my eccentricity (read: very particular) with food and intake has been a source of ribbing from friends and relatives. i don't mind those good-natured jokes and sometimes, encountering shocked faces and even more questions when one discovers it for the first time. i've gotten used to it and can now honestly say am at home and have accepted it.
for a time, however, that has not been the case. i can remember a time in high school when i had to pretend to eat (and actually ate bits, with lots of rice and generous gulps of water) vegetable during girl scouts' activities simply because i didn't want to be labeled sosyal and by default, be different. belonging in high school, of course, was very much in every young one's mind then as, by all indications, it is now. i didn't experience nor feel (okay, to be honest, sometimes) inferior and unsure of myself then, yet i still felt the need to be like everyone else at school. amongst family it was totally different. i was me, no pretensions. never felt the need to be a new or different me. and still don't feel the need now.
things changed in college. there i wasn't afraid to be matured. wasn't afraid to be right and wrong. and slowly became me. first, amongst friends, then, to mere acquaintances and strangers.
i didn't care whether they knew i don't eat vegetables and anything with mayonnaise, don't like ketchup (except when it's added in spaghetti and as long as i don't taste it more than the other sauces), don't eat beef (although peculiarly i eat burger patties, stateside corned beef and 1 locally-made corned beef), don't like dishes with vinegar (even the smell oftentimes makes me gag) and yes, if one of these touches my food, i can't eat it already.
unhealthy and limiting, some say, and i agree. but, i am happy and for now i am content.
for a time, however, that has not been the case. i can remember a time in high school when i had to pretend to eat (and actually ate bits, with lots of rice and generous gulps of water) vegetable during girl scouts' activities simply because i didn't want to be labeled sosyal and by default, be different. belonging in high school, of course, was very much in every young one's mind then as, by all indications, it is now. i didn't experience nor feel (okay, to be honest, sometimes) inferior and unsure of myself then, yet i still felt the need to be like everyone else at school. amongst family it was totally different. i was me, no pretensions. never felt the need to be a new or different me. and still don't feel the need now.
things changed in college. there i wasn't afraid to be matured. wasn't afraid to be right and wrong. and slowly became me. first, amongst friends, then, to mere acquaintances and strangers.
i didn't care whether they knew i don't eat vegetables and anything with mayonnaise, don't like ketchup (except when it's added in spaghetti and as long as i don't taste it more than the other sauces), don't eat beef (although peculiarly i eat burger patties, stateside corned beef and 1 locally-made corned beef), don't like dishes with vinegar (even the smell oftentimes makes me gag) and yes, if one of these touches my food, i can't eat it already.
unhealthy and limiting, some say, and i agree. but, i am happy and for now i am content.
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