What I Noticed at the Refrigerator

Imagine being upset with an eggplant. Yes, an eggplant. It didn’t happen dramatically. It showed up during an ordinary moment that began with a simple delivery.

My mom received some supplies from a friend. I collected the bag but never looked inside. At the time, it didn’t seem important.

As we say locally, “I doh put cocoa outside so I not looking for rain.” In other words, I wasn’t expecting anything to come of it.

Later, I opened the refrigerator, and the only thing that stood out to me was an eggplant. My heart started racing. 

My chest tightened. 

My breath shortened. 

My hands trembled.

For a moment, I could not move.

My mom quickly noticed the tension in my posture and asked what was wrong. I had no words. Instead, I opened the refrigerator wider so she could see what I was seeing. That only deepened her confusion. Everything inside was exactly what she knew should have been there and exactly where it was supposed to be.

That’s when I pointed at the eggplant as though it were the most offensive thing in there.

She held her head and shook it. She didn’t need an explanation. She already knew what my reaction meant.

Back in June 2025, I had eaten eggplant and had a very severe reaction—one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That moment spiraled into something much bigger, eventually leading to my recent diagnoses, which I’ll share in time.

Until that moment at the refrigerator, I hadn’t realized how strongly my body still associated the eggplant with the health challenges that followed. But the eggplant had done nothing wrong. It had simply existed. I had picked it up and prepared a nutritious meal. It had not been responsible for what came after, yet somehow, I had laid the blame on it.

Standing at the refrigerator, I had to pause and ask why its presence affected me so deeply. That question led me somewhere else.

Sometimes we don’t resent the thing. We resent what it represents.

We often react before we reflect and we rarely notice that we’ve done it. We assume one moment caused everything that followed. And sometimes, we attach that meaning to people. Someone says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and that moment becomes attached to them. Someone is present during a season when our capacity is thin, and that presence becomes part of the memory. Not because they caused the pain, but because they were there.

This isn’t to say all harm is accidental. Some harm is intentional. But sometimes, we are simply responding to what our bodies remember.

When illness or limitation shows up unexpectedly, we look for something to make sense of it—a food, a moment, a person.

The truth is, my body was already speaking. The eggplant wasn’t the beginning. It was simply the moment that everything surfaced.

Sometimes we don’t realize how something has shaped us until it shows up quietly—sitting on a refrigerator shelf.

My body remembers what happened. That’s what I noticed.

What have you noticed?