Some of that list making could be in response to financial insecurity. The first grocery list I ever made for myself was in Pittsburgh.
My stomach just flip flopped at the word Pittsburgh. There is some heavy stuff there. It spilled over and consumed my 20s with bad judgement and impulse control issues and stupidity. Naivety. School and Jay and sex and pot and tears. No voice. Tears.
Whew.... deep breath.
After my roomate left me alone in Pittsburgh. After I was failing in school and no longer attending. When I couldn't pay rent and was shamed for eating my roomate's food. (STILL have no clue how going to school in Pgh was supposed to work for me. I was enrolled in a tech school, made to sign a lease, and dumped in Pgh with a stranger. I attended school for 1 month. Then rent was due. Then I needed a bus pass to get to school. Then I needed to do laundry and buy toilet paper. And I had nothing. No one ever told me I needed to get a job. No one ever TOLD ME THAT. Everyone just told me to go to school and a living grant would be given to me. Well, it never came. I was supposed to be a full time student. I was supposed to be done in 18 months. I was supposed to be good. And instead of helping me, the dorm demanded rent. My roomate's family demanded that I pay for my own food and the phone bill. I had nothing. I was too scared to leave my apt in case I needed a quarter for the phone or something. I had no clean clothes, no heat in my apartment, no bus pass, and only a massive bag of potatoes to eat. So I stopped going to school. My roomate blamed it on the internet, but that wasn't it. My computer was my only friend. I didn't know what to do. NO ONE EVER TOLD ME WHAT TO DO! They just shamed me for my grades failing. My mother drove to Pgh and asked me why I was getting so thin and why I had bad grades. Um... You prepared me for NOTHING. I have guilt and shame to this day about everything that happened to me in Pittsburgh and I'm here to say, NONE OF IT WAS MY FAULT!!!!!!!! One day, I might believe it enough to get over it.)
Anyway. One thing I'd packed for my dorm room was a cookbook. I poured over it when I was hungry. I made elaborate meal plans and pairings. I made dream grocery lists, down to the ounce needed of each item. I kept it on the fridge. It was pristine. Meanwhile I cut and boiled a potato each day.
I was alone and starving. I had a computer, a bed, a recliner, and a 21" tv with a broken remote. I could only get like 3 channels and one of them aired Seinfeld a lot.
I made a lot of lists.
My mother decided to invite herself and Charlotte to brunch at my place. I was too afraid to answer the door. Someone else buzzed them in. I had no food. I was in dirty clothes. I had no where for them to sit. It was mortifying. And still, no one helped me.
I ended up staying with a boyfriend who dealt drugs and forced me to have sex daily. He threatened to kill me every day. He'd tell me, in detail, how he was going to murder me. I stayed because I could bathe once a week and they fed me dinner.
I was tormented by his sister. I was too dirty and fat. He would invite his ex girlfriend over and they'd have sex while I waited in the living room. They'd go out and leave me there. He'd tell me to leave because I got my period. I'd starve until he called me up again.
Once, I pretended to lose my keys so that I couldn't leave. His mother shamed him into letting me stay, that night, but drove me to home the next day.
It was horrible and humiliating and I was in pure survival mode. Do whatever you want to me. Say whatever you want to me. Until I believed it. I was worthless and dumb. I was a leech, so I had to give him whatever he wanted to pay him back.
I made lists.
