The meaning of Vegetables...

I'm currently writing a short story that is very clearly a fictional version of events in my life over the last two years. It's not based on actual events, it's a ghost story but the character is clearly me and the supporting characters are very clearly people from my life. Heck, they even have their own names. Which, is a risky tactic but I figured calling Harry, Henry would fool no one and make a mockery of the whole thing, if he is going to feature, he might as well feature with his own name. Yes Harry, you feature. Well a fictional character based strongly on you features. Don't worry; you're a hero just like you are in life. 

Writing it I have found the words to describe a phenomenon of my deepest darkest depression that I have been unable to explain before; the fear of the supermarket. In the depths of my madness I found entering a supermarket the most terrifying, soul destroying thing. I would avoid it at all costs. I resorted to stealing cereal from my despairing flat mates. On the occasions I did cook food it was invariably the same thing and the dishes left in my wake were discarded by the sink as I slunk away exhausted from the process of cooking and eating. In short, I was a terrible house mate; for many more reasons than the food stealing, the discarded dirty dishes, the over flowing bin. There was also the dark cloud hovering in every room I entered, the hysterical crying, the clawing neediness, the hollow, sunken eyes, and the lethargic gait. Living with me was horrendous and I knew it but I couldn't help it...which in turn made me feel worse.

Well now I live alone and when I descend into a week of leaving my dirty dishes, buying food in packets as I have no clean cutlery and cannot face washing up the dirty ones, storing my clothes in a heap on the floor and sleeping on the sofa as the TV blares there is no one there to witness it and I can feel bad in the peace and quiet of my own horrid mess; without guilt. But I cannot avoid the supermarket. However, I have found the dash in and dash out to buy a pre made sandwich or salad a comforting, yet expensive alternative. But why you cry was the supermarket such an ordeal? Even today when I have a bad week and cannot bring myself to shop and plan I can enter the supermarket without a sense of dread and panic. But in the depths of my madness, well, let’s just say none of the food made any sense and that was terrifying. It was a terrifying reminder of what was happening inside my brain. It had simply stopped functioning properly. In the past and even today, even on a bad day (and yes there are still bad days, plenty of them) I could look at a vegetable, a piece of meat, a fish and see a whole recipe unfold. Ooh I fancy broccoli, what goes best with broccoli? And so would begin a little adventure as I went hunting for the rest of the ingredients. But in my madness a broccoli was a confusing green thing that meant nothing: Mincemeat? Nothing: rows of vegetables together in a salad aisle? Nothing; I couldn't put anything together with anything else. It was all just a selection of things I had no idea what I was supposed to do with. And that is terrifying; when vegetables suddenly lose all meaning. How can a vegetable lose its meaning? I don't know but it can. I would nip in the supermarket and head straight for the wine aisle. I would spend what little money I had on my daily bottle of wine (I didn't drink a bottle a day but I had to have a bottle available to me every day so I could drink a glass, two, half a bottle, a whole bottle, it depended on the day) and then if I was feeling really adventurous I would head to the pasta or pizza aisles and buy them. That was all I could handle. The vegetable aisle was a terrifying mystery. The chocolate aisle was its usual comforting self. The meat and fish counters often involved an actual conversation with people and also couldn't be faced. Thank goodness for self-service machines, I could never have coped with the small talk of a stranger as she packed my pathetic shopping into a bag for one sad and lonely person. 

I would sneak home, make whatever I had at my hands for food that night, grab a wine glass and sneak upstairs with my bottle of wine hoping not to be caught in the process of a) stealing food, b) leaving my dirty dishes, again, and c) in possession of wine that I couldn't afford to share because I needed to have some left over for tomorrow night and the night after, I had spent all my cash and could not possibly have a night without my comforting wine between now and pay day. And then I would shut my bedroom door and pretend that everything outside it didn't exist. Not the dirty dishes and the over flowing bin, not the barely stocked cupboard, not the kitchen floor that I hadn't swept or mopped in god knows how long, not the bathroom I couldn't clean nor the shampoo bottles I kept stealing from, not the supermarket and certainly not the World outside. 

Even as I write this I am almost at once aware of it as an actual memory and looking at it as if it was a fictional person I was writing about. The story as I write it is coming out in the third person, which is exactly how I feel about it today: As if all of that happened to another person; a version of me but not entirely me. Which I guess is a sign that I am not in that place today. Even though the past few weeks have felt bad, they haven't been that bad. The vegetables still have meaning and I guess that's all I can hope for some days.