You all know that feeling: the one of rising dread as your stomach cramps in that particular way. You know what’s coming, and still, you try in vain to pray away the inevitable. Then comes the rapid onset: sweating, and a churning feeling that moves slowly yet decisively through your stomach making its way to your bowels. You have food poisoning.
This exact feeling overcame me last fall, as I was sitting with my mom having a pre-birthday lunch. The Columbia Dining Halls had betrayed me most egregiously. The banal, yet somewhat-reliable sustenance that came from big, heat-lamp-warmed vats had turned on me! The next three days were spent going from the bed to the toilet, from the toilet to class, and from class to the toilet again. I was shocked at my body’s ability to expel everything from itself. Horrified even. As my stomach began to settle, and I was ready to return to some semblance of normalcy, I noticed that a proverbial silver lining could be found: I looked snatched as fuck!
My stomach was flatter than a bodychecking Thinfluencer selling overpriced greens powder through the link in her bio. I looked like I had been putting Castor Oil in my belly button every night. Like I had a Pilates membership. I knew what I had to do: document this so that the perpetual online positive feedback loop of self-consciousness could persist. I had to be a cog in the machine designed to make femme-presenting folks feel terrible! I grabbed my digi-cam and got to work and the rest is history. 20 looked damn good on me.
