Freaky Eaters found a woman who eats as many as 40 ice cream bars a day!  She says, "It's almost like having a lover!"  I completely understand her.  Here is a holiday essay concerning Chocolate, My Lover,  saying,  "I find it safer to go home with a Russell Stover marshmallow Santa sans a man."

The Washington Post recently proclaimed, “Chocolate protects the heart.” It read, as I always hoped it would, that a Mounds can shelter a vena cava from getting further wounded. A divorced woman in my forties, I don’t smoke and I barely drink. Yet I have a bonbon addiction and, although it’s a struggle to get my size eight body into my size four jeans, I don’t want to quit. I find it safer to go home with a Russell Stover marshmallow Santa sans a man. There’s no chance of being abandoned the morning after.

For some, a Milky Way with its sugar and caffeine would be a no doze solution. For me, it’s a pain killer. When I was five, my parents divorced. It was just my mother, sister and me, when we moved from our comfortable suburban hi ranch to a small inner city apartment with a broken elevator. My grandmother moved in and I shared a bedroom with her. My mother worked as a secretary. An afternoon snack consisted of cauliflower with a side of cartoons. When I was six, my gran was admitted into a nursing home where she spent her last days battling breast cancer. On our way home from visiting her, we stopped for ice cream. I got a single scoop of Rocky Road. Soon after Nana died, I’d eat yodels every day with Mr. Rogers. 

When I finished a meal, I needed the satisfaction of a sweet treat the way a smoker desires a cigarette. As others had an occasional espresso, I delighted over the whole Pepperidge Farm cake. An acquaintance of mine could eat two Hershey’s kisses and feel content. Recently, I devoured the whole bag thinking about the date I thought I was to have with this hot guy. I met him at my birthday party, at a neighborhood bar, Election night. He seemed interested at first. Maybe I got the wrong idea by the way he looked at me. I’ve always had a thing for salt and pepper hair, which he had. There was no Snickers bar to take the edge off my nerves. Afraid I would lose the “hot guy” like I usually do, I fell all over him. In my red tank top, I flirted too much, came on too strong. I shimmied up to him, but he didn’t take interest. He left me like my father did, walking out the door.

The bartender handed me some pre-Christmas cheer, a chocolate flavored ale. I took solace in my favorite soupeon. I sought gratification in something a mans libido wouldn’t give me. My body consummated the fudge relationship on a couch in the pub without the guy touching me. I had what Sally had when she dined with Harry in Katz’s Deli, except hers was loud and fake, mine was quiet, and to me quite real. It was just another night of being more satisfied with a champagne truffle than with a fella. 

That night, alone at home I found further comfort in a box of Godiva. Me and my cocoa, a relationship that has never let me down. It has always been there for me. Whether it was a breakfast bar at midnight or chocolate mousse while checking morning texts, it soothed any emotional aches. When I started getting migraines and breast pain from the caffeine, the doctors implored me to kick the Nestle’s habit. I tried, but how can I give up something that has been so good to me otherwise. Anyway that creamy insatiable stuff was there waiting for me to come home and let it back in.

I know I can give up an infatuation with a substance that can possibly cause the onset of diabetes, but I just don’t want to. It shields me from sex. It doesn’t close the door on my face. It has given me so much in return. You should see these hips. Weight Watchers chart says I need to slim down. I fear there won’t be something to take the place of those Three Musketeers. I will have my chocolate with me during the holidays. I am not worried about being lonely.