Collegiate Times

JAMIE MARTYN/COLLEGIATE TIMES

He said:

When standing before my open refrigerator, I often think of women.

And it’s not because the shelves display row upon row of whipped cream and syrups for, ahem, special dishes. Besides, I’d be severely malnourished on that diet — despite it being delicious.

Rather, what I see typically doesn’t translate as sweet at all. I sideswipe items to discover neglected Tupperware that contains brilliant feasts such as Tuna Helper, and macaroni and cheese whose price tag didn’t exceed $1. The once-tasty meals recall the handful of relationships I’ve had since senior year of high school.

(Ex-girlfriends: “He’s holding me up to three-cheese pasta?”)

This isn’t to say they’ve all been so terrible that the memories radiate like the vomit-inducing stench of ancient StarKist. The analogy isn’t quite so direct.

But like the food that sits idle in the kitchen, my former girlfriends tend to occupy a distant portion of my mind. I devoured the nutrition for a joyful while, but the exchange had a capacity. (I wasn’t always full either; a couple of the ladies pushed the plate away.) The leftovers are boxed up with the best of intentions for their eventual reheating, but sometimes obstacles prevent it.

Maybe a stack of exams, a job or extracurricular activities force you to eat on the run for a few days. Simultaneously your roommate’s fresh groceries shift your food to the unseen depths of the icebox. The cuisine is essentially forgotten.

The same factors can extinguish your time for sincere, consistent communication with someone who was once intimately plugged in to your life. Your to-do list dominates the clock, and you can’t feasibly tend the transition from romance to friendship. A few steps back post-split can be healthy regardless, but daily white noise can turn those tiptoes into leaps.

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A version of this article appeared in the Apr 16 issue of the Collegiate Times.