Why I Spend Money on Eating Out

For some unknown reason, many people enjoy judging how others spend their money. Particularly when the person spending money is poor, others like to make comments. “Why would you have a smartphone if you can barely pay rent?” “How can you spend money on organic veggies if you’re using food stamps?” “If you can afford x then you can definitely afford y”.

What’s fascinating to me about this is that there are often complex reasons that people choose to spend their money the way they do. People have different priorities, purchases can mean different things to different people, and often something that looks frivolous may serve an important role to the person who buys it. It seems to me to be yet another example of individuals assuming that everyone else views the world and interacts with the world in the same way that they do, and then becoming upset when others act differently from them.

Unfortunately however, this kind of judgment does actually have negative consequences. It leads to campaigns to take away food stamps and support programs, verbal harassment, and serious anxiety and emotional tolls on those who do spend their money in different ways due to the necessity of constantly defending their choices. Those who live in poverty already have to make difficult decisions about how to spend their money, but putting their choices constantly under the scrutiny of all of society is generally a horrible way to ensure that they can make decisions which will positively impact their lives. Most studies have found that shame is a bad motivator, and because individuals require different things (unheard of, right?), expecting all people with lower incomes to follow the same set of societally enforced guidelines is deeply unhelpful.

Let’s not even get into the fact that oftentimes large purchases were made before someone fell into poverty, or were a gift.

Now I’m sure some people out there are shaking their heads and thinking “Yeah, but everyone needs food and shelter, so shouldn’t those things always come first? Shouldn’t you always make sure your money goes to those things and then prioritize other stuff?” Yes, it’s true that everyone needs food and shelter, but not everyone is privileged enough that these are their only basic needs. Some people have chronic illnesses, disabilities, children, or other extenuating circumstances that could put their safety at risk if they are not attended to. Additionally, life is not just about surviving, and when those who live in poverty manage to have the money to do something that helps them thrive, we should not disdain them for it.

As per usual, I will use myself as an example because I like to talk about me (and because I am the most readily available subject). I currently am living in poverty. I make a ridiculously low wage ($11,000/yr) and don’t get benefits. I am lucky in that I have a fair amount of savings, but I do have student loans as well and at this point in my life I’m fully independent. However I go out to eat on a regular basis. Sometimes really nice restaurants. I spend probably half of my money on food.

I very often have this pointed out to me as a way that I could cut costs and live in a more stable fashion. I’ve gotten the side eye from family members who think I’m being stupid or irresponsible. People tell me all the time “why don’t you just cook at home? It’s cheaper and better for you!” To that I laugh. One of the symptoms of my eating disorder is that I really hate cooking and having food in my home. It sends my anxiety through the roof, particularly when I have perishables around. If I have to spend more than about 15 minutes on cooking, I just won’t do it and when I try I often end up a crying mess, purging, cutting, or all three.

Because of this, the only foods that I feel comfortable having in my home (e.g. which I don’t feel leave me vulnerable to hurting myself) are those which are quick to prepare and will keep for a long time. Essentially this is ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and soup. When I eat at home, that is the extent of my diet and when I have attempted to change it, very bad things have happened. Eating this diet is not healthy. It’s not really safe for me to eat this day in and day out, especially considering my history of restriction. Going out to eat is the only reprieve I have from this. It’s not a get out of jail free card from my eating disorder, but it makes things easier. It gives me access to more variety, to balanced meals, to some joy in my food.

Spending money on eating out is for me spending money on my own health. I cannot simply choose to eat and cook at home and be healthy. So when others look at me and act as if I am being frivolous with my money by eating out, what they miss is that the money I spend is spent on something truly important. It could even be a matter of life and death (yes, eating disorders do kill and frequently). What they miss is that they have no comprehension of the complicated balancing act of pros and cons that go into my purchasing decisions.

Everyone has an entire life that goes into every action that they make. You don’t see everything they’re weighing when you see the final outcome that is the decision to spend money. So unless you have a great deal of knowledge about the life of whoever you feel the need to “help”, leave it alone.

