Sunday Scaries — March 17/24

I used to feel like I ate loneliness for breakfast. Like I consumed it, then it consumed me.

That as a young girl I’d sit at the big white wooden kitchen table that accommodated my family of six, and see the options spread out in front of me. Instead of Frosted Flakes, Cheerios, and if I was lucky, the sugary marshmallows of Lucky Charms, it was these grey, dull boxes of loneliness.

Then I’d pour the geometric-shaped pieces of whole-grain puffs into my bowl, knowing that their beige, sharp edges would cut the inside of my mouth as I took each bite. That the taste of the milk wouldn’t be enough to cut the bitterness of the loneliness as it hit my tongue and my taste buds absorbed its pain.

It felt like this was a choice that wasn’t my own, like even when I wasn’t a kid anymore, it was still a serving given to me by someone else that I didn’t have any control over. It was as though I was doomed to eat loneliness for all my meals and needed to find some measly level of satisfaction in the dish.

Then I started refusing the loneliness cereal in the mornings. I’d skip the lunch offering and dinner too.

I identified the difference between loneliness and solitude and the latter became my dessert.

My cravings became for time with myself, to think inwardly and do things for myself and often, by myself.

I stopped eating loneliness for breakfast and became so much fuller with chosen solitude.