It’s a Sunday in November, and my mom is visiting. I just had one of those weeks where it feels like you’re running from one thing to the next while trying to catch up in every class. Needless to say, I had not gotten a lot of sleep. I did, however, make sure to eat at least two meals a day. The importance of food in maintaining my health was ingrained into me growing up. I am very fortunate in that I have not had a terrible struggle with my body image, so I have never thought about my relationship with food aside from what it’s there for: to give me energy and (hopefully) taste good. So, I continue to make an effort to have a big lunch and dinner every day and keep enough snacks in my room, so that even when I am tired, at least my body canfind energy from somewhere.
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It’s noon and my mom just dropped off my Christmas decorations. I was hoping she could stay for a bit so we could go out for lunch. My past week was really busy, but Sunday was my catch-up day, and although I began to feel the anxious, foreboding feeling of wasting the little time I had, I did everything I could do dismiss it. Spending time with my mom was important, and I immediately felt ashamed that my on-to-the-next-thing mentality that had gotten me through the week was trying to categorize my mom as a distraction. She asked me where I wanted to go, and my stomach cried out for its most immediate source of energy: carbs. So, we set out to find Italian food.
The first place we tried was so close that we could walk, and I knew it had quick service, which helped compromise my stomach and that nervous feeling I was trying to ignore. Unfortunately, much to both parties’ dismay, it was closed.
At times, eating can feel like a nuisance. Especially during a busy week, making the time to eat can feel so inconvenient. It was not something I added to my Google Calendar, but it was something I always had to think about. Sometimes I wished I could just feel full all the time. But eating was sustenance, and I knew it was one of the only sources of energy that could keep me going.
Plan B. I stared longingly at the darkened menu of cannellonis and penne pasta. Luckily, Eataly was right upstairs and had just opened. Unluckily, Eataly had just opened. It would be a forty-five-minute wait, and neither my mom nor I had the time to spare when it came to our hunger.
That week I had eaten full meals, but if you asked me to tell you what I ate I would have to pull up the dining hall menu to remember. As I mentioned before, it was a week of running from place to place, and eating was no exception. Most of my meals were eaten in ten minutes or less, or on the go. The problem is, when you eat fast, it takes longer for your stomach to realize you ate and for you to feel full. I may have left the dining hall with a full stomach, but it wouldn’t feel like that for another half hour.
On days when I wasn’t running from one thing to the next, I entered Burwash with the mentality of studying while I ate. This mentality would last until I saw my friends because trying
to do work was impossible when there was someone to talk to. I would always end up leaving with that anxious feeling of having wasted my time.
Plan C. My mom had to get home soon to drive my younger sister to work. She asked me what we should try next, and the only place I could remember was a restaurant near College station. We headed toward Bloor-Yonge station, that feeling of time-wasting in full force but now overpowered by my hunger. It was only a short subway ride away. It would be fine.
The subway was delayed. We found this out, of course, only after I had tapped my Presto and my mom bought her tokens. Defeated, I slumped against a wall and tried to think of a solution while my stomach rumbled louder than a train would have, had the trains not been delayed.
Plan D. My mom suggested a take-out pasta place she had heard me talk about before. Or maybe we could just find something else that was quick. She wanted to spend time with me too, but she had to get back home, and we had already wasted too much time on the search for food.
But I didn’t want take-out. I didn’t want my food rushed. I wanted to sit down and have time to eat and talk with someone I care about. I wanted to enjoy my meal as more than something to just keep me going. So even though she had already asked me how my week was and I’d said “good, but busy” without elaborating, I told her how I just wanted to sit down and eat. That I hadn’t gotten a chance to actually enjoy a meal all week. After that moment, by some Italian miracle, the subway came, and we made it to our last resort. It was empty, but it was open.
We stayed for an hour. My dad came home in time to drive my sister to work, and although I still had work to do, I decided I could make time later.
My need to enjoy a meal that day overpowered my need to feel productive, and it is a need I have tried harder to meet since then. This experience taught me to give myself more time to eat, even if that means having to apologize for being ten minutes late, because food doesn’t taste nearly as good as when I have the time to sit down and enjoy it. Now when I eat, I make a point to tell myself that eating is for eating and it is not for working. It is for talking to friends and family and fighting against the feeling that this is a waste of time. The dining hall is not a place where my productivity goes to die, it is where I can refuel myself both physically and socially. And when I am having another one of those busy weeks where I am running from place to place, I remember to take the time to eat and to treat eating like the mental break it is, because that is what keeps me going.
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