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Celia was born gasping and then gulping at the air.

Unlike the other children, she didn’t stop when she was capable of breathing normally but swallowed like the oxygen was about to disappear. When Celia’s mother first breastfed her, she refused to unlatch, suckling for every last drop until she was forcefully pulled away.

As she grew this continued, she would endlessly indulge in whatever was directly in front until someone else took it away. Her parents noticed something was wrong immediately after her birth and went to great lengths to keep the impulses in check. Her morning meal at 5 years old was as follows: 6 strawberries, a yogurt, a small omelet with ham and cheese and 8 oz of water put on the placemat directly in front of her. All cabinets were locked and no one was allowed to eat in the same room as Celia.

For years this continued with her parents able to keep Celia from harm by meticulously keeping track of anything put in front of her. One slip up occurred when she was 7, a cousin, not knowing the severity of her condition, left a raw chicken on the counter for what was meant to be a quick trip to the bathroom. Celia wandered into the kitchen and devoured the entire thing. She gagged at every bite of raw meat but continued shoving it in, gnawing at the bones until her mother discovered her minutes later.

Any art material had to be carefully controlled, given a box of crayons, Celia would sit and draw until the last one was an unusable numb and her hands were raw. A whole tube of paint would be spread onto a single canvas, torn off bristles scattered throughout. Thinking a doll would be safe from her condition, she was given a Barbie and allowed unsupervised access for her birthday. The next morning, this privilege had to be revoked as Celia’s bloodshot eyes and the doll's messy haircut revealed she hadn’t slept since her and the doll's introduction.

Wanting to give her a normal life, Celia was sent to a regular school to study, teachers had strict instructions to have everything under lock and key. Unsurprisingly, friends were few and far between; more than a few had their lunch eaten and markers bled dry. She had been invited to only one birthday party, another mother had taken pity on the lonely girl, and Celia was lectured for weeks beforehand about how she needed to behave. On the day of the party her parents created a shift schedule to make sure there was always someone watching every movement. The first three hours flew seamlessly enough until an unforeseen bathroom break left an unsupervised Celia alone with presents and a beautifully iced cake. Both soon opened or eaten, the party quickly dispersed with a crying birthday boy and a remorseful Celia remaining.

As Celia became a young adolescent, she was keenly aware of the differences she had with the other students and increasingly noticed their distance each time she used another’s eraser to shreds. The birthday party incident years ago had not only cemented her oddities in the social hierarchy but revealed to Celia the emotional destruction her illness could cause. She herself could not understand her affliction, she wished desperately to be able to stop her urges and fit in with the rest of her classmates and yet her brain forced indulgence. Even her parents showed wear in the years of caring for her; at one time a manageable task, each year Celia became harder to control, through strength and cunningness.

People could never understand her disorder, Celia least of all. The only way she could describe her impulses was like a man had her brain tied around a rope and dragged her towards the nearest vice. The only time she had a moment's peace was when he would switch directions and ground his feet once more. If Celia chose to try and free her brain from him she would land face first in the nearest cake, chicken, or dozen of boiled eggs.

Teenage years were the closest she felt to normality with her peers. Awash with hormones and angst, they too indulged in their urges, taste testing drugs and sampling kisses. Some of the other girls now restricted their diets too, counted their fruits and weighed their chicken just as Celia had been eating her entire life. One of her first real friends was a girl named Lola. At lunch, and at an arm’s distance, they would eat their salad with 30 spinach leaves, 6 strips of chicken, a half tablespoon of feta cheese, 8 croutons, and 3/4 tablespoon of an unknown dressing. Lola was the first one to invite her out without her parents, a movie. A perfect outing with a definite end time. Her parents dropped her off and waited in the parking lot in case of a movie theater butter emergency, but Lola was the one who pulled her away from the popcorn.

Their hangouts became more frequent and less monitored. Celia’s parents no longer loitered in a car outside and the two wandered around inseparably, mostly so Lola could control Celia if need be. At 16, Celia finally felt like she had some semblance of a normal teenage experience. They would wander around concerts, downing half empty bottles of beer and smoking dead cigarettes. Celia’s first party ended with a hospital visit for alcohol poisoning, but 6 other girls from her class ended there for the same reason.

