Who Do You Owe Explanations To? (And Do You Squeeze Fruit?)

Photo by Karolina Kołodziejczak on Unsplash

I was in Costco yesterday picking up a couple of things, one of which was a box of clementines.

I adore clementines.

I love their sweet but also tangy taste.

I like that they're small, and that the individual wedges are so tiny and perfect.

I even love the fact that, when I peel a clementine, I smell citrusy for the rest of the day.

I just love the whole experience of eating clementines. 

Unfortunately, they're definitely a seasonal item; November - December and that's it. (Maybe that's why clementines smell like Christmas to me.)

I'd already purchased two very disappointing batches (drier than the desert) earlier in November, but when I saw these at Costco yesterday, I knew they were good ones.

I picked up a box, and of course, reached under the mesh and squeezed a couple. 

Now, does everyone do this? Or is it just me?

Maybe it's something I picked up from my immigrant parents, and specifically my Egyptian father.

I lived in Egypt for a while and know that there in the open-air markets, people are not shy about squeezing, smelling, and otherwise manhandling produce.

Especially melons.

(I realize this could be the punchline to a dirty joke, squeezing melons and whatnot, but it’s really not meant to be…I promise...)

Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash

No self-respecting Egyptian will buy a melon without giving it a few good slaps.

(Here's what they're listening for: if the fruit gives a hollow thud, then it's over-ripe because the centre is soft. If there's no thud, then it's not ripe enough. It takes a lifetime of slapping melons to learn how to identify a perfectly ripe one. Again, I swear I’m not making lewd jokes here.)

I do remember visiting... Germany I think it was (the other half of my heritage), where, when I attempted the Arab-fruit-fondling-and-smelling as taught by my father, I got severely reprimanded.

There are sales assistants standing by the produce, and you simply point to what you want and they will bag it, weigh it, and put the appropriate price sticker on it for you.

I didn't appreciate this non-tactile interaction with my produce, but it's Germany and rules are rules.

However, here in North America - and specifically yesterday at Costco - there was no one to interfere with my thorough inspection of a large box of clementines.

As I was squeezing them, I found that a few were overripe. (One was so ripe my finger pierced through it!)

Now, I did what I always do, and that is to take out the undesirable fruit, and replace it with firmer clementines from another box. (I do this with eggs too. No one wants to come home with a carton of eggs where one or more are cracked or broken.)

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

As I was putting the new clementines into my box, I noticed a man standing next to me - uncomfortably close actually - watching me and clearly judging me.

I don't think he was beside me when I took the fruit out, but boy howdy was he there looking at me with angry eyes when I was filling my box.

When I saw him staring, I stared right back, unflinchingly, as I finished the fruit exchange.

When I drove my cart away, I realized he likely thought I had been "stealing" the clementines - overfilling my box with "extra" fruit - instead of simply replacing the rotten ones.

I was incredibly proud of myself in that moment.

The old me would have felt judged by this man. I might have felt obliged to offer an explanation as to what I was doing.

But the new me knows there are very, very few people I actually owe explanations to.

You see, I grew up with very strict, authoritarian (and physically abusive) parents, who questioned everything and made me feel as though I owed them a justification for every move I made.

Over-explaining ourselves is a trauma response; it's a way of seeking safety by making sure others understand us.

It's taken me a lifetime to un-learn the habit of giving more information than a situation requires; a lifetime to learn that "No" is a complete sentence.

Yes, sometimes, to those closest to me, I will offer up and extra tid-bit related to the "why" of things, but I've become quite good at knowing who I owe what to as far as explanations go.

For me at least, there's something to be said for a lifetime of not being allowed to have boundaries, because now that I've set them, I can articulate them clearly. It's as though I hear a calm narrative voice in my head saying "No explanation is required here" or "This is a boundary violation."

So when that man judged me for what he thought I was doing, that voice said "You don't owe this man anything."

Photo by Quaritsch Photography on Unsplash

If he had wanted to, he could have gone to a sales associate and told on me, in which case I would have been fully prepared to explain. Potentially being accused of theft is definitely a situation that warrants an explanation.

But until and unless that happened, I didn't need to say anything because this man was no one to me; just a stranger at Costco judging me for what he thinks he saw me doing.

I also felt proud of myself in that moment for not caring what he thought of me.

I no longer need the whole world to like me and approve of me, and by Gawwwd is that ever liberating. (Yay ageing!!!)

If I had tried to explain myself to this man, it would have been coming from a place of justifying what I was doing in order to be thought well of by him.

Instead, I just walked away.

Maybe fondling fruit is weird; I know that my husband just grabs produce with very minimal one-on-one interaction. (He doesn't even SMELL the berries!! How is he supposed to know if they're good?!!)

But my point here isn't about whether what I did is strange; it's about owning my actions regardless of what someone else thought about them, or of me.

At the end of the day, you can always find someone who thinks - according to their world view  - that what you're doing is wrong.

The question is: are you going to feel bad about yourself for it? 

Bad enough to attempt to explain yourself to someone who isn't owed an explanation?

Because that would be simply bananas.

Photo by Berkin Üregen on Unsplash

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You might be asking yourself "How does this topic relate to recovery from binge-eating?" What I found is that - for me - finding new ways of thinking about life and its challenges helped me to stop stress-eating, and has been a very big part of my ability to stop binge-eating.

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