Lemons

Content warning: self-harm, suicidal ideation

I

f there’s a lemon in the house, I can’t help myself. My mouth salivates just looking at it. I have to have it.

My therapist wonders if this is a kind of self-harm. Lemon-eating. She says she’s never heard of it before, but how am I feeling lately?

I say, Well, I’m eating a lot of lemons.

She says, Hmm.

She writes something on her papers. The papers go into a folder. A folder of me.

The problem is that I eat the whole lemon. Not the seeds of course. I’m not a monster. But the rind, the pulp. I love the contrast of the two: one shockingly stunning like liquid crystals, the other the kind of substance you can’t help biting into, all that give.

I can’t remember if this therapist knows about my other forms of self-harm. I’ve seen so many therapists, and it’s been so long. In high school, I was a cutter. Well, I was a scratcher. I never used a razor. I never wanted to go deep. I just wanted pain. I took a safety pin and dragged it across my forearms until they were streaked red. I wore thick bracelets and long sleeves. I did and did not want people to know about my problem.

The lemons are a problem. It’s fine to just keep them out of the house, but I can’t go over to a friend’s house with lemons either. I will ask to eat them. And the friend, of course, will say yes. They will be amazed at my lemon-eating, but they won’t think of it as self-harm. Just a weird quirk.

My therapist also thinks picking my scalp is self-harm. I get these dry patches that I pick at until they bleed. She says, Have you considered that this is self-harm?

I’m beginning to think she just likes the expression: self-harm. I’m beginning to think she believes I have more problems than I think I have. I’m the most stable I’ve ever been. It’s been 20 years since the bleeding lines across my forearms. And so what if I eat lemons, pick at my scalp.

Just thinking about a lemon makes me want to eat one. Purged the house of them: self-care. This was an unspoken recommendation of my therapist. It’s dangerous to go into a grocery store, though. That pyramid of yellow. The thick spongy outsides. I like to cut them thin-thin—so the rinds are as translucent as fingernails. If I could just eat a lemon wedge, perhaps. Just one. But no, I eat the whole damn lemon. A lemon a day.

I don’t know what kind of mental illness makes you eat lemons. Google tells me the cause could be iron deficiency. Pica is not quite right, because lemons are technically food. I wonder about the rinds. Does being edible make it food?

My parents sent me to a therapist in high school. The therapist told me I was just worried about grades and college. This was her diagnosis. She was an older woman, and I didn’t tell her the full truth. The self-harm. The way I fantasized about driving to the Golden Gate Bridge, hurling myself into the choppy water below. I didn’t tell her about the drinking I did alone in my room. The pills I chased down with whatever booze I could get my hands on. Still, you expect a therapist to see through some of the bullshit. That’s her job.

Who doesn’t sublimate feelings? If we didn’t, things would be so messy. Everyone would be crying all the time and we’d never get any work done.

My therapist now thinks I have sublimated feelings. She doesn’t use the word sublimated. That’s my translation. She uses many words to say the same thing. Who doesn’t sublimate feelings? If we didn’t, things would be so messy. Everyone would be crying all the time and we’d never get any work done. I would be dancing on a classroom table naked. I would swerve into guardrails on the highway. Constantly. I would check my front door at least a dozen times to make sure it’s really locked. I would eat lemon after lemon after lemon. Only lemons. Sublimation is survival.

I will stop eating lemons entirely, I decide. And the next day, I decide I will only eat a little bit of lemon every day, but not on an empty stomach. It seems like a good plan, until I see the lemons in the fruit basket (I’ve bought them again). Then all bets are off, and here I am slicing into a lemon before I’ve had my coffee.

My therapist says that lemons are self-harm because they’re painful to eat. But: she doesn’t eat lemons so how should she know? A lemon is almost-pain. It’s that cusp between pleasure and pain. The place where I desire. A lemon is also just a fruit. Harmless. About 89 cents in the grocery store. 

Now, when I eat lemons, I have to think about whether I’m feeling negative feelings. Whether I’m sublimating some other pain through the almost-pain of lemons. My therapist has ruined lemons for me. But I still crave them, still eat them. I cut into a lemon and it feels like cutting into the heart of something. Like there’s some answer there in the fruit’s structure. There isn’t. It’s just a lemon.

And I’m thinking some day, I’ll eventually grow weary of them. Lemons will lose their power over me. It will be slow at first and then all at once, I’ll realize I haven’t eaten a lemon in weeks. Months. I won’t eat my water garnish at a restaurant. I won’t throw out handfuls of perfectly good lemons in frustration. I will squeeze a lemon over kale and not think twice about the juiceless rind in my hand.

And my therapist will ask, How are you feeling lately?

I will answer: No lemons.

And she will know exactly what I mean.