I’ve never told anyone about this, and 15 years later I still feel badly about it. So here’s my food stealing confession: When I was 21 I found myself in what started as a fun and exciting relationship that within a year became controlling and abusive. I still don’t even know how I let it happen, but there I was. I had a job at call center just outside of the city we lived in that my boyfriend would drop me off in the morning and pick me up later. It was an okay job that paid maybe 12/hr which wasn’t awful in 2003 for someone without a college education. We got paid every two weeks and I remember my checks were around $800 or so. I wanted to save up a few checks and buy a cheap car. Boyfriend seemed on board, but let’s open a joint account so we can Save the cash up in a safe place rather than cashing my check and having real paper money floating around the apartment. Somehow, due to my stupidity and wanting to believe that someone loved me, I let him “handle the money”. I never got my car. I never saw a dime of my paychecks. Very often all out money, because he worked too, would just go to drugs that he started using, or hanging out with his friends. I’m getting to the point regarding the food, I swear.
So he would mostly eat out at fast food places, meaning there wasn’t really any food at the apartment. I don’t know how he thought I ate, but he didn’t ask or notice and I was too nervous(?) to complain because his attitude changed so much when he started taking drugs. I didn’t have access to cash to go buy food and didn’t have my own car to go get food even if I did have a few $. He drove a stick which I had never learned and he didn’t want me to learn on “because I would ruin it”.
So back to work, I was always starving. Like chew your nails hungry. I became so thin over just. A few a few months that you would think I was the one on drugs, which I wasn’t. Before work each day I look at through the apartment for coins I could use in the snack machine. Chex Mix or pop tarts were like a feast if I could come up with a whole dollar!
The boyfriend started to get really lazy about picking me up after work. My shift would end at 5pm and sometimes he wouldn’t come until 6pm, sometimes 8pm. There was a second shift at the call center so they were still open and I hung out on the large break rooms or hid in the ladies rooms. One evening it was almost 9pm and I was starving. It may have been a day or two since I had eaten. I wondered around the unoccupied part of the call center hoping to find coins that someone left out on their desk, or dropped on the floor, but I could find anything. So I stole someone’s sandwich. It was awful and I felt like a total failure and a loser for letting my life turn into that. My family was 1000 miles away and I was too stupid to tell anyone what was happening in my life. I had always been so independent!
A few days after that I found myself stuck at work again, very late, like had been there for 13 hours. I didn’t take anyone’s sandwich, but I took a Slim fast shake that I realized later was probably an actual meal if someone was on the program.
Anyway, I’m sure I will get a lot of hate for this, and I get it. I’m not even sure why I’m posting this, but it feels good to just get it off my chest. I was desperate. And taking a sandwich from a stranger seemed easier than getting out of that relationship, or even starting the fight that would come from me asking my boyfriend for money.
I got out of that a few weeks later by the grace of a quartly bonus check that was handed out as a live check, not a direct deposit. I cashed it on my lunch hour at a branch I could walk to. I week later I was back home with my family 1000 miles away. And my mom cried when she saw how skinny I was. I never told her I was starving, she probably bought it was drugs. Somehow I was less ashamed of her thinking that than knowing the truth.
Any, I’m sure some people steal food because they are assholes, and I’m not saying there is ever a valid e cause for taking something that isn’t yours. I’m just sharing my story.
My life is pretty awesome now.
