Hello readers. I am glad you're here and reading, and I hope I can give you something with this newsletter - hope, relatability, warmth? All through my rants and discoveries from lurking on the internet.
Food in Covid
a rant
There's many forms of food -- diet food, stress food, comfort food; food for thought, food for suspicion, food for sustenance.
In 2020, when the first effects of Covid started to be felt in the form of isolation, distancing, leaving and never coming back -- the meaning of everything changed. All we had was ourselves. Everyone else was out of touch, and touch became a luxury.
Food became so much more important, then. Comfort food, specifically. Comfort food is sentiment, nostalgia, warmth; it is taste in our memories. When you can't touch, everything else becomes so much more important, especially taste. The one thing I could touch was food and tangibility was what I was yearning for.
Isolation turned into binge eating Maggi noodles and chocobars and KitKats in my bed. Propped up on my pillow, I ate. I ate pizzas and cakes and remembered days when I could share them. I ate for days I missed eating with others, I ate for days I longed for touch, I ate my weight in sentiments and hurt. Comfort food turned into a possibly toxic dependency where all I knew were days passing and chocolates in my fridge running out.
Food in Covid has a different taste, I think. It tastes of missed memories and missed people, of cafés we don't remember properly, of brownies and tapri chais. It tastes of weight gained as you sit and mope, possibly wanting to work out but being unable to. Even the best of the fit ones were hit by Covid demotivation, I think.
I never worked out. I tried, once or twice. Tried to listen to my father's scathing remarks about my increasing weight but I couldn't. Didn't want to.
I talked about body image issues on my Instagram -- Covid flared my insecurities up. I was eating comfort food as a dependency I couldn't let go of, was stuffing my mouth with food as a replacement for words I had no one to say to. In the middle of all this, weight gain was kind of inevitable and while it hurt to not fit into my jeans on the two occasions I went out, it hurt more to sit free with hands empty and heart emptier.
I say this is about food in Covid, but it really is about food as a comfortable avoidance tactic. It's comfortable to stuff your mouth with noodles not-really-cooked in 2 minutes, it's desired even. What isn't desired is the aftermath, the clothes not-fitting, the stomach fat showing, the body growing in all the ways you don't want.
Food in Covid is taste trying to compensate for touch; if weight gain is the price to pay for drinking hot chocolate and remembering the café in Green Park market with the best hot chocolate you ever had, maybe it's a good deal.
Or maybe I'm just bad at the economics of comfort food and weight gain. Maybe I'm dependent on my increasing weight to feel like I'm growing still.
Maybe I'm just a bad consumer, but that's okay in Covid. Maybe.
#prithurants
Self - affirmations for the average homesick living in toxicity
I talked of Covid and food above. I talked of my father mocking my weight.
Trauma in our homes probably hits the closest. I named his newsletter Homesick-Eye because this is me, seeing my home and feeling homesick.
Here are some self affirmations for your homesick, traumatized self.
i. your house is not your home.
ii. there is the cliché of home being a person, but really, you are your own home.
iii. you are a constant — a constant pain the ass for yourself, a constant support for your best friend, a constant fan of your favourite celebrity, a constant encouragement to your Instagram friends.
iv. homes are supposed to be constant. you are that.
v. you don't ways have to be there for yourself. sometimes, it's okay to leave yourself and take a break.
vi. taking a break from yourself is also important.
vii. I often have trouble telling left from right. it's okay if you have directional issued too.
viii. which is to say — you don't have to make the right decisions always. sometimes, it's okay to be wrong. it's okay to go left.
ix. it's okay to be an odd number.
x. you're average. it may hurt to know, but there's something special about average too — you can do so much, you can be so much, you can be everywhere and everything.
sidenote: an average is the sum of everything. you are the sum of everything.
A very stevebucky covid (of fanart)
1) artist: u-stucky (Tumblr)
2) artist: @ta_dachan (Twitter); source: Tumblr
3) Dose of Devotion by basharuse: Bucky suffers the side effects of the COVID vaccine and Steve is the ever-loving boyfriend. (Ao3)
4) You'll Be My Day and Night by wishesANDmoonshadows: "For the most part, Steve and Bucky spent their quarantine days watching Netflix, working out, sleeping in, and, mostly on Bucky’s part, cooking."
or: Steve and Bucky quarantine together (obviously, they're dating after all) and it's as adorable as anyone would have imagined. (Ao3)
Mag Calls (!!)
My top 8 selections for this month's mag calls!
most of these concern the genres of poetry (that's your expertise, isn't it?)
Deadline: August 31
Theme & genre: Ancient Greece, Her/Their story, short stories and poems
Paid (!)
Deadline: August 31
Theme & genre: Unspecified theme; poetry, prose, nonfiction, flash fiction, art
Paid (!)
Deadline: Running submissions
Theme & genre: Unspecified theme; poetry, prose, nonfiction, art
Paid (!)
Deadline: September 30
Theme & genre: Coffee Shop AU; all fanart forms
Unpaid
Deadline: Running submissions
Them & genre: Unspecified theme; poetry, prose, art
Paid (!)
*Art submissions are unpaid
(For women and non-binary writers only)
Deadline: Running submissions
Theme & genre: Unspecified theme; poetry, fiction, CNF
Paid (!)
Deadline: September 30
Theme & genre: Unspecified theme; poetry, memoirs, flash fiction, CNF, art, interviews, essays
Paid (!)
8. VQR
Deadline: Running submissions
Theme & genre: Unspecified theme; poetry, short fiction, non fiction
Paid (!)
(Websites are linked! Check, check, check and submit, submit, submit!)
It's been a pleasure writing this first issue! Curating Mag calls and fanart and baring myself to you (in a more polished manner, at least) was both exciting and emotional.
Homesick-Eye has been an idea for so long, and now it's here.
I'm bad at conclusions, so I'll just attach two playlists for your pleasure!
Always open and excited for your responses; tell me your covid food stories, please?
Share and stuff, okie?
Special shoutout to you, my amazing loving paid subscribers — thank you for your faith in me, I love you a little special.
Love,
Prithuwu.