Food Was Always A Thing

Food was always a Thing

He'd tell me he was bored with the food I made so I'd find a new recipe. He would criticise everything about it, say it looked disgusting and ask why I was so stupid.

So he'd give me one to try, I'd make it and he'd love it. If I made it again, it was never as good as the first time. If I made it again he hated it. If I never made it again he would tell me that he loved it and I was withholding it because I was lazy/a cunt.

His name is Dan, by the way. I'm tired of allowing him so much anonymity.

A friend of mine saw him at the grocery store. That feeling in my chest is back, and all she did was tell me about it.

He was with a woman; we think it's the same woman he took on what was supposed to be our vacation ( the one I predominantly paid for). That means she's been around for a little more than two years.

I am really struggling right now with guilt. She's probably seen him for what he is by now. And I'm sorry for that. What if I had had a spine back then and told her. Does she need help now?

I feel I should reach out.

Kindness to myself is how I will erase him.

when i was a teenager it felt very revolutionary to be cruel to myself. like some kind of slow passive protest against how much everything hurt. i starved myself of sleep and food and tenderness because it felt right. it felt sharp and angry and radical and i wanted to be those things. adulthood is the realisation that the world is already working to cut into you well before you learn how to do it yourself. caring for yourself and others is the real protest

Find you a partner who, knowing you love them, will make oatmeal peanut butter cookies despite hating both peanut butter and oatmeal themselves.

I'm lying in bed next to my amazing woman, who, moments ago, i woke up so that she'd hold me while I sobbed. For no reason that I can confirm. I am calm now and I feel her drifting off next to me. It's peaceful.

I spent so many nights attempting to pace away my anxiety and dread in the basement alone. I didn't want the creaky floorboards in our old house to wake him.

Waking him was always bad. Especially if I was looking for comfort. His demons were to be soothed, attended and deferred to. Mine, likely only an excuse for my shortcomings, were mine. What business were they of his?