Coffee stopped being enough

First real cold morning of the year and I was back on the couch by 9:15 with my second coffee, already starving, already tired, and nothing had actually happened yet.

That's the part I never say out loud. I feed 3 people breakfast every morning. I have not eaten breakfast in about 4 years. Coffee is breakfast. Some days coffee is also lunch.

I know I'm supposed to be eating protein. Everyone keeps saying it. I have a tub of vanilla protein powder in the cabinet from February. I have used it 2 times.

It's 7am. It's 38 degrees out. The kitchen floor is cold. A cold shake with ice in it is the last thing on earth I want, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

What I want at 7am is warm. Something sweet. Something that feels like a reward for getting up, not a chore I'm doing to my body.

My sister started stirring a scoop of this into her coffee and would not stop talking about it. She's not a supplement person. She's a coffee person. That's the only reason I listened.

So I tried it her way. Made my coffee, added the scoop, stirred. It turned into a mocha. Not a fake mocha, an actual one, with that bit of salt that makes chocolate taste like chocolate.

I did not taste broth. I keep saying that because it's the only thing anyone wants to know.

Then at 10:30 I noticed I wasn't hungry. I hadn't thought about food once. I'd made 3 breakfasts and a lunchbox and I wasn't running on fumes.

That was a month ago. The cold shake is still in the cabinet. This is on the counter next to the coffee maker, which is where I actually am every morning.

On the weekends I make it on its own with warm milk and sit with it while the house is still quiet. On weekdays it goes in the coffee. Either way it's the first thing I eat, and for the first time in years, it's for me.