 

Disability: Being Broken

Much of the time I feel broken. A fair amount of the time I don’t simply feel that way, I’m told that I’m that way. Not overtly, no, but in the way that people talk about mental illness, the way that people talk about people who don’t have good jobs straight out of college, in the way people talk about women who have experienced any sexual trauma…these things tell me that I’m broken. I once had a friend tell me that he could never be the parent of a disabled child because you would sink your whole life into them and they would still be subpar. As someone who has multiple birth defects and major mental illness, that fucked with me.

I’m told that I need to fix things about myself. I need to be less judgmental and more accepting. I need to stop reacting so quickly and harshly to things. I need to make my anxiety go away, and make my depression go away. I need to change how I feel about the world and myself, change how I perceive everything in order to be “happier”. I’m told that I need to change myself, fix myself, retrain my brain so that it’s different from what it is now and so that I behave differently in order to be whole and acceptable. I have been bribed and threatened by people who are well-meaning to get me into therapy to “fix” me.

And I now work in an autism program. And I hear the same kind of language. I’ve been reading blogs about autism and hearing about the ways that children are asked to ignore their own perceptions, feelings, and understandings so as to act in a way that is acceptable to others. I have begun to understand that in many ways, people to help those with autism still view autism as a disease that infects someone, a broken piece of their child that needs to be banished so they can have the real child back.

That’s how I feel when I talk about my eating disorder. People have literally told me to view the disorder as something separate from me, almost like it’s possessing me, like it’s broken and if I can just fight it away then I will be back and the disease will be gone. I’ve been broken or taken over by this bad thing, but if I could just get past it, throw it away, change it, then I would be normal and ok again.

Except that that’s not how mental illness or disability works. The way someone who is autistic views the world isn’t broken: it’s different. What is broken is the way that we treat those who see things differently or act differently. We expect them to move 99% of the way towards what we view as normal so that we can be comfortable, and then we make a 1% accommodation to adjust to them. We don’t allow that some people might be far more happy if they were allowed to act and think in a way that is radically different from the way we do.

As an example, I will always be more comfortable thinking in terms of my own safety and trying to avoid things that will be triggering for me: I will probably never be able to spend much time in a kitchen making food on my own. I will never cook for others. I will always feel more comfortable if others will simply accept what I say about my disorder and don’t question my experience. I will always feel more comfortable if I can move my hands when I’m anxious, or if I can twitch a body part when I have too much energy. Asking me to stop that doesn’t make my anxiety go away: it simply gives me no way to deal with it.

To take a more extreme example, for a lot of kids with autism, they have extreme sensory sensitivities. They can hear or feel things you or I never could. So they may never feel comfortable being in crowded or noisy places. And that doesn’t mean their broken. It doesn’t mean we should force them to deal with those situations. It means that we should accept what they can deal with, accept how they perceive as legitimate.

Instead of asking those of us who might perceive or experience the world differently from you to force ourselves into mental contortions so that we can look and act the way you might expect, maybe people should consider that we’re not broken. There is absolutely nothing broken about the fact that my brain likes to organize things A LOT, and thus it tends towards black and white thinking. There are useful elements to this and unhelpful elements to it. Telling me that it’s wrong will not make it go away, and even if I COULD stop acting in a black and white fashion it wouldn’t necessarily make me happier.

Making adjustments so that I can have time to think before jumping to black and white thinking, or encouraging me to rely on it in areas where categorization is useful but giving me some other tools to check it in my personal life: THOSE are helpful. They don’t try to fix me. They don’t tell me I’m broken or wrong in any way or that if I could just be more like other people or adjust my thoughts and my life everything would be ok. They do tell me that since I function differently than a lot of people I might need some help fitting myself and my perceptions into the larger scheme of things. Society is set up for the “norm”. It’s not set up for me. Which means I need some help getting myself to fit into the way society works. I need help functioning sometimes. But I can do that and still not give up the pieces of me that others view as broken. I can retain my mind and simply try to shape self and world to fit together.

