The other day I ate a doughnut. It was my first doughnut in about 14 years—I’d been dreaming about them, and I thought it was finally time to try gluten in its highest glory: in the form of sugary fried dough. And let me tell you—it was good. It was so good that I laughed so hard I actually started to cry. You would be right to think this was a total overreaction to this most mundane manna from heaven, but that’s just because you don’t know what it means to me. I started having gut problems when I was about 11. It was a season of funerals—three of my grandparents died within two years of each other, and my parents were suffering in their own cycles of grief. I was a preteen, facing the anxiety of puberty and graduating to new schools. At my maternal grandmother’s funeral, I got food poisoning and was keeled over a toilet for about two weeks afterwards. As an anxious young teen, I decided to try the age-old coping mechanism of refusing to eat. My body became sticklike, and I liked that. The closer I got to disappearing and the longer I went without food, the safer I felt in my own skin. I eventually re …