At this same party, Lola let Celia leave her side long enough for her to make out with the one boy in class that had ever shown any interest, and so began the indulgence in people.

For Celia, indulging in a person varied from the normal. With food or toys or books, the inanimate objects couldn’t leave, a forced participant in Celia’s disorder- people could. Whether after a month or a night together, sometimes even an hour in a club bathroom, a person could pull away. For the first time, Celia felt some semblance of control, while she couldn’t leave a person herself, she became an expert in choosing people that would leave her. The boy at the party wouldn’t say hi to her in school the next day, giving Celia a perfect prototype of who to seek out.

Lola and Celia started spending nights out at clubs instead of high school basements. A high school crush was replaced with a revolving door of 25, 35, and the occasional 50 year old man. Lola seemed to be infatuated with what these men could provide: drugs, attention, the sense of maturity and erred on the side of caution with her promiscuity. Celia had no qualms about sex with these men, nor could she help herself if she had, and the promise of an end date was intoxicating. Occasionally, as often happens when they find a young enough woman, a man would try to cling on to her, refusing to leave after their mediocre orgasm. In these instances, Lola would provide Celia something she would normally be restrained from, forcing Celia’s conquests to watch her devour a raw chicken or drink an entire bottle of olive oil. One particularly attached club promoter clung on until witnessing her eat a full roast pig, snout and all, at the barbecue he had begged her to come to.

Her reputation quickly preceded her and men now searched her out to waste a few hours together. They would ply her with meticulously measured drugs thinking her debauchery was rooted in a substance addiction and while she couldn’t help but partake, it was completely unnecessary.

Her parents noticed her many disappearances, however, years of being forced authoritarians left them little room to care. Until her high school graduation, she was made to attend school but afterwards little was done to monitor her behavior. Even Lola, her current roommate, after years of spending their days together, wanted to move on. She no longer wanted to waste away at dive bars and skeevy houses, no longer wrote off Celia’s behavior as teenage impulse but saw her now as a regular whore. As Lola refused to join her more and more, Celia’s chaperones were now a revolving door of men.

Portions of drugs and alcohol were less monitored, more than once she had snorted enough coke to fuel a frat house, a mistake that could only be rectified by snorting the ketamine laying directly next to it. Sometimes her chaperones feigned worry, offering to call a medic or lazily bringing a glass of water. Celia could see the apathy of her new friends, and while they knew about her conditions, slip-ups were becoming increasingly more common.

Now 20, and in search of more reliable companion, Celia begged Lola to be set up with a friend of her new and seemingly stable boyfriend. Celia wanted the illusion of normalcy, a date without him knowing about her condition, free of any stigma. Restaurants were usually safe places for her, pre-portioned. Begrudgingly Lola obliged and the meet with this nice and normal finance boy was set.

The day soon arrived, Celia’s mother even did her makeup for her, something she had never been able to for herself. For any unknowing eye, Celia had done it, she was by all appearances ordinary- at least for an afternoon.

The restaurant picked was a newly opened spot a 5 minutes walk from Lola and Celia’s apartment. A short journey like this meant Celia could walk there without supervision, more likely than not without facing any complications. And after an uneventful journey, she arrived in front of a plain but kind looking man. Together they walked in blissfully unaware that this new restaurant just so happened to be a buffet.

Instantly upon entering, the imaginary man in Celia’s head dragged her about the room-

First to the trays of pasta,

Then to the platter of sushi,

Up next was the pizza,

Then the fried chicken,

Fries,

Dumplings,

Burgers,

By time she made her way to dessert there was vomit covering her dress.

Slowly the bystanders came to their senses, the employees dragged her away from the plates, Celia’s date backed outside horrified by what had just occurred. After an eternity of being held down by the employees, the EMT’s finally arrived, outfitted with tranquilizers. Celia was sedated, like a wild animal. While she lie on the floor staring at the ceiling, shouting all around, she couldn’t help but vomit once again. The sedation had taken its affect and there she stayed, choking on her own bile.