I looked at the fruit bowl and realised I had stopped buying the things I like

Dear Delyara, Apples for one child. Bananas for the other. Grapes if they’re on offer. Oranges sometimes. Everything selected around school, preference, cost, waste, routine, what will actually be eaten, what won’t come back untouched. I stood there and thought: none of this is mine. That is such a small observation and yet it reached into something bigger immediately. Not fruit, but presence. Preference. The quiet shrinking of self inside family systems that are not malicious, just hungry and practical and structured around the loudest needs. I don’t disappear in dramatic ways. I disappear in bowls.