IS THAT A WHOLE FUCKING CHEESECAKE?

By Harry Hildreth

Have you ever sat at a table, watched your friend or family member eat most of a meal, and felt an uncontrollable urge to just finish it? Regardless of what it is. Regardless of how long it’s been sitting there while you just wait for them to cross their fucking cutlery to signal ‘I’m done here, go ahead. Clear my plate.’ Regardless of how gargantuan your serving was, or your second one. Regardless of how much your body is screaming ‘please don’t eat anymore’ and your brain screams ‘please don’t eat anymore. You’re only going to punish yourself in an hour.’ But then, the other side of the brain goes ‘nah, it’s just this once. I won’t do it tomorrow. In fact, I’ll purposely not cook enough so that I have a smaller portion.’ Yeah. Fucking. Right.

My whole life I’ve been the ‘dustbin’. I’ll eat anything. Ask anyone who knows me. I’ve always had more of an appetite than anyone else I know. Once, me and my friends at the ripe old age of 17, drove to Tesco to buy beer (some of us were over 18/had fake IDs) after a day of being hungover and smoking (tobacco) in a friend’s garden. We hadn’t eaten much besides a tray of oven chips his Dad had specifically left in the freezer knowing we’d all be feeling like shit after his living room ceiling was found with dried beer on it. My friends, however, didn’t really buy much besides maybe one of those repulsive Ginsters pies and a crate of beer. I got my beer, obviously, but I also grabbed a pasta pot and an entire New York Cheesecake. Why? Because I fucking love cheesecake.

‘Harry, is that a whole fucking cheesecake? Hahaha.’

Yes, it is funny. As kids/teenagers/even mid 20s, you don’t see the signs of someone really struggling with stuff. I would stress eat. I still stress eat. Not even in a Ben & Jerry’s and a packet of Oreos kind of way, but just by eating fucking LOADS of food. Don’t get me wrong, since going vegan it’s been way harder to eat the absolute trash that I used to eat, but I’d still fuck you up in an eating contest.

My teens were a...tricky time for me. My parents split after a few years of needing to split, just when I started secondary school. Not the most perfect timing, but I’ve never held anything like that against them. I found school and making friends difficult because I was just a bit strange and quiet for a while. My Dad moved in with someone else pretty quickly and that was it. Me, Mum and three younger sisters. During this period, I just ate what was there. I didn’t have access to an abundance of food. I was too young to work and we had fuck all cash, so there wasn’t much in the way of pocket money, despite my Mum working her arse off when she could around 4 kids all at different schools. My Dad just disappeared for a really long time and would often go weeks, months without contact. I took this out on my sisters and Mum in our tiny little house near Ore and eventually, like Alice in Wonderland, became too fucking big for the walls of the house.

I was kicked out of my Mum’s house and sent to my Dad’s with a bag of clothes, a guitar and a shitty amplifier under my arm. I was welcomed into this house full of lovely furniture, and told ‘this is your room’. You what? This fucking hall is my room? It was insane. It had a desk with my Dad’s computer which he’d essentially just given me. The best thing was, I could play my guitar as loud as I wanted, whenever I wanted (unlike Mum’s, where it was not enjoyed by anyone within a mile). From the age of 15 until I was 19, I lived with my Dad. At 16, he and his second wife decided to break and then it was just me and him in St Leonards. We had a flat near Warrior Square and on the day we moved in, we bought a shit load of food from LIDL and carted it down the road in the trolley, then returned the trolley. It was great. We had beer, food, guitars, cigarettes and music. It was great. For a bit.

Inevitably, things took a turn and suddenly I was a 17 year old parent. Not because I’d done the deed without protection, but because my Dad was at war with a real dickhead. Himself. His weapon of choice? Vodka.

At this point, I was fighting a war on two fronts with my dickhead Dad and with another dickhead. Me. My weapon of choice? A whole fucking cheesecake.

This relationship with food that I have, eating EVERY. SINGLE. CALORIE. I. CAN. SEE. started around this time and before I knew it, I was strutting through Tesco car park with a crate of shitty beer and a whole fucking cheesecake ready to drown my sorrows in that velvety, vanilla, crunchy goodness.

Since then, I’ve grown. It’s taken a hideous amount of time, energy, fitness plans, diet plans, criticism and money, but I’m getting better. Only recently, during this lockdown, did I really begin to recognise my relationship with food for what it is. When I’m playing music or talking about something I’m passionate about, which is normally music, I can go hours without food. When I’m with friends now, yes I can get hungry - I’m a growing lad y’know (I’m not. I’m 6ft and 29 years old and have grown what can be grown), but I seldom find myself craving everything in sight. Ah ha! It’s a mental health thing. It’s not greediness. It’s not because I’ve got hollow legs. It’s not because I’m a ‘big guy’. It’s not because I’m a ‘human dustbin’. It’s not because of all of the things that people innocently say to men that actually hurt. It’s because there’s a gaping bloody hole created by sadness, rejection, loss, grief, anger and anxiety that I may have, once or twice, dabbled in filling with cheesecake. Sure, I still feel guilty when I eat bad foods or drink to excess, but then I remind myself that it’s not all bad and that I should still love myself, because my friends and family love me. I guess you could say that cheesecake was the best thing that happened to me.

Thank you for reading this.

I don’t write. I’ve never written anything, I have no knowledge of how to wrap this stuff up, so I’ll just say this.

If you have a friend, regardless of the gender they identify as, who maybe has a bigger appetite than you, be there. They may be fighting the cheesecake too (recipe below).

1 cup of sadness

½ cup anxiety

2 tbsp pain

¾ cup guilt

and a fuck load (approximately 3 cups) of shame.