Preserved Peas
I realize last night that I imagine most food – particularly high quality food – literally isn’t a thing I can have without some sort of social negotiation. I can’t have peas, for example, because it takes at least 2, maybe 3 people to authorize the use of preserved vegetables. And there are lots of things I that category, where I can’t have them alone. Cooking itself often feels like it’s in that category – if it requires heating it’s a thing I can only do if it helps more than one person. Or at least one real person and not just me.
There’s a whole seperate level of social food nonsense – sacrifice. There were foods I couldn’t have for myself, and a whole second level that wee only for use in serving your master. You cooked food you weren’t allowed to eat as an offering to the authority. If your offering pleased them – if you sacrificed enough – you could buy a small amount of favor. At least vegetables were a thing I could justify serving to the Kids. But there were pieces of food we hoarded for Mother to use as an offering when we needed her to facilitate grocery shopping. We had eaten crackers and slimy lunch meet and powered chocolate milk for 3 days but we were saving a meal to serve Mother on the weekend when we might be able to get more food.
There are so many places in my life where what I wanted simply didn’t matter. Where whether or not I approved or consented or liked a thing I had to do it – maybe even make it happen – regardless of how I felt about it. Survival decisions. And it has left me in a place where I need reassurance to want or like or need things. I have become such an expert at giving things up that I can’t properly imagine keeping anything. Not even my closest relationships.
It’s also frustrating that what I so desperately need is someone to reassure me like a toddler that what I want is okay and real. I shout about things I want or fear and what I get back is silence. Which my survival brain says is the same hateful disinterest it always was when I was young. Some of you say you talk too much, but it’s rarely pointed at me. And the rest of you say you can’t talk because I’m too much.
Which is true, in some ways. https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/crkd3u/ I’ve been trying to imagine my disability and not just be ashamed of what I need. It’s tough to be on the outside of the sort of advise and support we imagine a typical person needs. I don’t need to let things go, I need to hold on to them. I don’t to control my emotions I need to let them upset people. I want to stop participating in my own oppression. If only I could ever allow myself to imagine it was real. Just thinking about it makes other people overwhelmed or disgusted and so they want to deny it. Oppression demands denial. But should stop doing it to myself.
Shanda is out on a 2nd date tonight with the new couple. She said she would be home early and that I should expect to spend time with her tonight, but she’s hours late even checking in let alone heading home. I don’t mind the change in plans – presumably you’re doing something good – so much as the lack of communication about it. Waiting for people sucks.
Next time you’re having a hard time with someone you want to be able to talk to, you might consider a list like this to see if you are stuck in an old pattern, or even triggered to your past. https://youtu.be/gZj176ZoM4Y
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
