet kid. Avoided telling many people anything, so no one really paid attention to my food intake, especially my father. Eating horribly tasting food everyday was such a chore to me, I would go days without eating, never feel hungry, and no one would truly notice. My best attempts to acquire actually good tasting food were always shot down. “You’re always so picky.”, “It’s not my fault you won’t eat.”. I really wanted to, I just couldn’t understand why my body would not let me. In the end what I ate or not did not matter, or even if I did. Growing up I never learned the real value of food. So I never tried to acquire it.

One day I happened upon something that tasted quite nice. Through my random attempts at picking random T.V. dinners, which was all I was able to eat living poor, and I found a heaven-sent meal that showed me how you can actually enjoy food to some level. This meal was a seafood meal, specifically fish. It wasn’t too heavy that made my stomach turn, not bitter that made me nauseous. It was a soft flavor of the sea, the pleasure of it was like freedom. Like the vastness of the ocean on a summer day, the cool breeze on the beach when you lay in the sand. Nothing about fish made me hurt, and I could eat as much as I wanted without that pain. Ever since then I would try my best to have at least some fish options when nothing would appeal to me.

But even with fish, seeing how people can enjoy a taste of the meal. I still did not understand why people enjoy eating. I couldn’t always eat fish, it was too costly and I would never be able to ask specifically for it, I was judged for being “too picky” and belittled for how hard it was to get myself to eat. My stomach was another factor that made nothing understandable. When I do find food that doesn’t taste bitter I can eat it, but the amount I could eat always changed. Somedays I can eat an entire meal, but others I'd only be able to eat half. Like one time I got Chick-Fil-A, I remember eating the fries and really enjoying myself, it tasted nice, but then my stomach started feeling nauseous again. I didn't even get to eat the chicken, and when I tried to eat it or even look at it I gagged. I thought to myself “how can someone enjoy eating when you look at the same food you just enjoyed, and all you can feel is a deep subtle disgust in your gut?

One thing I did learn about this is when I reheat food in the microwave, instead of it tasting worse it tastes better. Weird right? I considered it being the content of moisture, or something that gets removed when microwaving but I don't have a clear answer as to why.

Texture. My taste buds which enhanced the taste of bitterness, also made texture so much more apparent. Foods that conflict with texture like, cold sauce on top of hot food cause a confusion overload into my mouth and make it difficult to eat it as well. Mushrooms and squishy types of food can be very difficult to eat despite having 0 flavor, cooked into the entire meal, but solely because of its texture. 

Then we are here, 2026, I have learned what I can eat and enjoy and what I can't. I know I will never truly understand how people can eat whatever they want, enjoy things like coffee or chocolate, but I have accepted this phenomenon as it is what makes me, me. Despite all the prejudice, the feeling of abnormality. All that matters is if I enjoy myself. Not what others see me as when I do.