After the big move to Switzerland, where customs writes you amazing letters for charges, in a language you don't understand to the ingredients in your recipes that can not be bought or shipped here (ingredients that can be smuggled in a suitcase). After the overwhelming urge to escape and "go home" we agreed to give it a go. To make a trip to good old London town and buy the Spaghetti hoops I so desperately craved (credit to the amazingly patient husband for tolerating my cravings).
After hours spent on the internet, with my tiny computer screen and iPad, I discovered a better understanding of where my urge to eat familiar foods (mainly junk) and where my feelings of anxiety rooted from. There's a period between the wedding day and 3 months later where you don't really feel like anything is the same. It's a scary period because, "home is where my mum is", now not only is there another lady in your life who you refer to by that name (my MIL is lovely), but I no longer lived with mum :(. Still miss her like crazy, not a day goes by where I don't wish to see her face, long to tell her about all my adventures, take her for a crazy mission. My mum is and always will be my biggest blessing. But there's things like cleaning the kettle, and ridding it of limescale, to actually making the most imperfect curry and having her fix it. It's this period of free flux, (maybe for me the transition was more challenging as I didn't share my upcoming nuptials till a month before the wedding). But it was this time, where I was "settling", I needed to ingest the familiar foods I had in London, and drink the Red Label tea my mum bought from Sainsbury's to feel right. Not having access to Bisto gravy literally gave me feelings of anxiety and I remember walking back from the big Coop with tears in my eyes as to how I would make roast dinner (which I have never made or craved - the one dish my brothers are resoponsible for).
It wasn't the foods, or the familiar tastes it was the fear of not being surrounded by the same house I had lived in for 25 years, where no matter how messy it was home! The people inside were my own, and the smells were ours, and the food tasted good no matter who cooked. I tried to keep my old routines of walking, working, my old schedules and friends, soon enough I had myself muddled into volunteering and over-booking myself not realising that life wasn't ever going to be the same.
The moment where it all hit home was in Ramadhan, mid-way through when I couldn't stomach soup at iftar. I was still trying so hard to live my old life that I wasn't giving my new life a chance. I needed to just stop. Stop trying to be who I used to be and rediscover who I was now, what I was meant to be in my new life. I also realised then that I had truly married my best friend, even after my crazy need for specific foods, refusing to eat paprika crisps, and my extreme schedule, he agreed with me to work towards where we wanted to go, those plans we made while engaged, our purpose of getting closer to God, our set goals. He's a patient man.
And when I embraced the adventure, happiness became a bi-product of gratitude to the Almighty.
After hours spent on the internet, with my tiny computer screen and iPad, I discovered a better understanding of where my urge to eat familiar foods (mainly junk) and where my feelings of anxiety rooted from. There's a period between the wedding day and 3 months later where you don't really feel like anything is the same. It's a scary period because, "home is where my mum is", now not only is there another lady in your life who you refer to by that name (my MIL is lovely), but I no longer lived with mum :(. Still miss her like crazy, not a day goes by where I don't wish to see her face, long to tell her about all my adventures, take her for a crazy mission. My mum is and always will be my biggest blessing. But there's things like cleaning the kettle, and ridding it of limescale, to actually making the most imperfect curry and having her fix it. It's this period of free flux, (maybe for me the transition was more challenging as I didn't share my upcoming nuptials till a month before the wedding). But it was this time, where I was "settling", I needed to ingest the familiar foods I had in London, and drink the Red Label tea my mum bought from Sainsbury's to feel right. Not having access to Bisto gravy literally gave me feelings of anxiety and I remember walking back from the big Coop with tears in my eyes as to how I would make roast dinner (which I have never made or craved - the one dish my brothers are resoponsible for).
It wasn't the foods, or the familiar tastes it was the fear of not being surrounded by the same house I had lived in for 25 years, where no matter how messy it was home! The people inside were my own, and the smells were ours, and the food tasted good no matter who cooked. I tried to keep my old routines of walking, working, my old schedules and friends, soon enough I had myself muddled into volunteering and over-booking myself not realising that life wasn't ever going to be the same.
The moment where it all hit home was in Ramadhan, mid-way through when I couldn't stomach soup at iftar. I was still trying so hard to live my old life that I wasn't giving my new life a chance. I needed to just stop. Stop trying to be who I used to be and rediscover who I was now, what I was meant to be in my new life. I also realised then that I had truly married my best friend, even after my crazy need for specific foods, refusing to eat paprika crisps, and my extreme schedule, he agreed with me to work towards where we wanted to go, those plans we made while engaged, our purpose of getting closer to God, our set goals. He's a patient man.
And when I embraced the adventure, happiness became a bi-product of gratitude to the Almighty.
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