sunday scribblings: fridge space

Besides my cat, I live alone. I do not share a bathroom, I watch whatever I want on television, and I never have to be quiet when I come home late at night. Most days, I enjoy my domestic solitude. I relish the freedom of cleaning only when I feel like it and turning up music loud enough to be heard in every room.

But sometimes I open the refrigerator, and I see all that empty space, and I get to feeling a bit lonely.

You see, empty refrigerators have always made me a bit anxious. I’ve never really felt at home anywhere until the fridge was full. Something about those cold, bare shelves and the way the first few items to go in get swallowed up by all that emptiness always got to me. It wasn’t until I had to rearrange half the contents of the fridge in order to squeeze in a jug of milk or left-overs from dinner that I felt like a refrigerator and the walls that housed it really belonged to me.

I’ve done my best to fill up the fridge in my apartment. I buy a whole gallon of milk just for me to drink. I tuck every remaining scrap of each meal into its own tupperware container and stack them, one on top of the other, on shelves that seem to stretch on for miles. I refrigerate foods that don’t need to be kept cold–peanut butter, canned fruit, bread. I hesitate to remove foods I know to be past their prime just so I won’t have to face the void they’ll leave behind.

But no matter what I do, I never even get near reaching capacity in my fridge. Each time I open the door to store another item in its huge belly, all those empty spaces stare back at me with hostility, reminding me that the welcome emptiness of my apartment will always beget that which I loathe in my refrigerator.

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