You could read my optimism by opening the freezer.

Frozen blueberries.

Frozen vegetables.

Chicken I bought in bulk because this time I was going to become the kind of person who meal prepped on Sundays.

Everything inside was waiting for a version of me that kept showing up next week instead of today.

Hope freezes beautifully.

That’s its greatest trick.

Fresh food asks difficult questions.

Frozen food is endlessly patient.

It never complains.

It simply waits.

I liked that about it.

Every bag of vegetables believed me.

Every vacuum-sealed chicken breast assumed I’d be back tomorrow.

Even the ice cubes seemed more committed than I was.

Months passed quietly inside that little white box.

The blueberries gathered tiny constellations of frost.

The chicken forgot what season it came from.

Expiration dates disappeared beneath snow.

Nothing rotted.

It just waited.

That’s what made the freezer so dangerous.

It preserved my intentions long enough that I never had to admit they’d died.

The refrigerator held reality.

The freezer held fantasy.

Reality wilted in four days.

Fantasy lasted for years.

Sometimes I’d move things around looking for dinner.

I’d uncover frozen meals I’d bought during one of my “fresh starts.”

Protein waffles.

Cauliflower rice.

Lean turkey burgers.

Entire versions of myself buried beneath a bag of ice.

I never threw them away.

Throwing them away would’ve meant admitting I wasn’t coming back for them.

So they stayed.

Taking up space.

Quietly believing in me long after I’d stopped believing in myself.

People think change dies all at once.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes it goes into the freezer…

where it waits just long enough to make quitting feel unnecessary.

I used to think the freezer was preserving food.

It wasn’t.

It was preserving permission.

Permission to tell myself,

“I’ll start Monday.”

Again