One night, John promised to make dinner. Promised. And I was thrilled. I cooked every meal we ate unless we ordered pizza, which wasn't often. So six, sometimes seven nights a week? Me. I was exhausted. This felt like a break, a tiny act of care. A little "thank you." I was so excited.
I thought maybe, just maybe, this was a step toward caring. That maybe he saw me drowning and wanted to throw me a rope. Not a cheese coated anchor.
He brings out… ramen.
Not the good kind with veggies and a runny egg. Just a weird, clumpy bowl of sadness.
I didn't say anything. I didn't complain. I was disappointed, sure, but I was trying to be nice. I smiled. I picked up my fork.
And then I took a bite.
It was the worst thing I have ever tasted in my entire life, and I ate dried glue as a child. The noodles were somehow both soggy and crunchy. How do you mess up ramen noodles? How do you achieve wet, mushy overcooked noodles and simultaneously undercooked ones that snap like ramen shrapnel?
I was trying so hard not to react, but the texture hit, and my brain just screamed wrong, wrong, WRONG.
And then the flavor hit.
He had added cheese.
Not like, "Oooh creamy ramen" cheese. No. Powdery, dried Parmesan and shredded cheddar mozzarella combo cheese. With chicken flavored ramen.
It was a crime. A culinary war crime. I spit it out instantly.
I blinked at him. Part stunned, part betrayed. And all I could think was, this is what love looks like to him? A landmine in a bowl of broth?
And he was offended. Offended.
Meanwhile I'm trying not to gag, wondering how the hell he had the audacity to serve this, let alone eat it with a straight face. Did his taste buds break in the war?
But what made me snap wasn't the taste. It wasn't the texture. It was the injustice of it all.
As an autistic woman, I have a strong sense of personal justice. It's like a compass made of fire. If something feels unfair, my whole body lights up with it. He promised to make dinner. And he didn't. He threw cheese on a Cup Noodle and acted like it was a five course meal. He wanted a standing ovation for minimum effort, and I'm over here crying into clumpy cheese ramen.
It wasn't just dinner. It was the betrayal. The break I didn't get. The gesture that wasn't one. The bite that triggered my gag reflex and my soul.
He told me that if I didn't eat what he cooked, I wouldn't eat at all.
Bet.
This was not my first hunger strike. Not my first food showdown. No, I had been here before, and I'd won.
I'd gone to war over food once already when I was eleven years old. My mother served me a bowl of plain oatmeal for dinner. No brown sugar. No cinnamon. No fruit. Not even a pity raisin. Just a gloopy, gray bowl of sadness. She plopped it in front of me and told me I had to eat it.
I looked her dead in the eyes and said, "No."
And thus began the standoff.
She said I wasn't allowed to leave the table until I ate it. So I sat there. All night. Until 10 p.m. when she finally told me to go to bed. She wrapped the bowl and stuck it in the fridge with a smile like she had won.
"You'll have it for breakfast," she said.
The next morning, I woke up to that cold bowl of cement. I didn't touch it.
She packed my lunch for school, light. Suspiciously light. Probably hoping I'd be so hungry I'd cave.
Joke's on her. I bartered with my friends like a little food-hustling goblin. A cookie here, a fruit snack there, I made it work.
That night? That same bowl of oatmeal came back out. It had solidified into a single gelatinous mass with some watery grief pooling on top. Still, I refused. I sat there again, defiant.
By night three, the oatmeal had developed a crust. It thunked onto the table like a medieval weapon. Still not eating it.
On the fourth night, she cracked. No threats. No oatmeal. I got a normal dinner with the family. She never tried that again.
So when John told me I wouldn't eat unless I choked down his cheesy ramen monstrosity?
I grinned.
Sir, you are not scarier than my mother with a bowl of three day old oatmeal. I have survived worse. I am forged in the fires of starchy rebellion. And I will not eat that godforsaken bowl of cheesy, crunchy, rubbery noodle soup horror. You can starve me. I'll go to bed hungry!
And I did.
He didn't speak to me the rest of the night. And honestly? I preferred the silence.
People don't always understand how intense food textures can be for autistic people. And I didn't even know I was autistic until years later, after my own son was diagnosed.
Suddenly, so many things in my childhood and adulthood made sense. But growing up? Especially as a girl? Autism wasn't even on the radar.
They barely diagnosed it in boys unless it was extreme, and girls? We were just "sensitive" or "picky" or "difficult." But it wasn't just picky eating. It was like my whole body rejected certain textures.
That oatmeal?
That ramen crime scene?
It wasn't just gross, it was an act of war on my nervous system. There's no "just get over it" when your brain is screaming this is a threat.
When your brain is wired to reject the smallest discomfort, you learn early which discomforts you're allowed to complain about, and which ones you're supposed to swallow.
Turns out, I wasn't just rejecting textures. I was rejecting being handed disappointment and told it was dinner. Or love.