Mushroom Lover

I had a flashback of me, at a younger age, forced to eat mushrooms. Don’t get me wrong, I was a fungi lover. I can’t quite recall the conversation mom and I were having; all I remember was being forced to stuff those cold and bitter mushrooms down my throat while keeping a straight face and listening to the buzz of nonsense mom was making. It was the the worst dish I’ve ever had in my life — it ruined mushrooms for me completely.

“Why don’t you like mushrooms anymore?” She asked, sometime in history. I told her the story, but time has altered reality. None of the details could I still tell, but that bitter taste still lingers in my tongue, my mind, my shivering soul when I see a piece of mushroom somewhere. Oddly enough, how is it possible for one wrong dish to ruin all the “beauty” within mushrooms?

Of course it was never the mushroom that tasted off; it was the part where I told my mom “I’m full, I don’t want to eat anymore,” yet that was forbidden. The taste of rejection was slowing drowning me as I stuffed one awfully-tasted mushroom after another; I could hear not a sound, but me chewing every single bite of that bitterness, me receiving the echo of multiple denials in my mind, me, not allowing myself to show a second of disrespect or disobey — me, dying in my own world.

I hate mushrooms. Those are indeed unpleasant memories, unforgettable tastes of bitterness. I survived; I went through a tunnel, I’m a survivor of trauma. After all, the mushroom tale was only a very light invisible scar; it’s nothing that affects me too much. Time has also the ability to change a person permanently.. or offer a reason for someone to change temporarily. She owe me an apology, she said “I’m sorry.” Wow, after.. after how many years has it been?

I can’t recall.

10/28/24