Posts

This one touches on areas of trauma (but is also about community (and dystopia)).

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Perhaps the largest of the issues I’m currently working on is food.

There have always been foods with textures or smells that make me physically uncomfortable or worse. There are also many specific tastes that ruin a dish for me, a lot of which are popular “also added”s. I also have ethical issues with much of food production. Not to mention: dinner events often involve bright lights and competing loud sources of sound. Plus there is a very specific way to sit and to hold utensils (plus sometimes secret etiquette like that time Wesley Crusher played frisbee on an away mission), and the social expectation is to participate in “polite” conversation the entire time (“polite” excluding all of the above topics). Also, it is mandatory to look unfailingly cheerful and relaxed.

Food involves judgment. Societal, certainly. Diet cokes and salads (look at your thighs!). At home, for reasons, I didn’t feel the food supply was secure. I bought protein bars to compensate, and sometimes saved half for later. You’re welcome to imagine the consequence of hoarding a half-eaten protein bar in a big box in the closet.

I never really learned to cook. Cooking and eating were, I understood, a waste of resources. In university, on scholarship, I ate raw cans of tuna with a fork and felt unentitled to bread and spices and condiments and other luxuries. I also ran cross-country, a weird combination of strong and malnourished.

My good doctor a few years ago seemed accepting of my theory about Avoidant-Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, which has manifested for me as resentment of eating. Even now when I have food in the fridge and time to prepare it and no one around to judge my dexterity, I would still generally rather not eat. Sometimes it’s not just an aversion but a physical inability.

This is incomprehensible, I know, to people who have more of a binge-eating relationship to food (or even a healthy one, I guess, if those people exist). The closest to understanding loved ones seem to get is that I’m “just not hungry,” but that’s not it. There can be physical pain involved. That has, historically, been irrelevant to the question of eating.

I’m working on all of this. I’ve developed tricks based on new self-knowledge, and I try to deliberately spend time on recipes and groceries and kitchen practice. Sometimes I even reach enjoyment instead of resentful sustenance! But learning new skills and changing old habits is hard. There’s a lot of back-sliding and I still have the instinct to save groceries “for later,” especially in times of stress (which now certainly is, what with climate and safety concerns about the food supply, inter alia).

One thing I’ve found helpful is food exchanges (leftover swaps). I also like learning how other people were taught to do things, and then eating the meal we prepared together. It’s good for me personally, and I think it’s good for community too. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to buy their own groceries and try to personally cook and eat everything before it goes bad. There is money and labour to be saved from a more communal approach. (Reminder: capitalism is bad.)

I’m now imagining a group chat that involves meal planning. More sharing, more variety, less waste. (“I’m going to need the cumin next week; could you bring it to the meal exchange?”) Maybe there could be a shared calendar…

Anyway. A more personal and stream of consciousness post today, as I procrastinate eating and worry about the wisdom of posting anything vulnerable and opinionated in a world getting more cruel. But then I think “What would P!nk / Tank Girl / Katniss Everdeen do?” and the answer is more truth and more community and more shit-disturbing. So.