From "Confessions of an Eater"

"I remember the first time I ate compulsively. I was seventeen years old, not yet an introspective person. I had no language or vocabulary for what was happening to me. The issue of compulsive eating had not yet become a matter of public confession. Looking back I can say: 'That was the day my neurosis began.' But at the time, if I knew the word at all, I would not have known to apply it to myself.

I was in Berlin, sitting at the breakfast table with my American roommate and our German landlords. I remember the day vividly, the wind blows, the curtain lifts on the window, a beam of sunlight crosses the room and stops just at the spout of the teapot. A single, amber drop becomes luminous at the tip of the spout. I feel that I am about to remember something and then, unaccountably, I am moved to tears. But I do not cry. I say nothing. I look furtively around me, hoping this wave of strong feeling has not been observed. And then, I am eating. My hand is reaching out. And the movement, even in the first few moments, seems driven and compulsive. I am not hungry. I had pushed away my plate moments beofre. But my hand is reaching and I know that I am reaching for something that has been lost. I hope for much from the food that is on the table before me but suddenly it seems to me that nothing will ever still this hunger--an immense implacable craving that I do not remember having felt before.

Suddenly, I realize that I am putting too much butter on my breakfast roll. I am convinced that everyone is looking at me. I put down the butter knife. I break off a piece of the roll and put it in my mouth. But it seem to me that I am wolfing it down. That I am devouring it.

I notice, with alarm, that Olga is beginning to clear the table. Unable to control myself, I lurch forward, reach out for another roll and pull the butter plate closer to myself. Everyone laughs and I am mortified. I am blushing the way I have not blushed since I was twelve or thirteen years old. I feel trapped and I want to go on eating. I must go on eating. An yet I feel an acute and terrible self-consciousness."

                                                                     Kim Chernin from "Confessions of an Eater"