The bedroom I shared with my older sister suffocated you upon entering with a sweet smell coming from the puddle of crystallized sugar and cream residue on the carpet. The smell was what gave me away: the sugary aroma of 2-day-old melted fudge bars marinating in a room-temperature playhouse kitchen. Alex, my older sister, was also a snitch. We are 19 months apart in age and universes away from each other in temperament. I worshipped chocolate more than I loved my sister on her worst days since I was 16 months old. At 20 months, I could speak just enough to ask if we were having dessert and later learned the manipulation tactics to get what I wanted that would guide me through my formative years. I waited until all of the new groceries were put on their shelves and my mother went to lie down on her bed to steal three fifths of the chocolate fudge bars from the bottom drawer of the freezer. I recognized that the frozen treats, if left alone, might go away. I could be asleep on a night when my family would wake up just to devour each artificially flavored delight, leaving none for the always forgotten youngest child.

I teetered back into my room, knowing that once I crossed the threshold of my door I was safe from my mother’s ears. Plopping down in front of my pink pretend home, I treated myself to a fudge bar for a job well done. I strategically licked the parts that threatened to drip on the carpet that would reveal my heist too soon. Methodically and deliberately, I enjoyed my reward. That was the lone ice cream bar that survived my kidnapping. I experienced regret for the first time knowing I was the only one to blame for that ice cream-less week in the middle of July. Those are the dark days I don’t like to talk about.

I was 17 years old when I knew the importance of a fudge bar in too-hot-to-comprehend Las Vegas heat. My then-boyfriend and I were fighting about nothing except that I didn’t feel okay and made it his fault. We saw the movie "Moonrise Kingdom" and drove to my home in virtual silence with the exception of when he pleaded with me before he started the engine to open up and tell him what was wrong. I had no explanation for my behavior. The air conditioning in his beat-up Mazda Tribute sucked, so I let the hot wind whip my hair against my neck the whole 15-minute drive back to my house. Daryl Hall and John Oates were mocking me in a cinematic irony kind of way, shouting about dreams coming true. I stood at the kitchen sink, washing my hands of the theatre popcorn grease. He wrapped his arms around my waist and I shuddered. I didn’t hear him coming over the noise of my own thoughts. This upset him to think that his touch shocked and repulsed me, but he was done asking what was wrong and expecting me to be forthcoming.

I was 17 years old, so naturally I was obsessive and territorial in my relationship. I felt him walking away, so I tied a string around his neck that wasn’t tight enough to asphyxiate him but enough to make him uncomfortable. He was the first person I ever loved, so I was confused when I felt millions of miles away from him. He kept unspooling the thread until late that summer when he cut it with a talk about needing space. Standing at the kitchen sink, I knew those words were under his tongue, but if I didn’t keep him close, he would dissolve before my eyes.

People sometimes disappear like late-night snacking on fudgsicles. I wanted to keep everyone on dusty shelves in poorly-refrigerated conditions -- even at the cost of their well-being.

I proceeded to hide perishable foods in my plastic fridge several more times in that naïve second year of life. I didn’t learn after the first incident with the ice cream. Nearly 18 years later, I have found that relationships can’t be like stealing fudge bars; people can’t survive in poor conditions, either.