When the Meal-Maxxer Lost Her Appetite

Sophomore slump. It is true. My third semester is slumpy, to say the least. To be fair, my first year of college was fantastic, so once the novelty of everything wore off, things were not so fun. Also I was dumped.

Over the summer I started a relationship with the person that I met at that darty, and during our very first meal we discussed our views on selling out, living for the plot, our favorite teachers ever and philosophies of friendships and how we wish we were parented, and the conversation just continued flowing. So, we created a yap sheet for all the things we hope to continue yapping about over the summer.

To be completely honest, I fell so hard for this person. The summer romance felt idyllic—we were digital penpals, starting with text chains that span over 100 messages at a time from each person to snail mail letters we exchanged, a shared Obsidian note (think, glorified Google Doc), voicememo storytimes, all-nighter FaceTimes, even a "yearnal" (he gifted me a yearning journal…). It was kind of surreal. Then I was abruptly woken up once the school year began.

When he broke up with me (suffice to say it was due to some fundamental difference in our capacity to give and receive love), it didn't just end a relationship—it disrupted the script for who I believed myself to be.

Even at the peak of our relationship, he challenged me on my meal-maxxing approach to friendships. He asked me whether I've made any meaningful friendships from grabbing meals. While I did answer with a specific person I thought I became decent friends with, I was not convinced by my own response. His question continued to linger as I reevaluated my life in the aftermath of losing this relationship.

He explained that people enjoy grabbing meals with him because of how he makes them feel when he shows genuine interest in them. But he wanted to focus on the reciprocal effort of the other person, so he raised the bar for who'd he get a meal with. While I really enjoyed all the meals in the moments, perhaps meal-maxxing became a kind of performance to prove that I was endlessly open and curious (and it was fun to tell people about it). I have always been a person who loves understanding people deeply—I've always thought of myself this way until I don't. I felt cognitive dissonance, a strange out-of-sync-ness between my values and my desire to withdraw from not just meals with new people, but even the people I'm closest to. What was most disquieting wasn't the absence of people, it was the absence of the version of myself who used to seek them out.

Yet, I gave myself a lot of grace despite feeling guilty for disappearing, ashamed for not responding, and relieved to have no obligations of meals to attend to.

There are still people I owe rescheduled meals to from the time of the breakup—messages I never sent, rain checks I never cashed. I appreciated the people who reached out to get a meal with me. But, for the most part I did not want to talk to anyone. Whether a person suggests a meal out of pleasantry or sincerity, I felt emotionally exhausted to engage as the person they had known me to be.

One of the first weeks of the semester, a former classmate asked me, "Didn't you have another boyfriend?" referring to the person I'd vaguely mentioned in a Chinese presentation last year. I told him no—I had broken up with him about a year ago. Instead, I was in a relationship since the summer with someone I had hoped would be the one. Then, he broke up with me. It was painful to repeatedly share these fragments of myself as if they were bullet points in a timeline about my life. Now that I'm in my third relationship—the most stable and secure one yet—I'm more hesitant to share about my relationship. Because I worry it reflects poorly on what I believe: that love is renewable, my heart is porous, and I believe in the abundance of love. I don't want people to misunderstand me as someone who moved on quickly when in reality I consider the amount of time to be reasonable, yet catch-up meals compress everything. The meal conversations makes a year's worth of growth sound like a week's worth of chaos.

By October, I texted friends that I wouldn't be available until November "ish". I ate more than three-quarters of my meals alone. I'd enter the dining hall, spot a friend eating by themselves, and instead of joining them, I'd quietly choose my own table.

In early November, I decided that I cannot neglect my friendships and other aspects of my life under the pretense of having to work constantly. At this point in the semester, some of my friends were in performances like spoken word poetry, dance, or glee, amongst all the things they're all so talented at—and I realize it's time for me to show up and support and cheer them on. I didn't revert to full meal-maxxing. But I began making selective, intentional plans to see people.

Despite my original optimism about people, I cannot muster the enthusiasm to get to know people as I had (meal or not). Before, even trivial interactions would prompt me to reach out to a person. In a poignant way, I've become the typical Yalie who does not follow through with meals anymore. But, I've also become more discerning about who nourishes me, especially as I leaned on the support of my friends.