Wanted: Chocolate Cake

I spent a good portion of Lost's two-and-a-half hour finale sobbing. Not weeping pretty and silent tears that roll down your cheeks like raindrops like you see in the movies, but ugly-crying that puffs up your eyes and makes your nose ooze and just basically leaves you looking like someone's been roughing you up.

Were it acceptable to come in to my job Monday wearing sunglasses, I so would have. But then all the high-schoolers would have thought I was masking a hangover, and we just can't have that. Teachers don't drink. (Ha! Sorry. Couldn't write that with a straight face.) So I just came in looking like ten kinds of hell.

Now for the aftermath. After any event I find emotionally draining, be it a funeral or a farewell lunch for a friend you know you might never see again or perhaps bad news about the health of a family member, all I want to do after the crying has stopped is...eat.

Does a good sobfest really burn that many calories? Do tears suck away that much of your body's essential nutrients and minerals? Or is it just an excuse to comfort yourself in high-calorie foods? I want to believe that when I hit the pantry after a cry that I'm simply keeping myself from malnutrition and dehydration, but I reckon I know better.

No matter the reason, all I've been able to think about all day is chocolate cake. Seriously. Work has been hell for me the last few days as I go through the usual end-of-year stress alongside some school-wide technical issues I've received roughly ten million calls about. And all day, when I've had a minute to think, I think...God, what I wouldn't do for a double-layer dark chocolate cake slathered in buttercream frosting.

So I am going to go home and, given that chocolate cake is just not something normal people have sitting around the house, carb-load on something else. But it won't satisfy. Because the heart wants what it wants.

What food to you crave when your body and soul needs comfort? And do you by chance happen to have any cake lying around unwanted?