The Whole World is in Your Mouth, Just Don’t Chew

I am a sensory seeking woman. Why of course, I love to experience all the earth has to offer. Stepping on creamy mud like I am squishing grapes on a vineyard just to see it ooze from between my toes in curled slices. Doing my dishes first thing in the morning so the hot water wakes and warms me. A mandarin on the top of a mountain, why not? Food, the ultimate sensation of survival, is attached to so many of my memories. Scents or textures lifting you from the present and placing you back to the porch of your childhood with pasta salad and popsicles. Like fresh salmon at blue hour when 10pm was only for the adults.    

I really love sumo oranges and West Coast IPAs. I think the best silhouette of a meal is something stew-like that I can scoop up using pieces of good crusty bread with melted butter. I grew up eating black fennel off of bushes and hating tomatoes. For seven years of my life I ate oatmeal in the morning and every night for seven years I went to bed excited about my oatmeal. The tastes of my life and surroundings baptize me daily—welcoming and grounding me to my environment.      

People rank their five senses. We have all heard this—sight or hearing first, touch feels pretty important, taste maybe, then smell? Or smell then taste. Depends on whether you’re a foodie or not. But, I do not want you to take any of my body parts, emotions, or human responses. Plus, I am a foodie.                                                    

The simplest of meals will take me at the very least one whole hour to make. I must light a candle and pour myself a glass of something. Here is what happens: Think about sampling the sound of washing my rice or the layered snap of my knife through leeks (I am not a musician though, so just listen). Swirl juices together on the cutting board, notice what stains. Steam face over boiling water. Do a lunge while waiting. And, when I sit down to eat, I like to taste my fingerprints in my food.

At the start of 2021, I got Covid. I was stuffed up, my bones ached, and my skin sore. I was quarantined with my lovely partner at the time. Tall and feverish (amongst many other things). One night, we ate Indian food on the floor of his bedroom, stretched for the health of our lungs, and went to sleep. I knew immediately upon waking up that my taste and smell were gone. I could not sense my mouth. I could not taste my tongue or my cheeks or my throat. I hadn’t known that I tasted those things, but it was now very clear that I once had. 

It was unfamiliar, but not surprising when my coffee went down like sour water. (Please note, sour is a sensation not a flavor. My taste was gone, my mouth was not numb.)

My partner lost his a day later. It was almost fun at first, exploring the world safely without two of our senses. What happens when I bite a raw onion like an apple or when I drink a smoothie only made of vegetables? We played, and after a couple of weeks his taste and smell returned. I waited. His came back; mine was next. Although, I soon realized if it was gone for a month it may be gone for more. 

It melted from an interesting quirk to a debilitating fact. I felt plucked from the world around me in a disturbing way—late to leave a burning building or failing to feel the juice of a plum fermenting on my tongue. For one whole year I imagined tastes and scents. You could make yourself dizzy though, and also crazy, smelling candles and coffee trying to get a hint of something. A constant edging really. Scent being a reward like an orgasm can be.

I went home that summer for a week—North Carolina where the air is thick. The perfect sky for languid aromas. I lingered around my childhood home. I know it so well and yet it felt so foreign to me. Like walking onto the set of your own home—a recreation void of the things that brought it to life. I could not tell when my mom was awake because I could not smell her coffee. I could not smell or taste the ripened tomatoes on our counter that I’d learned to love, and my mom’s cooking became mush shoved against the roof of my mouth (disrespectful but out of my control).

It was winter again when I sat on the couch and ate a frozen peanut butter cup (awesome texture). For a fraction of a second there was something. I directed every nerve in my body to my tongue. I could not find it again right then, but within a couple months things started to happen. 

Ultimately, anosmia (the loss of smell and, therefore, also taste) is a paralysis of the olfactory neurons, so it’s a very similar process as regaining movement from any physical paralysis. The recovery process of this involves the nerves literally relearning how to pair what is on your tongue, or in your nose, with what it knows it to taste like. 

After about a year of having no taste or smell the gears started to turn and I began to experience something called “parosmia.” This can happen while your body is relearning, these neurological connections can essentially make mistakes. I was optimistic because this reassured me that something was happening. But, during this time most things tasted and smelled as horrible as sewage or rotting cantaloupe. For a few months my gag reflex was a habit. The taste of garlic, peanut butter, or chocolate could not be swallowed without my stomach trying to make itself hollow. Even unexpected scents like someone’s perfectly normal breath, the smell of Whole Foods, or hot pavement outside were repulsive. The scent of my own skin, my lover, my blanket, my home, my morning coffee, and the fresh air outside had all changed. I took zinc and melatonin, I did something called “olfactory training,” and I thought really hard about what things tasted like while I ate them. I joined Reddit pages and Facebook groups. I woke up hungry and dreaded the days. I pinched myself to just get calories in my body. I knew this was a part of the process, but it was absolutely the hardest part. I couldn’t eat at restaurants or eat someone else’s cooking. I couldn’t try new recipes or feel excitement for a meal. I could no longer just not think about my lack of taste and smell. 

I stopped being vegan, and I lost a decent amount of weight. I was exhausted from thinking about food so negatively and so intensely. I had seen people in Facebook groups say it gets better—they said lots of food still tasted off but they didn’t think of it as much now. I felt insane, unable to fathom how I could experience this and not have it be this debilitating thing. But, after a few months, it was there and with less intensity. Foods were still twisted in taste, but not horrible, and glimpses of accuracy kept me going. I pushed through and tried to eat normally to re-familiarize myself with the taste of everything. And, over the months, it came back slowly and sneakily. My kitchen table saw less tears and more small wins.

Food was important to me before this, but I will never eat and exist the same way. I smell my ingredients more. I waft the pages of my cookbooks and lay tomatoes flat on my tongue. 

I don’t share this with all that many people. I cannot bear someone brushing past something that changed my life. But, when I walk into my home and smell the traces of my shampoo and coffee and linens, I think of it. I take extra time to fan the pages of a new book and to indulge in the scent of fresh baked bread. I want to know the scent of my body forever—my skin freshly showered or sweaty and bitter with caked dirt. I want to know what my life smells and tastes like. I am even thankful for wretched trash and burning rubber. For paper plants, gasoline, and hot piss on city streets. It tells you where you are, what’s around you, and creates memories. Otherwise you are looking through a window, which is okay but I like to indulge when I can. I want my limbs spread to every corner of the Earth, so I can be tickled by every offering. Eating dinner will forever be a whole body experience.