My diet is not my choice
It was a midnight in august, we had just closed shop after another 10+ hour workday and me, my mom and my dad were in the kitchen, all trying to find something to chew on after having nothing for an entire 10+ hour period. My grumpy dad just got up from the kitchen table where he was eating some re-heated beans and rice cooked by my 75 year old grandmother. I could not stand the foul odor of the butter she used in that rice so I turned it away and tried to wait until my dad went to sleep so I can have what I actually want to eat. I spoke briefly to my mother about what we should have about dinner and we agreed on making our "breakfast pie". It was a recipe in which you have an entire lavaş lay out on a pan with butter and crack 2-3 eggs and add cheese and some ham as extra then top it of with another lavaş to create a breakfast pie, it was extremely buttery and comforting and warm in the best way possible and left you feeling full for long hours after. I knew it wasn't a great idea to eat such a heavy meal at night, -in fact it never really was- she did too, but when I thought about opening the fridge once again I found absolutely nothing edible by it's own. Some peppers, pickled vegetables, eggs, milk and cheese were among the most consumable at the time. So we settled on the meal that brings us an infinite comfort at each bite. When my mom called me back to the kitchen to come eat with her, I noticed my dad seated at the corner and looking away from the table with disgust and an almost pathetic and sad expression that I can only describe as a fedora-wearing-anime-fan-explaining-his-master-plan-to-eliminate-all-his-waifu-haters type of fury. He then tells me that if I dare take a bite out of that amalgamation of fake foods he will not look me in the eye, or finance my education. I was already swallowing my first bite while he was coming to the end of his sentence so I told him that it's stupid that you put down one food over the other. He told me to eat greens, those unhygenic, god-knows-whats-mixed-in-there beans with the foul smelling rice now getting cold and becoming stone-like again after having been awakened from its organic form via the heat of the pan. I told him again that this is the food that brings me comfort, he cared not to listen and told me that this is fake and unhealthy. I told him that since we live in a 3rd world country so it's not even a chance for us to eat as healthy as a European. He cared not, and kept on telling me how he will curse me and my mother every day and night and will not finance my education, which I was so excited for since I was going to study in Italy, a first world country, and the major I was always interested in, psychology. He then told me "look at yourself and then answer me back, such bold claims you have" and I said "look at yourself first"."What?" he said with a confused tone and proceeded to stand up and check himself out, I yelled "Dad you're not even wearing pants right now!". Indeed he was wearing an at least 10 year old blue colored, torn in the back from over-washing pajama shirt and he had an old pink-yellow blanket stuck around his waist like some ancient Greek guy.
How was I to explain to him that the my diet is not even my choice? That I was overworked, had only 4 hours of personal time to wake up, eat and do anything that interests me. How was I to explain that my weight was not even considered obese but just slightly overweight in a way that does not please the male gaze? Or that my diet is affected by what was in the fridge that night, how much energy I had, the beliefs and values my parents hold on their diet culture, how much money my parents were willing to put into groceries and only very slightly by what I chose to eat that night?