I am writing this hungry and undercaffeinated.

None of this is aspirational.

I had my first Diet Coke at nine years old because my mom was on a diet that admonished

sugar, and I was chunky.

Sometime around then, I have a memory of walking into the kitchen and announcing, “I

weigh a hundred pounds!” I was proud of my growth before my Mom dashed out of the room

quick enough that I wouldn’t see her cry in earnest, but muttering fearfully, “That’s not a

good thing.” I felt heavy.

And now we lived in California. I wore a school uniform because it was supposed to be an

equaliser. But it looked different on me than it did on a lot of my classmates. After Mom

dropped me off at the bus stop, it came at 7:30 in the chilled blue mornings, the other moms

would hike a local mountain as a followup activity. In Boston, it had been coffee and a pastry.

My classmates also did not eat McDonald’s. I still did, but now instead of a Sprite with my

McNugget happy meal, I got a Diet Coke. In Monopoly Season, when every medium soda

purchased at McDonald’s meant you could be a cash winner, Mom got me a medium Diet

Coke. I felt lucky, even when we never won. I had all this soda and unlike so much in my life,

it wasn’t making me fat.

Because for centuries in the American odyssey, California has been the place where the down

and out get lucky. In the Bay Area, we could easily find any international food we wished to

try. I rode horses. I received a theatre education of rare quality and variety. It is always

beautiful, even when it is not. My favourite weather growing up was misty and rainy, the

mountaintops heavily shrouded so the world was blanketed and green with new growth. This

was my weather, the kind I felt in my soul, whatever soul a twelve year old has.

In high school, I felt lucky when at my breaktimes, I could walk against the bright blue sky

and through the sunshine to the cornershop a few blocks from school. I had since decided that

Diet Coke tasted better out of a can: somehow colder, crisper. At this particular cornershop,

they sold extra tall cans of Diet Coke. Nothing felt better than coming to my next class with

an ice cold, towering can from the cornershop. It was like carrying freedom back into my

adolescence, and not just that: I was sensible. In front of me had been all the cornershop had

to offer, Pop Tarts and Arizona Teas and Takis and Hostess Cupcakes, but I still went with

one of the few no cal options. Didn’t that mean I was aware? Sophisticated?

I thought I learned a magic trick. Through months of self hatred and reducing and reducing, I

eventually metamorphosed myself into a person that could make herself full all day on a Diet

Coke and an apple alone!

When I visited my grandmother at Christmas that year, she was proud of me. At long last, I

had learned. My mom had friends and a small garden design business now. She had realised

that the way she’d talked about my body and her own when we first moved had not been the

kindest. Now, she was terrified.

But I grew out of the habit one day. My mind had been so singularly occupied by that daily

Diet Coke and apple and my body and other peoples’ bodies and mine in comparison to

theirs. I missed my mind and all the things it could think. The fizzy feeling in my stomach

was overwhelming when there was so little else to feel inside.

So, by senior year of high school, I was gaining some weight, but losing friends and

confidence. It’s still a bit of a crapshoot, one big symbolic shrug as far as my personal

development goes. But then the world shut down. Suddenly, I really didn’t care about high

school.

Mom would get mini cans of Diet Coke during our weekly shops, a pandemic treat. I started

the morning with a fancy iced coffee then sunk two baby cans into a big cup of ice to

recaffeinate in the afternoon. Either that or I’d venture to the cornershop near my house,

Quick n’ Easy, with a dollar bill and a face mask in my pocket. I’d wordlessly cross through

Quick n’ Easy to the soda fridge and get myself a normal-sized can of Diet Coke, then pop

the dollar bill in front of the cashier, who rarely looked away from the Bollywood action

films he’d be watching on full volume. I’d rip the mask off around the corner and crack open

the can, sated by that valuable exchange in humanity.

Now I am twenty-one and I am responsible for buying all my own food. I feel most grown up

when my shelf in the fridge is occupied by an eight pack of Diet Coke. It feels sensible.

Probably because the alternative is buying it at school for £1.20 a can (change of continent,

change of currency), extortionate. My friends and I figured out the economics. If one scores a

twelve pack of Diet Coke cans from Heron Foods for £4, that’s a mere 33p a can. At the time

of writing, that is 41¢, much less than the dollar I paid back in Californian pandemic times. I

felt like a good adult after I discovered I was getting my Diet Coke cans for such good value.

I felt like I was going to be okay.

The vibe I get from the scientific community is that Diet Coke has too many ingredients and

some of them might even cause cancer. But still, I don’t see an end to my Diet Coke drinking.

Because frankly, not to state the obvious, but there's a climate crisis on, which is the main

reason I don’t want kids, and if I’m worried about my potential child’s quality of life due to

all of that, I’m not too sure about my own at the age of a hundred twenty-five, or however old

non Diet Coke drinkers live to.

I’m not saying I drink Diet Coke because of climate change. Anyone that analyses my

addiction (yes, addiction) closely knows that it has produced hundreds, probably thousands of

aluminium cans.

But again, none of this is aspirational.