- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
Julie's obsession with food and food storage is strange to me. She reminds me of kids who enter into foster care after years of neglect and have regular access to food for the first time in their lives. They hoard it, sort it, make lists of it, pay ridiculous amounts of attention to who ate what and when and become agitated if they feel the food supply is in any way going to become limited.
I know Julie's dad played head games with her regarding food she was allowed to have (which is weird, no matter how stupid and gross Julie is - aside from booze I've never known a parent to repeatedly buy food stored in the family kitchen that was completely off limits to the teens in the house). But even so, I wonder what has caused her to be so strange about food, its preparation, when she's expected to eat it, where it's stored, etc.
It's a combination of the father's games, mixed in with the OCD and the 'tism. The father starts the ball rolling fucking with his kids' heads, and then Julie's combined conditions keep it going. An NT kid growing up in the same house will obviously have some serious issues with food themselves, but after a certain age and degree of life experience they're able to grasp just how fucked up their relationship with food is. They may never quite manage to completely break with the childhood training and indoctrination, and some may even continue it themselves in their own home with their own children, but they will eventually grasp that this shit isn't normal. Julie, on the other hand, has clinical OCD, and it's ridiculously difficult for someone with OCD to be able to perceive their own disorder. On top of that is the autism, which has its own compulsive component, and additional lack of self awareness. Essentially, Julie's obsession with food is a combined manifestation of both faulty programming and damaged hardware. It's yet another reason why Julie desperately needs psychiatric care and intervention. There's no fucking way she'll ever be able to think about food in anything approaching a functional level without some hardcore therapy and drugs.
Jesus Christ this family is fucked up.