Oh, I Don't Care, Whatever You Want
what she says: "Oh I don't mind, we can eat anywhere. I'm not picky."
what she means: "For my entire life, I've been called bossy/picky/selfish/arrogant/bitchy for voicing my opinions and making my views known, so now when someone I care about asks me about what I want, my immediate gut reaction is to defer to the other person's preference. it's less of a hassle to capitulate to someone else's desires than to risk having someone verbally berate me for being truthful about what I want." ~GALLICINVASION
I was part of a 6-person web for a while. "What do you want to eat" was the biggest fucking chore. One time, that question literally resulted in 3 days worth of panicky, tearful emails and emotional processing. To this day, I still have no idea how.
Even when we instituted the rule "whoever vetoes the most recent food suggestion has to come up with a new suggestion, or else we default to the last unchallenged food suggestion", we still took ALL DAY to decide what to go eat for dinner as a group. And I mean, we would start discussing it when the last person woke up that morning and keep discussing it right up until one of them yelled that we needed to make a decision or else she was going to pass out.
So I had to hone the skills that I had begun practicing years before, where I literally did not allow myself to have a preference, and to just learn to find something I liked no matter the menu. Because at least then there were only 5 people arguing about food instead of 6.
For the last several years, to avoid the stress of choosing food, I have started simply packing my freezer with premade meals (which I was already mostly doing for other reasons that I don't want to get into here) and then just eating what was on top. That way I didn't have to choose. The amount of freedom that not having to choose food has given my emotional stress and decision making process is shocking.
BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE MADE CHOOSING FOOD SO STRESSFUL THAT I WOULD RATHER LITERALLY PICK WHATEVER THE FUCK IS ON TOP THAN MAKE A DECISION ABOUT FOOD
No fucking wonder I became anorexic. In a world where I have no control over anything, including food, I can at least control whether or not I eat by not eating anything at all.
This post was originally posted at https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/398760.html.
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