Matthew Strader, Food Box Challenge Participant

Day five, lesson five

My last lesson is simple, it’s day five, and I get to finish my challenge.

I’m going to eat at my favourite restaurant, and I know myself. I will feel guilt with every bite.

It didn’t hurt, it was only five days, and I have no lasting physical effects from a week off of nutrition.

But thankfully, I have some emotional ones. And I hope they never go away.

The week taught me the isolation. And everybody in my circle knew my week was fake.

We live in a world in which we are measured by our material gains, there is no denying that. And the sad part is, most of us are guilty of measuring ourselves more than being measured by others.

It’s the girl trying to be the girl in the magazine syndrome. It’s unattainable, and yet we strive. And even if we don’t have, we use judgement to make ourselves feel higher.

We try to be something we’re not, and we feel a sense of loss when we don’t reach those goals.

Being without choice, and without variety, has shown me that not getting lunch at my favourite restaurant, only drinking water, and watching others eat, does isolate you. People stare. They ask you why you’re doing it. You become the square peg, who can’t fit in the round hole.

It is a behaviour we have not evolved past yet. 

We judge.

The raw and unrelenting truth of this week. I felt stupid.

And I don’t want anyone to feel stupid.

I don’t care anymore what the reasons are that someone would have to feel the way I did. Addiction, lack of education, emotional loss, mental health, or simply circumstance – I don’t care.

I get to finish. My five days are up.

Some don’t.

That is stupid.

The final lesson is I will do my best not to forget that it isn’t fair to have to feel this way. It isn’t fair to have to feel like a loser.

There is always reason, but I won’t ask anymore.

I will just try to help. Maybe that in itself is selfish because it will allow me to feel buoyed by what I will do – and defend the fact that I get to choose – but in the end, if someone like Anne gets to eat a real salad instead of a fake one she has to create out of what she has…if she can choose to eat crap, just like the rest of us do when we choose to be lazy…if she can choose, and not feel stupid, then ok.

Maybe I’ve learned my lesson…