food people

there was no wild writing last week and i don’t know if this is wild writing but it is, it probably is, except without a pen and without my notebook, the messy one, they’ve all been messy since I stopped thinking about how someone will read my journals when I die.

someone will read my journals and i won’t be around to yell at for all my past choices and mistakes or dumb things i’ve said when i was small and sad and probably freezing outside of a cafe in san francisco or in the sun, smoking a cigarette in LA, like I was wont to do. i’ve lived so much life and then forget about it and then go back and read about it like i was some other person.

in my second session with aaron today i skim over a memory of parents working graveyard and the veritable plate buffet of food on the kitchen table, all covered with paper towels, some starting to get soaked with grease. canned corned beef omelettes, fried fish, white rice (the fresh stuff was in the rice cooker), pandesal, longanisa or tocino, maybe spare ribs. pancit. the faint smell of bogoong, like someone had it out for a bit but put it away, the fermented fish of it all too pungent to keep unlidded. all of it cold. make a plate. put it in the microwave. aunties and uncles would come in and out and do the same. maybe there was sinagang in a pot somewhere. i think about how food is a thing. not just for me but for most of my family. my sister, brother and i get excited about good food, comfort food, family foods. we scope out good restaurants. we know where the good food trucks are. if anything, i’m the picky one because wet condiments aren’t my jam.

no one has ever said to me that being a food person is important and i should never lose that.

when you’re fat, you’re told being a food person is probably the thing that will kill you.

it’s really no wonder that when i joined the discord, i found myself most at home in the snacks channel.

old food stories that i had growing up, instilled by family unknowingly, are still hanging around even though my parents are different people now. i like that my mom is obsessed with the bread sticks at the small pizza hut counter at target. i like that she gets little containers of curly fries or wings at the hot deli. i like that there is this joy she has in having these things. i witness her own self judgement and it makes me sad. sadder than when i judge myself. when i’m her age, I want shame to be a distant memory.