Denise, ~1990
My grandmother had a thing about tapeworms. She used to tell this story about a relative of hers who had a tapeworm. This relative was told the way to get rid of the worm was to stop eating and the worm would starve to death. She did stop eating for several days and the tapeworm came up into her throat and then her mouth looking for food, and she was able to reach in and grasp it and pull it out of her mouth. That story had a horrible fascination for me as a child. The thought of that pernicious and disgusting creature peering out of this cousin’s mouth haunted me for years.
I am reminded of it lately when I think about growing up an adult child of alcoholics. My addiction, which is food but could as well be liquor of other anesthetics, is like the food I need to feed my tapeworm. I know that something serpentine lives in me; something carrying the unexpected angers, fears, sadness of my life; something that is sucking the nourishment from my spirit; something that is feeding off of the energy and emotional strength I should have for my living. And I feed it with chocolate and ice cream and cookies. And I grow fat around it, sheltering it and protecting it.
Lately I feel a great fear that the food is not working. That no matter how much I eat it does not take the edge off the terror and sadness that I glimpse out of the corner of my psychic eye. That even if I ate twenty-four hours a day it would not fill the infinite emptiness in me.
So, I have been abstinent for a while now, refusing to use food to fight off the panic that I feel when I look too closely at my life, when I slow down and feel the helplessness of troubles and needs I cannot seem to cope with not bear. And I feel the tapeworm rising from my gut toward mt head. I feel those fears, those needs that have been buried beneath an avalanche of food, rising to consciousness.
Soon it will be in my throat and I will reach in and grasp it and drag it out, look it in the face. And I will recognize it as something I lost a long time ago, something that should be a legitimate part of me, but had been banished to the shameful depths of my body. And I will wear it in my hair for all to see.