Coron-orexia

[Is every title going to be some kind of Corona pun? No. Just most.]

I’m going to have an argument with myself tomorrow morning. I can feel the fight speeding toward my brain like a train with no breaks or a stick of butter in my direct eye line. Inevitable.

As of tomorrow, there will be no more blueberries in this house. We’ve rationed them for two full weeks. 6 per oatmeal portion, 8 per Greek yogurt breakfast (b/c Greek yogurt is now poison), 0 for tossing in ones mouth as a little jolt of natural sugar joy (jolts of perishable food joy are cancelled).

Do we need blueberries? No. Do we want blueberries? Yes. Should we go to the grocery store to get blueberries? That is the question my brain and I will go to bat around tomorrow morning (or, I guess, right now).

It’s been two weeks since we’ve gone to the grocery store and some food supplies we commonly eat are approaching low to no. Do we have food? Yes. Is it the ideal set of ingredients for a delightful week of three square meals? No. Is there what one might call plenty of food in the house? Yes. But are we at hoarding status? No.

[Is every paragraph going to be this series of questions and obvious rhetorical answers. No. Just most].

So we could go to the grocery store and maintain our status as morally upstanding citizens of the Pandemic: Los Angeles Edition. But we could just as easily skip the grocery store and be fine for another seven days. Pre-covid “fine” but mid-Covid actual fine. What are we supposed to do?

The absolute safest move for our health and the health of others: don’t go. A perfectly logical move (given how safely we’ve learned to operate in public and how thoroughly we clean everything that comes into our house): go.

But there’s this other - force I guess? - now guiding my decisions. This voice that says have less, buy less, do with less.

It says - be a hero (?); live without blueberries for seven days.

This is strange because it’s not like some Pandemic patrol officer comes to the house each week to track our moves and count our berries. I don’t get on a regular conference call with my best friends and brag about how little I’m shopping at Sprouts. And LA is not Singapore where my friend Clelia reports that you can now take a photo of a fellow citizen sans mask and send it to the government so they get fined (Yikes, but also maybe bravo?)

Adding to the illogic of my logic - I’m not experiencing an unusual amount of fear around getting the virus. That’s not why I don’t want to go pick up some stupid berries (and kale and hummus and I’ve been craving eggplant and more decaf coffee would be nice). I just…I don’t know…want to not need to go?

Ugh I feel so American, I said as we wrote a grocery list two weeks ago.

It included pints of vegan ice cream. How dare I want vegan ice cream when people are dying, I guess? Now is the time to live like my grandparents lived, I’m thinking? Pandemic pussies need fresh fruit in their oatmeal, is my soap box speech to no one?

I seem to have - for some reason - decided that “good” people live as small as possible right now and “bad” people (American people?) buy berries?

But I know that spending money on food helps our economy. I know that springing for take-out helps my community. I know that keeping a healthy diet of food I enjoy helps me stay sane so I don’t drive my husband and/or dog crazy(er). So then why did I turn a two-servings-per-container chia pudding into four servings by adding water?

[I promise that is the last rhetorical question sequence. Of this post]

I honestly don’t know, but I’m wondering if it has more to do with the fight in the brain than the subject of the fight. I have this sneaky suspicion (inspired by some recent therapy chats) that my body needs a place to put all the uugghhh, so it shoots it from my nervous system up to my brain. And my brain knows just what to do: give it something to fight with myself about. Something to be bad at. It’s easier to be frustrated with yourself that - say - the bat that gave the world a pandemic.

So I think I might be fighting the wrong battle. Or maybe it’s the fighting at all that’s wrong? Maybe this whole Quarantine is just an exercise in learning to surrender? Maybe if I cry for 30 minutes about how frustrating it is to try and write television scripts in a loud house (we’re under construction here, long story), where another person is working (predominantly through conference calls), while thoughts of global shut down sit heavy on my heart (slash body and brain), I’ll feel fine about buying the blueberries?

I have no idea. But on Day 37 (of what will be at least 64, in Los Angeles), I’m (becoming) willing to find out.