It will ripen, either way
I have to keep going to the grocery store.
I have to keep going to the grocery store. I hate that it’s true. I have to keep feeding myself, making breakfast and planning out what to eat the next week. I have to keep returning the empty shopping cart. I have to keep setting full bags on my front step while I fumble for my key. I have to keep unloading nearly ripened fruit into the drawer that will stay untouched until it goes soft and mushy. This will never change.
It’s the cruelest reality. Your world could go to shit in a matter of hours, and you would still have to go to the grocery store when the milk runs out. I never understood as a kid why my mom would send dinners to family friends going through chemo treatment, or a death in the family. But now I know. It’s exhausting to keep yourself alive sometimes, even without major hardships, and the last thing you want is to squint at labels under fluorescent lights while strangers pass pushing the cart with the squeaky wheel. But you must. The days go on.
You learn of loss, of unreturned love. You realize which thing your mom said hurt you the most. You don’t realize where your guilt has festered until you make a joke about it and your throat closes in. You’re pinched at your softest part until your bones bruise. You swirl yourself into a pit so far underground you forget to turn the lights on.
And the world still spins on. Work shifts come and go, keys turn in locks, and your stomach reminds you to feed it. Over, and over. The peach will stay in the drawer. Maybe you eat it, maybe you don’t. It will ripen, either way.
The world will move on with or without you. I don’t know how to think of it in a way that isn’t despairing. I think of all the peaches I’ve let soften. All the wilted bags of spinach. All the food I’ve let go to waste because I lacked the life to prepare it. All the days I’ve spent staring at an empty fridge dreading the inevitable.
I don’t want to be coerced by the capitalists to get ahold of myself and do something before the world runs off without me. I don’t want to think about vitamins and food groups and nutritional content. I don’t want to compare brands and scour ingredient lists and search for 20-minue recipes on Tiktok. But I will, because my fridge will empty and my leftovers will go bad, and I’ll have to scrape the mold out and into the trash. No technology, no variation of Instacart will rid me of the mental weight of having to go on.
And yet I will. Whether I want to or not. I will ripen, either way. And maybe in that ripening lies an outlook that isn’t despairing. I guess I will see, either way.
Where I’ve been ripening
Daily: billing and numbers and new tasks at my new job that tire out my brain too quickly, revisiting my high school for my sister’s graduation and realizing how much I’ve changed, afternoon Diet Cokes and evening raspberry shortbreads
Media: The Weakness by Ruston Kelly ft. Samia, Walk Me Home by Searows
Books: End of the World House by Adrienne Celt, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy
Here’s hoping we have enough milk to last the week,
Helena