Panic in the Aisles

I tried my hardest not to go to the grocery store. But when I moved to New York in 2016, it officially became a thing. There was no finessing my way out of it or sidestepping; it was all on me to get the things that I needed as often as I needed them.

For a little bit, I subsisted on sugar-loaded snacks from the bodega: oatmeal raisin cookies, Twizzlers, honey buns. For protein, I'd pick up a chicken sandwich from McDonald's. I didn't cook—I refused to cook—out of laziness, but also because of my anxiety. It had started to get worse.

There's nothing in my life that my anxiety doesn't touch. I’ve responded to emails days late because I was too anxious to open the email. I have stayed home because the anxiety that would come from riding a packed subway would be unbearable. I've ignored coworkers in hallways because I was too anxious to make eye contact. And I've avoided stocking my kitchen with basic essentials because when you have my brand of anxiety, the grocery store is sometimes too much.

Last summer, I got a nice media job with a salary that typically isn’t afforded to black men who are college dropouts. The job gave me more financial freedom than I thought I would have at this stage and age. I took my first vacation within months of starting the job and everything was fine. Until it wasn’t. Despite what people may say, money and new experiences don’t make your anxiety or depression go away. In my case, it made everything worse.

In the midst of my professional success, my mental health deteriorated. Getting out of bed every day became a struggle. In fact, everything I did became a 24-step process with 6 questions for each step.

When am I going to go to the grocery store? What time am I going to the grocery store? Who will I see at the grocery store? If I buy these groceries, when will I have to get more? What do I have to say to the cashier? Is hello enough? What do I do if I want to cook and my roommates are in the kitchen? Am I even allowed to cook in the kitchen? Do I have to eat all of this now? How much weight am I going to gain? Am I going to get fat from all of this food? Is it better to just smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and not eat?

It probably sounds crazy if you don't have anxiety yourself. The easiest thing I can compare it to is how a lot of black people would feel as kids when we were about to ask our mothers if we could sleep over at our favorite cousin’s house. Mom holds all the cards. She can say yes or she can say no. Uneasiness and worry fills your stomach as you try to figure out how to ask. Ultimately chickening out and getting our cousin to ask.

That’s what anxiety feels like to me. It’s like I’m 12 again and about to ask my mom for permission. I’m fidgety, worried, afraid, and and my heart is racing. But there's no sleepover. There’s nothing to ask my mom. I just feel like that. Every day.

Before things got worse, my friend Herb had explained to me how important it was to treat myself to a nice meal when I’m feeling down. His words played in a loop in my head as summer turned to fall. I wanted to follow his advice, but it’s hard to treat yourself to a nice meal when you’re depressed, lazy, anxious, and terrified of the grocery store.

For a while, I found a solution in the form of two apps: Seamless and Fresh Direct. For a while, these apps were my new best friends. I started to routinely order the food and groceries I needed to survive like a regularly functioning adult. But it only took a couple of months before I started to feel like an idiot. The food would come from Seamless and as I ate it I'd count how many minutes I'd waited for it to arrive. Ultimately the time I had waited was longer than it would have taken me to just walk to a nearby restaurant and get some food to go. Fresh Direct wasn't much better. I’d unpack my groceries in the kitchen that I had avoided for months and berate myself. I pay all this rent and don't even use an entire room of the apartment? These eggs, this pasta, had me feeling small, stupid, and ashamed.

“You gotta eat bruh.”

Those were the four words that my best friend Isaiah would text me as fall slowly turned into winter. With the cold and snow came a deeper depression and more anxiety. There were days when I could barely get out of bed; sometimes Isaiah would have to Facetime me while I showered, just to get me through it. And cooking? Forget it. Isaiah offered to have food delivered to my job because I was refusing to eat in general.

But slowly, I started agreeing with Isaiah. I have to eat. And so the other day I decided to grocery shop. I didn’t want to use an app or wait for a delivery person; I wanted to go into a real store, to be bigger than my anxiety. When I came home from the store, I put the groceries away and made a meal for myself.

I had done something that had once seemed impossible, and it exhausted me. But it was a good exhaustion. As I laid in bed that night trying to fall asleep, I felt proud. My body is a car, my body needs gas. That night, I'd filled up the tank.