Literally, and what it “literally” means

I overheard this while eating in a restaurant last night.
“I am so hungry, I could literally eat all the food in the whole restaurant.”
It’s hyperbole and I generally have no problem with it conversation.
Talking with other human beings can be a boring practice and spicing it up is necessary through metaphor and hyperbole, but I draw the line at literally.
As an English major, I use the word all the time to distinguish between metaphorical interpretations of passages and literal interpretations of passages.
For example, for this sentence, “Jane walked with her friend Maria into the canyon,” literally means she walked into a canyon with her friend Maria. That’s the simple meaning of that definition.
Or as Merriam Webster likes to define it, Literally is “in a literal sense or manner : ACTUALLY ”
A metaphorical, and ridiculous, meaning could be something along the lines of “Jane and Maria explored their sexuality” because metaphorical canyons represent vaginal symbols or some ridiculous bullshit.
See, the literal tag allows writers and interpreters to allow them to them to cut through the metaphorical swatches of meaning with the word, “literal.”
The word has a concrete and unbreakable connotation. Something is what it is, and there are no exceptions about it. It’s like the top from Inception that supposed to fall over when the narrator is in reality but keeps spinning when he’s dreaming.
“Literally” is that totem. Not literally, but in a metaphorical sense, you know?
However, the misuse of this word is taking away its concrete meaning, and throwing the rest of the world into a horrible surreal reality where everything is literal and nothing is metaphorical. This is just as frustrating as it is in the movie when one can’t tell if the top falls or not. And just as anticlimactic.
When that women said, she could literally eat all the food in the restaurant. I was scared. I hid my food. I didn’t want her to eat my food as well.
Whenever someone says they literally could kill someone, I run in fear. Literal or not, I don’t want to be part of a murder investigation.
And I am even more cautious when someone says, they literally drank a gallon of vodka. I always call the cops, but I am usually made into a fool because I believed the literal sense of what a drunk person was telling me.
My reality is unreal because of the bastardization of this word. I have taken the pains of proposing possible solutions.
Treat the word and what follows it as concrete truth: In this manner, maybe people will stop using it. I know I would the first time I said something like, “I literally don’t need my pinky toe,” and then had my pinky toe taken away from me.
Treat the word and what follows it as metaphorical: This manner will also encourage the use of the word to die down. For example, if someone said, “I am literally dying for water,” and they were in fact dying, and I told them to quit exaggerating, and they died, I am sure no one would ever use the word literally around me again for fear of not being taken seriously.
Ignore anything that’s said if it contains the word: This applies better to the previous example. “ I am still literally dying of thirst.” Oh yeah? I am still literally not listening to you until you change your diction choice.
Stop overreacting to a seemingly innocent word choice: This manner would require English majors to let things go, which seems like a great idea. However, it’s not possible and will not be considered.
Again, I don’t have the solution.
Until a solution is reached, I will continue to overreact, for safety of course, anytime literally comes up.