I hardly ever eat it, but every time I see one, my mind instantly drifts back to that one unforgettable, electrifying experience at summer camp at Regina Pacis, when I was five years old.
My very first group tour.
We’d be driven there by minibus in the mornings, spend the day at the beach, and the nuns—whistles in hand, skirts rolled up to their knees—would signal when it was time to get in the water and when to come out.
I remember it all as if it were yesterday.
We’d have lunch together in the semi-open dining hall overlooking the sea, then lie back for a nap on the stretchable lounge chairs made of colorful plastic strips. For snack time, they’d give us all sorts of things, but what sticks in my memory is bread with salami—Milano salami. The one with tiny eyes… You know, the little round bits of fat in salami or other cured meats. Maybe because my mom never bought salami, and I loved it madly… but only on its own, without the bread. I’d toss the bread aside and eat just the inside.
Of course, I’d get hungry again almost immediately.
I felt like doing something a little rebellious, and lately, revisiting yet another piece of evidence of my own narcissism, I’ve realized: in relationships, I often go for the salami and discard the rest.
Does that make sense?
The thing is, by doing that, I end up becoming someone else’s salami: they take the inside and throw away the rest. In my own relationships, it’s usually the opposite—they want the outside and could care less about the inside.
But anyway.
Result? the hunger never really goes away.
You’re left craving something, but you’re not even sure what the hell it is.
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