I went through things like growing up underweight for a while and sneaking food that was withheld from me. Those things still affect me. Looking back, one of the worst parts of this was that my caretakers were not poor. We went on vacations around the world each year along with wealthy families(one of them was a millionare family) usually staying in impressive hotels. Yet I was somehow always under the impression that we were desolately poor. I remember a teacher making an embarrassing call in front of the entire class to my childhood caretakers to tell them I needed new clothes. They sold this myth to me that they could not possibly buy me many basic needs, and I believed it more than the proof of these vacations that we were actually well off.

Someone in my current life repeatedly told me I can heat up canned food instead of eating it straight from the can. The idea of taking the step to heat my canned food still feels forgein. If canned food prices weren’t through the roof now, I’d try to keep practicing what they told me.