Food and the Glorious Fury

So this is an essay that I wrote some time ago but something about it has always stuck with me and I can't quite shake how it feels to read it after all this time. It was an assignment given to me in High school by my English Teacher, and it became so personal that I never really got rid of it. So, here it is for the world, or a small part of it ...

For the last three years of my life (it may have been more, but three years seems like a reasonable estimate, and I can't recall anything exact), I have been desperate to escape. It is hard to articulate what I mean when I say escape- for some, it possibly conjures up an image of a vulnerable teen runaway, and for others it means a brief intermission from everyday routine in the form of a holiday. Neither of these really convey any sense of promise. Neither of them are close to what I meant or felt. What I still feel.

There are times when adolescence, and the burden of a future too far to locate and too close to ignore can make you question what the point is of pushing forward. You look around at your classmates, at your friends, and you still see the children you once laughed with, carefree, ignorant. Often I still have to remind myself that I am still a child. Still young. All of us still so young. It's difficult to be taken seriously in a world that still claims that children are not so shaped by their experiences. That it is only an adult who is capable of harnessing past struggles and past pains into something better, something good.

I told myself that perhaps a solution would be to set myself a goal- to envision a future where I felt free, unrestrained, liberated. I told myself I would run barefoot in every room and eventually, finally, have a full rack of vinyl, well thumbed and varied. I would develop new constants; not the ones that had shaped my teenage life, but a new breed of independence. Relying on the heating never working at the chosen degree, organizing my books according to my mood, wearing odd socks with no lapse of judgement. Then, afterwards, I would remember that it was't that simple, that I'd pay bills, maintain a home, maybe have a stressful, all consuming 9-5 job I despised. It made it that much harder to comprehend any potential I had as an individual; and so instead I withdrew from the idealism of a more confident, older me and retreated to reflect on the goodness that had already defined my life-and the more I thought about that, the more I thought about food.

For many, food isn't particularly important, only on a required level - growing up, it held immense value to my family. My mother, who is still a nurse, would often sleep during the day, and in the evening would expect dinner on the table by five o'clock so she subsequently had time to prepare for work after having eaten. My father would cook, and we'd help him set everything up. When we were all seated often an exchange would take place of everybody's day, as well as the events of the outside world which seemed so far from us in our dining room, and the more heated topics of politics and school trips. It was a routine you could rely on, depend on taking place each day. It meant something to me, because it was one of the only times my parents (who are both constantly working) would sit down together and we'd all speak, sometimes all at once.

I think maybe the food opened us all up- my siblings would set the table and wait with anticipation for their favorites- spaghetti, lasagna, moussaka and cottage pie - when my parents were both working or only once of them was there, the atmosphere was totally different; my sisters and I would sit at a table too big for us and would silently chew on pasta and peas.

It seems silly to reflect on the impact of food now, but it held an association with so many events in my life- attending my parents wedding when I was only four and eating their cake which I spat out in disgust (I still remember this and haven't been able to stomach fruit cake since), and shortly afterwards sitting eating my dinner in our tiny kitchen, my mother rushing from the table to be violently sick as a result of being pregnant with my youngest sister. My father's face turning cloudy at a crowded fast food restaurant back in 2014, putting down his mobile and telling us his father, my Grandpa, had passed away. I remember the irony of the bright, obscene colors, as we sat in a booth, life rushing past us, burgers abandoned on the sticky plastic trays. I can't forget all of this, and not remember the meals I've shared with people I have loved and sometimes simultaneously despised, and not recall my laughter or occasional tears.

I think now and try to once more envision a life after, separate, new. I imagine myself, alone. Cooking for myself in a secluded space, walls and ceilings blurred because I can't quite depict the color of the paint I will have used for the layout of the room. The silence will be so disheartening, as I sit by myself at a table not built by my father or adjusted by my mother, and suddenly independence doesn't seem quite so spectacular.

It seems empty and fruitless.

2016