Dwayne Wayne "Different World" was trying to decide what he felt for Whitley Gilbert and his mom (Patti Labelle) told him "Good love feeds yah like good grub". When I heard that I thought it was so profound. Now of course I realize that my "love" for food helped me make the connection. Actually now that I'm trying to unravel my love for food, it may be an even more profound statement than when I first heard it. Addicts talk about chasing that first high, which of course you never get again. We food lovers, I think chase similar highs. We chase a feeling or a memory associated with a food. For example, just the right tomato sauce evokes memories of when my mom introduced us to homemade pizza by Chef Boyardee. The crust was so thick and substantive, but it was so cool being able to roll out your own dough. The sauce came in a small can, and it was all in that yellow box. I thought that made me as normal as normal got. I couldn't imagine a normal household in the world that didn't have these yellow boxes. For that time my dad didn't exist and everything was right. There was no salad or vegetable to be seen anywhere. I didn't know that balanced meals require more than a good memory, after all tomorrow is coming and the realities of poor nutrition will have to be answered for.
What I perceive as love is sometimes like that. Its a feeling or a memory. My mom would sometimes refer to how my dad treated her family when her father died. I even had relatives who supported my mom's choice to stay talking about his respect of mom's mom and so on. Things change, people change and sometimes what you see is really not the whole story. In middle school we read this story, and I've never found it again. A boy much like us at that age was having what he perceived to be a great day and near the end he encountered a genie. The genie granted him a wish. Being young and impetuous like us at that age, he immediately wished to re-live that day and be able to know he was re-living it so he could enjoy every moment. His wish was granted and he started the day, but as it went on he realized that he had missed little nuances and the day was not as perfect as he thought. He was glad when the day was coming to a close, but to his horror he was not able to stop himself when he reached the place in his day where he wished to repeat his day, and like the best Twilight episode he was left entangled in his own warped world of imperfection.
I think lots of us, self included look at interactions with others through rose colored glasses and see the perfect day. Its only after we are completely separated from the interactions that we see clearly. The abused woman begins to see that her husband wasn't really caring and protective. He called her every hour or had her call him to control her, he wasn't supportive of her losing weight, he was wearing down her self esteem by throwing her weight in her face and comparing her to his secretary. Many times we mistake a high carb, high sodium, high fat pizza for normal and good.
When Mrs Wayne compares good love to good grub, I think she was trying to tell her son to get something sustaining. Chasing a high, a memory or a feeling doesn't allow growth, maturity, and stability. Its more like being on a treadmill, running in place. There's more to experience, more to learn, more to see, and and more to feel. You can always tell when you're in "non-good grub" relationship. You look for the next time you get that same feeling again, to reaffirm why you remain in the relationship. With good grub you have a pretty good feeling that you've made the right selection, and it will feed your heart and soul healthy nutrients. Choosing the other stuff means months of extra workouts, ways to balance it, because it throws everything off. A friend and I compared indigestion stories and she told about being on vacation. She developed severe indigestion, but because she was on vacation and determined to "enjoy" herself, she took antacids and continued to consume what was causing her severe indigestion. Don't look so shocked, she's not the first or the last.
Recently a "cousin" (in the Black community we have sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles etc that we have NO blood relation to, but they have the full rights and privileges of said office) tried to put the moves on me. He started by blowing sunshine up my butt (no not literally.) He informed me that he was attracted to bigger women, (that's an amature trick, on the level of pulling a quarter out of some one's ear). He then tells me his friends are the same and if I was in their midst, I wouldn't last 2 minutes. I would be like a rabbit in a group of foxes. This is suppose to have swelled my insecure head. Let me set the scene for my sarcastic and brutal tone. Imagine, Denzel, Taye Diggs, Omar Epps, and then imagine what they would look like mushed together, and having led a hard life. Now remove all but eight or nine teeth. Oh it gets better and put them outside a trailer after a few beers. This is what's talking to me. But the amazing thing is that he brags he has several children in the county that I live in and proceeds to name the cities and towns he has helped to populate. He brags that his girl drives an hour from that county to the county he lives in to see him. WTF!!!!!!! I need some alone time with this big girl. Then it hits me, in her desperation to experience a feeling or a memory she is chasing this shell of a man, mistakenly thinking he can give her that. I guess he makes her feel wanted and for that she is willing to eat an unbalanced diet and work it off later. OR maybe she has some of my control issues, and she feels here is a man that she knows where he is, she has something he doesn't and no matter what he will always be there or "want her" cause she's got what he needs. Unfortunately life is as unpredictable as it gets and under different circumstances I could have been the one piece of chaos that threw her world completely off.
I guess though until chaos does occur she will continue this nonsense. I for one want to foolproof my life against bad grub. I don't know about you, but I could use some of that good grub and good love Mrs Wayne was talking about. Hopefully as I grow through this journey, I will learn to discern good grub and good love for what it is and get lots of both into my diet.
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