this is our home, that’s the kitchen

I shouldn’t have stressed about it so much. Nothing even matters, I should stop my obsession. | I’m actually putting together a poetry collection, a collection of poems, prose poems, vignettes, and micro-essays that I’ve written over the years. I started writing seriously during my sophomore year of college, I think; at age 20 or so. 

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I’ve gained quite a bit of weight during the past four years or so. 30 pounds, or so. I’m now 280 pounds. I’m trying to slim down, my goal weight is 200. I’m 29 years old.

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I think I wasn’t smart enough to realize that all of the spare change and ten dollar bills I was donating to my local fast food joints—I didn’t fully realize that I could have used that same money to buy the type of groceries I want, at a fraction of the price. I guess I did keep on reminding myself that “I was abused in the past”; “I have mental problems”; “I’m hungry”; and etc. That was my justification for my takeouts. You have to eat in life, but I overused my local Mickie D’s, and almost everywhere else. | I’m actually a good grocery shopper, I’ve come into my own in that regard. While I was growing up, my family and I grocery shopped for the most bland necessities, like milk, eggs, and red meat; and we had no sense of ‘stocking up’ on food items, whatsoever. I kind of noticed that my friends’ pantries and cupboards and refrigerators were filled with food items–both treats and essential food items, healthy foods; I guess to last a few weeks. My kitchen was almost always close to empty, or it had boring, bland food like oranges and frozen chicken breast. I couldn’t figure out why. 

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I think I’m gonna eat from the food we have at home, from now on; I’m kind of done ordering from and paying visits to burger joints, from now on. I think I’m gonna deliberately select the cheapest grocery store near me, something that’ll hopefully save us considerable money throughout the years, and I’ll stock the kitchen full, these days and until forever. What else were we planning to do? I guess no one really showed us the beauty and the benefits of stocking up, and being prepared and ready for a rainy day. No one showed us the beauty and benefits of meal planning, either—cooking and prepping meals ahead of time, to be eaten throughout the week. We assumed (with full rigor) that we had to either cook new lunches and dinners when the time came, every day; or we had to eat leftovers from the night before, or from two nights before. (Or three.) We didn’t know about meal planning, preparing cooked foods ahead of time to be used for main dishes, throughout the week. It was a completely foreign concept, we never did it. | Not having a substantial stock of food at hand, and not having cooked food groups nearby, only creates hunger, frustration, exhaustion, and a feeling of malaise, like “this can’t be right, something’s got to give. Something’s not right, here.”

I’m happy that I grew up in Virginia; if I had grown up in Sudan where I was born, I wouldn’t have written in English, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten into creative literature, music culture, and working with youth with developmental conditions. This is not to say that there aren’t cool opportunities in Sudan—work, volunteer, and recreational opportunities, and a culture of creativity and giving back, and etc. But it’s not nearly as strong and deep-rooted as it is in the U.S.—I have to face that bitter fact as a Sudanese immigrant. It’s an underdeveloped country.

I’m grateful for all the mishaps I’ve had while growing up. I’m grateful for being born in Sudan, and for the happy early childhood I had in Virginia. I’m thankful for spending middle school years in the Middle East, in the UAE; and I’m thankful for spending high school and college back here in northern V.A. And I’m glad I got to spend part of my post-college years in Doha, Qatar, where my dad now works. But I’ve really got to put two and two together these days; I’ve got to make sense of my past and move on, now. I know the way I grew up, the household I grew up in, was not ideal by any means. Our constant traveling and our lack of common sense with regards to food stocking, putting a large storage of (likable) food in the kitchen to stretch over (a couple of) weeks at a time, was not an ideal scenario; it was bad. The abuse in the house was also horrendous in some cases, I’m not gonna lie. I know no one’s family is perfect, no one’s growing up years were perfect. || I just know that I have to be more responsible, now—now that it’s within my purview to do so. It’s hard with my schizoaffective disorder I have to deal with, but I’m determined to do it. I want to live as responsibly and intelligently as possible from now on. (Intentionally and responsibly; making good choices and doing things logically.) I don’t want to be a stupid slob for the rest of my life. My childhood wasn’t exactly structured and intelligently planned out–the environment and the way we did things wasn’t optimal. But that was then, and this is now. The mental illness in my nuclear family often went unaddressed and untreated, but that specific element is not really my problem anymore, now that we’re all adults. I can just walk away from them now for the most part, I can walk away from their abuse. I don’t have to tolerate anything anymore, it’s within my faculties to walk away and not bother, anymore.

*I once heard a statement I’ll never forget; a young lady (25 yrs old, I think) was saying (in response to her abusive mother, who denigrated her weight, and stuff); “I’m an adult, I can monitor what I eat. I know health is of utmost importance, and I’m striving for that.” For some reason, that really shook me, that struck me. That changed my whole outlook, somehow. It reminded me of my own story, with my weight issues; my family background with regards to cooking, meal prepping, grocery shopping, etc.; the overall abuse that went on in my house; and etc.