SeanFromCanada's Blog

Originally posted on Oct 9, 2014

I believe if someone is prepared to seriously use the word ‘hate’, they are well advised to take a look at what’s behind such an emotion…it’s certainly not my intention to live a hateful life.  And if I’m going to actually ‘look’ at where the emotion is coming from, the journey certainly wouldn’t be complete without diving into the psychology of all this.  You know, to acknowledge past demons, excavate poorly anchored beliefs and confess to other self-hurt that clouds happiness.  It’s not always easy, and it’s never fun, but if you don’t ‘go there’, you can’t get healthier.

And since only friends are reading this, I’ll share a few things that I’m sure even the most distracted psycho-analyst would be able to surface.

There’s no doubt in my mind that food and my feelings towards it have deep roots in my relationship with my Mom.  Those who know me know I’ve had a strained relationship with her, and that her health challenges haven’t made for a smooth ride for anyone in our family.  As I write this, my relationship is going well with my Mom, but follow the threads here.

First – my Mom is a Home Economist, an entrepreneur who wrote two cookbooks.  I grew up playing the role of the lab rat, being subjected to both successful, and many unsuccessful, meal experiences.  Everywhere I went, people would say to me ‘you must love all the cooking going on in your house’ and ‘you must be picking up a lot of great tips‘… The truth being I was a young teenager and my perspective on things was something quite different.

My Mom slaved in the kitchen; experimenting, documenting, chopping, cooking, cleaning.  It was hard work (something I’m now capable of respecting), but at the time, it just plain sucked.  The kitchen was a hectic place, the stress level always pinned at 10, and she was tired and pre-occupied.  There was a great deal of tension, frustration and the kitchen was the scene of the biggest fights I’ve seen in my family.  The fact those cookbooks succeeded held little value to me – a self absorbed teenager – I just hated the whole thing.  It wasn’t the dream situation everyone else seemed to think it was.

Next slide:  I was a bad eater as a child.  I didn’t like the taste of a lot of foods, I was repulsed at the consistency of more than a few food items, I commented on the smell of virtually everything and I was a distracted doodler.  I’m sure you can imagine, mealtime (particularly dinner) wasn’t a ton of fun.  When I think back to the times I can remember my parents yelling at me, virtually every ‘situation’ was at the meal table.  Since I’m now facing the same sentence with Phoebe, I see how incredibly frustrating and challenging forcing a kid through a meal can be…but at the time when I was young, for me, meals sucked.  My parents and I didn’t ‘connect well’ during meal times…lets just leave it at that.

The worst words I’d hear in the back yard as a child was ‘dinner time!’, being yelled by my Mom.  That meant the playing stopped, my friends had to go home, and I’d have to navigate and negotiate my way through another meal – many of which made me want to gag.  I just didn’t like a lot of food…I was picky, stubborn and a huge pain in the ass.  And so, again, it’s not really that difficult to connect the dots between those difficult and unpleasant times, and food.

Food and tension.  Food and stress.  Food and fighting with my parents.  Food and the end of play.  Food and my youth…messy painful memories that represent ugliness in my past.

While I can look at all this now, and place many of the pieces into other categories, such as ‘highly emotional teenager’ and ‘my Mom was running a business’, I feel a sense of sadness and loss around the images.  I own this past, and know I cannot change it.  Food was a part of all of it, and I see now that much of this emotion has carried forward into my adult life…and my relationship with food.