#feel free to read tho!! i just treat tumblr as my diary aklajflkadsjf

[zhuhongs]

When I was growing up I didnt understand why people shared food with others. I shared food with my mom and such, but that was it. I thought that sharing food was something people only did with those super close to them. I never once just considered sharing food with others like many families do.

I grew up as one of the only poor colored kids in a well off white neighborhood. My mom always had this weird complex. That she and the rest of our family "weren't like other Hispanic people" because we "didn't take handouts" and "didn't live like that" whatever that was supposed to mean.  I hate her internalized racism sm... it fucked me up so bad but i’m mostly over it and she is too thank god but that's a whole other issue for another text post) Thus she always ingrained it in me that I don't take food that other ppl are offering me. If a white person tries to give me food, they're probably just pitying me for being the poor girl. And if a poc gives me food, they need it more than I do, I should take it but pay them back later for it. To save face and not cause burden. I never thought twice abt it and it was rarely an issue. Most of my friends were white and their parents always thought it was kind that i offered to pay for my food but never let me. And my friends of color... well i didnt have many. I didnt have many friends growing up that I rlly remember. I was always just weird and quiet. I occasionally brought food on birthdays and got food for others on their birthday. But outside of special occasion I didnt go out of my way to give people food. If I didnt like something I'd give it to someone who did. And if someone was gonna throw something away, I ate it. I never let food go to waste. When I went out with people, I bought my food and they bought theres and we just ate. Nothing else. I never thought anything of it.

I remember a very distinct moment where I started to feel differently. I was in my second semester of university and my dance team was preparing for a performance over spring break. We had been practicing from 9am to 3pm and then decided to go to the mall to get food and just hang out for a bit. My university friend group is like.. notoriously bad at making decisions so I usually make the decisions for them bc theyre all so passive alkfjaslkfjd (THEY ALL HAVE OLDEST IMMIGRANT DAUGHTER OF COLOR SYNDROME like me too omg ik ur a ppl pleser but PICK SMTH, ily them... i’ll stop now) . SO we were deciding where to get food and settled on the food court and we all get what we want. So we did all that and sat a big table together and I just remember everyone putting the food in the middle and getting extra plates so we could take from each we wanted and have a little bit of everything. And at first i was like?? HUH!?? like I got what i wanted bc thats what I wanted and then planned to take my leftovers home to eat at work later that night. And that ended up working out, they could kinda tell that was my intention but ever since then I noticed that that friend group always does that. We all buy different things and share. I really used to find it dumb at first bc its my money and i paid for what i wanted. I didn’t want to take others food and I didn’t rlly want to give them mine. I thought that mentality was universal. I was always kinda on the outside with that group, we never fully meshed but I really wanted to make the effort to be friends with them because I knew it would be rewarding, even if we were just casual friends. And yea idk, just through them I began to kinda unlearn the way I used to feel about sharing food. It’s not about the money, it’s about the connection to others and about giving freely and letting others give to u. But money was always tight as a id. As I’ve started working and making money, thankfully i’ve abandoned this knee jerk reaction.

I read a chapter of a book for highschool english once called “Sharing Food as an Act of Communion” or smth along those lines and I got the concept but didn’t rlly think it was that deep. But in that moment, i started to understand it a lot more. Sharing food and sharing things in general isn’t about the object itself, its about what got u to that point to share something with someone. Due in part to way i was raised as I elaborated on earlier, I really wasn’t a loving or giving person. I was selfish. I was taught to be selfish. Because my parents had that mentality and passed it onto their kids. That was the cutthroat immigrant way of theirs. They were very much “pull yourself up by your bootstraps ppl.” My brother is still like that a bit. It’s very sad sometimes, I’m trying to get him out of it. Baby steps. My mom doesn’t understand why he’s so selfish. One of these days I think i’m going to sit her down and tell her that it’s her own doing. That how she raised us. But I know she doesn’t want to hear it, so for her sake and mine I just agree with her and let the issue pass without incident. I truly believe that kindness and community are the most radical things that humans have. I rlly do. It took me a long time to get there. I used to be so convinced I was better of alone. One man for themselves. I blame my father, i really do.

One time when things were really going to shit with my family, my dad came in my room and asked me how I could be so cruel to him when he was my father, completely unaware of the fact that I had been abused by him my entire life. He just didn’t register it that way bc it wasn’t physical. He said to me “You know Sage, I would expect this from your brother. But you’re a girl . I thought you’d be nicer, more loving and giving.” but it was his own actions that shaped this. And it wasn’t until I had stopped living with him at 18 that I was able to become more like how I am now.

Really, in the past I wasn’t a very nice or loving person. I wasn’t mean either!! I was just passive. A cold lake near a forest. I was nice looking on any surface level, but there was nothing warm or pleasant. A cold lake with jagged rocks underneath. With the help of others i’ve warmed, the rocks eroded down to something you would keep in a collection. I prefer it this way. I’ve healed a bit. I understand now what ppl mean when they say food is a love language. It isn’t one for me yet, but I recognize why it is for others. I get it now.