Gabriela

Gabriela calls herself Vivacious, extroverted, thoughtful, determined and honest. About three years before the diary she moved to a large West Coast city. She shares a house with three roommates, I’m the only girl in the house!, and two cats, and they cook family dinner together once or twice a week. She grew up between more than one culture. Her mother cleaned houses when she was small, and she often went along. Her mother told her I am the architect of my life, and pushed her to study; she is the only one in her family to finish college.

She names three defining moments. The first is the large, diverse Southern city where she was born: You can travel all over the globe with your taste buds there. The second is her father’s sudden death. He hid how ill he was, and she writes: It breaks my heart my father wasn’t healthier because it could have let him be with us longer. The third is a breakup that sent her west. Before it she was working 60+ hours a week, and was so burnt out and spread thin that I gained a ton of weight. She says, briefly, that she hit a low point when I was drinking all the time and I think I was just tired of feeling like I hated myself. The move, she jokes, was the most unoriginal thing ever, but it showed her there’s still some fight left in me.

Food, for her, is love that needs no words: you can say so much to someone without a single word, but make them their favorite comfort meal or a cake. Her mother found her first job in this country cooking, and still sends her back with barbacoa: i literally fly home with it. She was taught never to leave food on a plate, because our family has background in poverty, and she links that to a lifelong struggle with portions. Overweight from a young age, she looked outside the family for guidance: Not that they didn’t want to help, it just was a different time.

She has tried vegetarian eating and wants to eat less meat, but one thing stops her: Like that means I could never eat my moms homemade food again - that’s not going to happen. One reading is that, for her, a change of diet is also a question about her mother’s kitchen, the place where she feels most loved.

Her superpowers are my humor, kindness, charisma, nerve and perseverance, which carried her as a big brown girl in places where she stood out. Her weakness is old hurt: when something echoes past pain, it can sometimes paralyze me. She talks to herself in the mirror, because I believe we’re a lot nicer to each other if we speak to ourselves as a friend. Under stress she reaches for burgers or sweets, foods tied to being cared for, like shortbread and cold glass-bottle colas with the woman who looked after her father and became like a grandmother to her. Her 2 a.m. people are her mother, her boyfriend and her best friend.

Surgery early in the year, then the pandemic, brought more ordering in and stress eating. Her Day 5 wish is to cook again: I’d like to go back to my old self!!! She would gain peace not having to stress about weight and health often. Her letter imagines a woman who can feel confident again in your skin.