Me and Food — What Truly is Love?
This is the first time I am making an active choice to take my writing seriously, without any external influence. Actually, that is a bit inaccurate, my career coach is going to set me straight if I don't do this (I’m being held accountable this year). The fact is, this is the first time I am choosing to make writing a goal, I believe there is something here for me and so I am willing to explore it. This is why I am starting this journey of possibilities with something that is most dear to my heart, Food.
Food is one thing I love very much, I’m always so quick to express how much love I have for food to anyone who will listen. However, I find that my relationship with food is extremely unique, For someone who claims to be insanely in love with food I can go hours without eating, I always get stuck ordering the same things from a menu, I never necessarily try out new meals or recipes and I mostly detest cooking. So how exactly do I justify my love for food?
Food, in this case, signifies my varied relationship with other things in life, from people, to work, to reading and swimming, I find that I love these things but I do not express an innate passion for them, I’m never overly crazy about anything at all. I’ve figured that I have found things and people that I enjoy in this life and it’s absolutely fine if I love them in small doses or under certain conditions.
Back to my analogy of how my relationship with food describes me in my entirety, I find that my love comes from a place of having never been disappointed by food. I have zero allergies, no special preference, and I will always clear my plate (eventually, I am a slow eater). Growing up a skinny little girl, I could spend 2 hours to finish a plate of rice. I would walk around, find multiple ways to distract myself, or just daydream, before finishing up a meal you can imagine how frustrated my parents, sisters, and maids used to be (How can you dish a meal for a child, only to start looking for her 5 minutes after. And no, I never abandoned my meals, I always went back to finish it. I always finish what I start).
What I am saying is this, I have found that as a person, I express love to only those things that I can fully depend on and have never disappointed me. This is not very healthy because as we know, life is a museum of disappointments, every day brings an opportunity to be let down, (Except if you live in Lagos, the disappointments here come per second), I have had to deal with my fair share of disappointment and I must say, it leaves a bitter taste. This is why I hold on to things that are dependable in my life (God, especially) and can only express a certain level of love for these things.
For me, food has helped me realize these things about myself (I find that using the simplest of things helps me with self-awareness) and I now understand that love to me means, consistency, reliability, and dependability (as opposed to the crazy hot or blind passion that I have believed it to mean in the past) and I have come to terms with this understanding of myself.