"ℙ𝕒𝕤𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕜𝕖𝕥𝕔𝕙𝕦𝕡"

My parents got divorced when I was in my early teens, I honestly don't remember the year. Most years back then were chaotic and put in files in the back of my mind so that they weren't easily remembered. I was in survival mode. I lived with my Mom for a few years in the apartment she rented and when she moved to a different town, I didn't follow her, but instead rented the same apartment for a while with her financial help.

I worked at a nursing home of sorts, I say that because it was titled as an assisted living facility. But many residents were unable to care for themselves, and I almost lost my job as the dishwasher for feeding a woman who couldn't feed herself. As a sixteen year old, getting called into the administrator's office for a lecture on why I just needed to wash dishes, and leave caring for the residents out of it, was confusing to me.

So I did what I had to. I kept feeding her, but I got better at pretending I wasn't. I would give her spoonfuls of her meal in between clearing the tables. Even though she couldn't communicate, I felt like she knew the routine that I developed to feed her. I quietly told her son one day when he came to sit with her at lunch, and he started showing up regularly to feed her too.

I had no extra money. I walked the couple of miles to and from work, rain or shine, snow or storms. I learned to make do with what I could afford, and that was a skeletal selection of whatever food would last the longest. Thus began my sustenance on ketchup and dry toast, two items that gave me the biggest bang for my buck. I learned to eat the ketchup toast and be thankful for having something solid to go with my tea, which is a Canadian staple. And we drink it with cream up there. Here I drink it either black or with cream, perhaps a blend of my citizenships.

Many nights I went to bed hungry because I was saving the last two slices of bread for morning's breakfast (my energy boost) before walking to work. I wasn't angry or sad because those were emotions that were bled from me long ago, teaching me to accept my circumstances and find the best way to deal with what I had to work with. Emotions were for people who had the space to express them, but there was no room for emotional displays in a room that was cramped from chaos and need.

I eventually grew up, moved to America and I was able to experience an unremarkable life, but one that gave me more than ketchup and dry toast .

Every once in a long while, I eat dry toast with ketchup on it just to remember how grateful I was to have it back then. The tang of the ketchup reminds me of the struggles I had but the sweetness reminds me that I overcame them to be where I am today. The space between "have" and " have not" for me was paved with ketchup and dry toast. I've known people who said "yuck" to the very item on my life menu that kept me going, physically and mentally.

I have never seen ketchup on dry toast listed on any menu in a restaurant and likely never will, because ketchup on dry toast is my story, my own testimony of accepting "what is" until "what can be" arrives.

I was in a feast or famine kind of place back then, and I chose ketchup on dry toast as my feast.