Neurodivergence. We diverge from the norm. We’re not broken. We just fit differently. And it’s not all our job to make ourselves the right shape to fit into society, because sometimes we’re not that flexible. Sometimes society has to be flexible as well. I don’t want to feel broken anymore. I don’t want people to tell me I’m broken anymore. I have some more work to do to be able to function and to fit myself to society, but so do most people. I want that to be ok. I want it to be ok if I’m at a party and I say that I have to leave because it’s too noisy for me or because people are talking about diets. I want it to be ok if I show up to a party wearing fuzzy footie pajamas because I had a rough day and I need the sensory calming (see me up there in my onesie? That was the best party I’ve ever been to). There is nothing WRONG with these things. They don’t make me unhappy. What makes me unhappy is when people can’t accept that that’s how I cope. I am not a problem.

Tattoos and Embodiment: The Power of Self-Mutilation, Piercing and Tattoos

There are very few ways that we get control over our physical bodies, particularly our appearance. We don’t get to choose things like height, build, weight (much), skin tone, eye color and shape, facial features…we can barely even control out hair most of the time. And philosophically speaking, people today rarely view their body as really THEM: generally it’s considered more of a house for your soul or your mind, broken away from the real you. And so it seems to me that asserting ownership over our own bodies is something really extremely important.

Particularly for traditionally marginalized groups whose bodies are considered public space, having a way to mark your body as your own, or physically change your body in order to feel more in tune with it or to connect it to your emotions is a powerful action. When you change your body in some physical, permanent way, you are loudly declaring “This is mine. I can do with it what I will. I can change it to suit my desires, and I can brand it as my own”. It’s liberating to see your body changed in some way that you have imagined and then acted out on your flesh. It’s sensual in its own way, and the pain that often comes with it is a visceral reminder that you’re alive, you are embodied, and you are solid. It creates an adrenaline rush of knowing what’s about to come. It can be a powerful emotional experience that connects you very deeply with your body.

In addition, for those people who have powerful negative associations with their bodies, tattooing or piercing over the site of negativity can mean a lot. I have scars from self-harm on my hips and legs, and have plans to tattoo over at least some of them as a metaphorical way of reclaiming that territory. Our bodies go through a great deal that leaves us marked in ways that we can’t undo. Some of this is by choice, some of it isn’t. But the choice to cover or change the marks from the past is a strong statement about who we would like to be in the future.

Many people view tattoos as “rebellious”, “tacky” or “low class”. Many of the reasons they’re viewed that way is because marginalized groups often use them to assert their autonomy or their belonging in a group. They mark someone as different, as particularly themselves, and as a BODY. We don’t like being marked as bodies. We often view it as objectifying. We don’t like to be viewed aesthetically, we prefer to be judged based on our intellect or personality. But the fact  is that a major part of our selves is our body. The inherent recognition of this in the act of bodily mutilation or piercing or tattoos is deep, and you can’t escape it when you’re undergoing the process. You feel more connected to yourself in certain ways. It’s one of the reasons that self-harm can be so grounding.

Tattoos also signify a great deal to others: they can tell about our experiences, our emotions, our aesthetic taste, our interests, our values, and our group membership. They use our own bodies to convey messages of our identity, something which is extremely powerful in integrating your body into our identity. In addition, they can signify things to ourselves. They can remind us of our past, of something we care about, of self-care, of good or bad things we’ve experienced…especially for those people whose voices are rarely heard, using your body as a canvas is one of the loudest ways to get a message across.

Some people say that the body is beautiful and shouldn’t be tampered with. But for those who are in marginalized groups, they haven’t really hard this about their bodies in particular. Their bodies are often viewed as wrong or bad. The few times they do hear these things, their bodies are generally objectified. It can be hugely empowering to make your physical presence different to fit your conception of self. It changes your narrative about self, takes your body away from the societal narrative of beauty, or brands visibly on your body that you have autonomy and are more than a body. Of course these are all comments about tattoos personally chosen: being forced to get a tattoo says the exact opposite of all of this.

It reminds you that you’re a body, but also that your body is yours, and that it has its own needs and desires and some autonomy. It’s not just an object. Its senses are how you navigate and manage the world, and the act of the tattoo reminds you viscerally of your senses and your physical boundary with the world. The constant reminder of that is an act of asserting yourself into space.

Reminding ourselves of our bodies, of the ways we can control and identify with our bodies, and of how we can present our bodies to others as part of our identity is a big deal.

Also I really want the tattoo in the picture, so I felt like I had to write this.