There’s this bakery right next door that I absolutely love. It is called Happy Belly Bakes. ‘What an apt name!’, I always think. Because once you eat their cake, your belly will be happy, oh yes.
Even though we are told, multiple times, that sweets are bad for just about everything including the waistline, we can’t help but eat them, can we?
The sight of colourful macarons filled with so many different things- I remember this one I had that was flavoured with orange blossom and rose, a bakeshop with its wares so deliciously laid out, the pastry dripping on the sides, and the smell of fresh bread just calling you in…
What is it about humans that our death wish is often the sweetest of everything we ever wish for?
Here at Happy Belly, there’s this one cake that I absolutely love. It has a layer of chocolate mousse, followed by coffee glaze and a base made of cocoa and almonds. And sugar. Loads and loads of sugar.
I have been known to buy it by the kilo for no reason whatsoever and consume one piece every hour until my stomach begins to complain and there’s this clear sense of nausea building up. And yet, in the next hour, I’m eating another slice.
And so it is with me and toxic people, I have just discovered.
Much like a craving for sweets, I find myself drawn to them again and again. Each time they make matters worse, I want more of that complicated, completely nutty layer of almonds in chocolate.
Each time they break my trust and do the exact opposite of what they said they would, I want that bitter coffee liqueur.
Perhaps most significantly, and most reflectively of my own self-destructive tendencies, I believe, again and again that the layer of sweetness in the middle is just what I need to soothe an aching soul.
And once again, the nausea in my stomach tells me otherwise.
But there’s a reason the cake is called what it is. Very apt name, from a very aptly named bakery.
This concoction of people, you see- I think I am helping myself by having them. In that short moment, their sweetness has me on my knees. Until the next hour, I can’t help but think about that sickly sweet, yet insanely delicious aftertaste, they leave in my mouth.
And again, I reach out to them, I reach for them, knowing all too well that very soon, the sweetness will get me down.
Oh, and that cake? It is called Bad Addiction.
