A piece of my final chapter. Spoilers should be limited.

This took an absurd amount of time to finish. The idea for this book was birthed in late 2012. But here it is. It’s in your hands. It’s out in the world, and for some reason you were compelled to stick with it until the end. Perhaps you’re reading only this chapter, or you’re reading the chapters out of order. Maybe you just read the poems. Either way, I am eternally grateful, and I apologize if I annoyed anyone with relentless sarcasm, cynicism and hyperbole. All three of these things are like pasta to me.
When I first started writing this book, pen and paper became vital to me again, more so than air. I lost this feeling of necessity once I hit my thirties. In my thirties I was wife, wannabe mother, student, professor, desperate higher-paying-job seeker, professional drinker. I eluded myself from the page.
A belief exists that in order for writers to be real writers, they must write about what they know and live. Whether the work is fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or a cover letter for a job prospect, a writer must experience the content directly or indirectly in order to use language in the creation of art.
The problem I have with this idea is what if you lived a life where nothing too major happened, especially before-adulthood, but you possess an urge to write about your life anyway. How can anyone write a memoir in their thirties when his or her life was not a hayride, but it sure as hell didn’t resemble Family Ties either?
One of my reasons for sweating this for so long was a need to get older. Age would increase the likelihood of sounding legit, so I thought. I am now pushing forty and no matter how many friends and family try to convince me otherwise, time is chipping away life the chocolate coating of a Klondike bar.
Above all else, I wanted to convince you, the reader who took time to at least shuffle through this literary bag of marbles, that you have a story to tell whether you like it or not. The question is, how do you write in a way that is fun and keeps you engaged even when you’re ready to lose your damn mind?
I’m almost positive that is the reason why I chose to center on food. Yes, I am a big woman and I love to eat, having gained back the weight I killed myself losing after my divorce. More importantly, isn’t it our responsibility as humans to be in love with all of our five senses? Forgive the hyperbole again, but don’t we have, like, five minutes to live on this planet? I think this is what we are losing – the willingness and the know-how to take in and embrace what our senses allow us to experience. Senses that can easily be swiped from us at any moment.
Over many hours of psychotherapy, I’ve heard a lot about mindfulness. In short, being mindful means focusing on the now and staying there as a way to steer away from the past and the future. Excellent concept but when you have a mind that is harder to control than taxes or the Kardashians, it is easy in theory but not in practice.