I’m a chronic overthinker, recovering perfectionist, and serial red flag finder. I’ve experienced more grief than I can compartmentalize, with much of those experiences beginning to sewage together circa 2022.
And within that sewage, I allow the actions and words of those past and present to create this toxic alphebet soup in my mind; a curdling of letters that form rotten sentences, meals I ingest in haste before evaluating their ingrediants.
We’ve all been there. We’ve chosen to place our foot on the gas and coast into a familiar setting that’s commercialized as something we will enjoy.
The happy meal.
I recall, as a little girl, feeling ansty in the backseat of my father’s car. There was an excitement, hoping and praying I’d get the figurine I was desperate to behold. Whether it was to show off or play with or collect, I just had to have it.
Isn’t that half of the fun? The flaunting of the prize? The burst of dopamine as we unclench the slender cardboard prison filled with pungent grease and mystery meat?
But after the meal is eaten and the toy is revealed, the excitement never lasts. It’s gone within a flash. Perhaps I’d play longer with one toy more than the other, but not for long. There was always another toy to grasp, another meal to purchase.
And those meals came with a price.
At 13, after consistently living off of fast food (due to circumstances outside of my adolescent hands), I became ill. I gained weight, I felt exceedingly lethargic, my joints ached, and insomnia became an unwelcomed acquaintance.
It wasn’t until becoming ill once again with Topical Steroid Withdrawal at 25 (unapologentic plug in for Eczema Awareness Month — go watch my film x), that I started to understand that all that we do, say, eat, apply, surround ourselves with… is fuel. It’s all fuel. But instead of being cognizent of how that fuel may effect our wellbeing, we often trade nourishment for instability, a rush, or just an abandoment of assessing ramifications because we turn a blind eye to what we want most and settle with what our bodies want right now.
Now. Now. Now. Impulse.
Whether we’re unaware of it, fighting against it, or even blatantly allowing it to go unsupervised, it’s that vein-tapping hit.
Impulse is that sexy happy meal, and everyone wants the toy. And then the next toy, and the one after that…
…until we wonder why we feel so sick and unsatisfied from seeking easy and cheap, instead of realizing that sustenance is the prize.
Whether it’s
… wellnes choices
… relationships we form
… careers we pursue
… media we consume
… personal practices
quality will always, always, always win out. We have to stop looking for answers through a fast food window and start being more intentional before we can no longer remember what nourishing fuel sounds, looks, and feels like to our body and our mind.
We have to stop wasting precious time talking to a box.
Instead, reverse out of the drive-thru;
from the dazzling lights of a screen
from the misaligned behaviors of people
from the beauty standards guised as health instead of harm
from the accustomed Golden Arches.
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