Cookies and Obsession

Do you have any weird obsession over something in your life? Do you have any habit that is so irrational you cannot really explain even to yourself? I do. It is the cookies. To be more precise, it is the obsession of having tea and dunking cookies into it.

It all started in childhood. Once my parents bought a package of simple, not flavoured cookies just as a treat for tea. All of my family members would bite a cookie and have a sip of tea after that. I tried their way and felt the cookie remained too dry in my mouth. I thought that was not the way to experience the full taste of a cookie. I instinctively dunked half of a squared cookie into my tea, swallowed the soaked cookie, and had my first cookie orgasm. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. Without exaggeration, I finished the whole package in one day. That’s how it all started and continued pretty much till my late teens.

My parents could not make me lose a taste for cookies. I would simply refuse to eat anything except for cookies sometimes. My poor parents, I gave them a lot of pain. You see, I had always been very picky with food. Sensitive to most ingredients, as they say it now. I would only eat certain things, and there was no force in the world that could make me try something outside of my comfort food zone. I did not complain to my family. I simply went hungry for hours or days. Eventually, my dear parents gave up and let me enjoy the dunking process. As for the cookies, I could not just dunk any type into the tea. There were several rules concerning the size, texture, filling, and shape of cookies to make my tea ceremony perfect. It sounds crazy. I cannot explain why I had that obsession. I was the only one in my family like that.

Time passed, and I grew up. I had to start watching what I ate and how much I did. Painfully for me, I had to eliminate cookies from my diet. I rarely eat them now. The obsession, however, has not ended. Even now, I literally have to skip the cookie aisles in the stores because of this  strange temptation to resort to the bad habit. And if, for some reason, I find cookies at home (some guests might have left them after the potluck party), I let myself forget about the diet, indulge in a pleasure, and forget all the problems in my life. Even if it is only for 10 minutes.