I should preface this by saying that this is possibly the darkest thing I've written and if I never come back to this point then I'd be ok with that
It was spring, and that meant that America needed (well, wanted) to at least act like he wanted to live. America already regularly worked out, but now he also needed to eat a bit more healthily. It would be good for him.
So as it was, he was at Walmart, trying to buy healthier food, but all he could think about were the prices of the cheapest foods in the store: a loaf of bread or a box of pasta for eighty-eight cents, a 27-pack of Austin Sandwich Crackers for 5.98. Hell, Alfred had once bought a discounted family-sized box of rice crisps for 1.27. None of the cheap food was ever healthy, and Alfred needed to be healthy, but Pop-Tarts were less than four dollars for sixteen; that was twenty-five cents a meal.
Pop-Tarts were hardly food, much less a meal, America reminded himself— and then, much more rudely, he told himself, You're not going to starve, you stupid fuck.
America survived his trip to Walmart by thinking, over and over again, I will kill myself right here in the middle of this goddamn produce section if you don't shut the fuck up. Threatening himself with suicide was an awkward solution (not to mention the quick split in identity), but America didn't really want to die and the pocketknife he carried was unusually heavy that day. He bought healthy food and left the store, but as soon as he got to the car, some sense of impending doom prevailed over all else.
...
Every year America eventually gave up on healthy eating because he was weak and found self control too emotionally difficult. America hadn't actually seen the inside of his pantry since the end of the previous summer; as it was, he enlisted Canada's help. Canada was his closest neighbor and the only person that regularly went to his house.
Canada faithfully showed up, as he always did for his brother, but he could not have anticipated all America's bullshit.
Canada had successfully talked America into getting rid of two items so far: a cheesecake mix from the 1980s and a bottle of ranch from 2015. But now America put up a fight over a container of pesto sauce from earlier that year.
"Dude, come on. I can't get rid of that. Pesto sauce has tons of calories in it."
"That's your reasoning?"
"It's only a few months old, not like it's gone bad yet. Come on. It's useful to have high-calorie foods like that; what if I'm lacking one day? I mean, if you can't get the nutrition, then you get the calories, right?"
Canada shook his head. "You buy your own food, America. There's no decent reason to be worried about lacking nutrition one day, and I don't know where you're getting this idea that you'll have to live off pesto sauce. There's no way this is still good, anyway."
"It's not that old," America protested.
Canada opened the lid, pointed the jar toward him; it was filled with mold, the pesto sauce barely visible from an aerial view. "Not that old, eh?"
America cringed.
Shortly after, they had lunch. Canada made it, insistent on checking the food for rotting, and soon they were sitting with sandwiches.
America covered his mouth while eating, something Canada briefly interrogated him over. But soon Canada had changed the subject, asking instead, "Why don't you eat healthy more often? Don't you find it enjoyable?"
America stretched. "Nah, I like feeling like shit. It's nostalgic."
"Nostalgic?"
"Yeah, dude. I mean, come on. You eat like shit, you're sluggish and you feel guilty over eating too much but you still want more. You starve, so then you're sluggish and when you do eat you feel guilty because you ate too much, but you still want more. It's familiar. Don't tell me you've never enjoyed feeling shaky before."
"When did you starve?"
"When I was way younger."
/\
The final straw, really, was when Canada pulled out a moldy loaf of bread. He put it on the table. "America, what is this?"
America replied, "I'll just cut the mold off and cook the hell out of it. It'll totally be fine, dude."
Just then, a maggot crawled out of a hole in the bag. Canada and America both watched it for about a minute, unable to do anything. "This is disgusting, America. How the hell did you let things get this bad?"
"Yeah," America managed, but his head was swimming with the mere knowledge of maggots in his pantry. He forced a laugh. "I guess I will have to throw it out."
"How did you let things get this bad?" Canada repeated. "Who cares if you can eat the bread or not? It probably costed you, like, three dollars."
"Eighty-eight cents without tax," America corrected.
"Whatever. That's nothing. It doesn't matter in the end that you can't eat it. What matters is that you let it get this bad. I can't believe you still act like you're starving after, what, two hundred years? Three hundred? How am I supposed to help you when you took so long to even seek out any sort of support for yourself?"
Canada left after that. America went back to staring at the moldy bread, at the waste. Eventually he stood, threw it out. He effectively cleared his pantry after that, but seeing everything he'd wasted only made him feel worse.
America was afraid of hunger. To an extent everyone was, especially nations— or so he'd thought, until he called Canada again (he couldn't talk to England about something like this, and he couldn't call France because he didn't want pity; with Japan, he just didn't want to confess to anything everybody already knew).
"Hey, Canada, bro. Sorry about the other day." America shifted uncomfortably under the apology, so he quickly continued: "Anyway, I, uh. I have a question that's going to seem really dumb, 'kay?"
"Alright."
"Okay, cool. Um, when are you hungry enough to eat?"
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah."
Canada began to say something very rude, but he cut himself off before America could properly hear what it was. "Well, I guess just focus on whether or not you're actually hungry."
"Yeah, so I am— I think. But like, is it enough to justify eating?"
"If you're hungry then you should eat."
So that wasn't very helpful. America continued to lay in bed, hungry (or was he?) for the first time in perhaps half a year. But it wasn't enough; he could wait a while longer.
When America was a kid, he'd began to feel pretty good when hungry— it was satisfying, to know that he was not using up the little food he could afford. As a child he'd grown wary of this perverse pleasure, but as an adult he was simply afraid of it. America was old enough now that being a child— and all of the disgusting, horrifying shit he'd done to survive as a child in the years of personal starvation — seemed distant, like some vague, hellish nightmare. When America thought of those nights, filled with sin and make-believe maturity, he wasn't flooded with the anger and shame that had plagued him even ten years ago.
Even so, America could not help suspecting that he wasn't as 'recovered' as he thought.
America may have been through enough to poorly excuse a lifetime of bad eating habits, especially given the time he'd grown up in. But it had been three or four lifetimes and he still wasn't comfortable enough to pay more than a bit of attention to what he ate, which posed an obvious problem: actually making his own food gave him too much time to think about it. Instead of thinking about what spices to put on his eggs or whether or not to put some sort of nut butter on his toast, America thought about how cool a time machine would be, how much he would pay to go back in time.
America figured that, if he could go back in time, he would go back to when he was a child. Then, in an ideal world, he would be his own hero. But there were no time machines and even if there were, America would probably be too afraid to go back; of course he wouldn't be susceptible to the same exploitation a younger version of himself had been, but he was still less grown-up than he'd ever pretended to be. He was separated by time, a most complete distance. Perhaps it was best left that way.
America ate an entirely healthy and fresh breakfast that morning: an egg, toast, fruit. He even had a glass of milk. But when he was done, he decided that this year would be another year of not confronting his history; he was happier pretending it hadn't happened, that he had always been a binging asshole obsessed with saving the world, and that he was just another regular person with bad habits. Once the groceries ran out, America would turn back to feeling guilt over eating too much, but it would actually be too much.
A/N: I was hesitant to publish this due to the ridicule of legitimate eating issues (such as calling rationalizations 'bullshit', which was a bit blunt) but it obviously isn't from a neutral point of view, so eh...
I'm ashamed to admit that this story breaks every bit of the ethical code I've been following ever since I came up with it in my room when I was twelve. However ashamed you think I should be over such a thing is, you may kindly imagine, how ashamed I happen to be at any given moment. But it's whatever, I guess.
Anyway a review would be totally lit, have an awesome day and stay cool/safe (what you prioritize is none of my business) my dudes.