I Just Bought Butter Pecan Ice Cream

My guilty breakup indulgence tells a bigger story than you think

I’m in the grocery store. I’m living my best post-divorce life. It’s a weekend so I’m figuring a girl can splurge a little. I stroll toward the frozen food aisle.

The ice cream is calling to me.

What happens next is part absurdity and part emancipation.

I scan the scrumptious guilt-inducing flavors before me. I’m a creature of habit. I go for the mint chocolate chip because it’s typically my fav. But something stops me.

I defiantly grab the butter pecan.

I feel an odd sense of satisfaction.

I slam that puppy into my cart like the newly independent woman that I am. I can buy whatever I want. Butter pecan was my go-to for years. It was one of my childhood indulgences.

I no longer live with the man who hates butter pecan.

The man who got sick on butter pecan and never ate it again.

I don’t live with him.

I am feeling pretty cocky.

The world is my oyster. In reality, the grocery store is my oyster. I am feeling supremely positive. Reach for my dreams or at the very least the butter pecan.

The sky is the limit.

“Everything you can imagine is real.” —Pablo Picasso

I push my cart with great intention. I grab some wine because again, it’s the weekend. I am loving the single life. Who needs a husband to go out with? I can snuggle with my breakup butter pecan.

I have one more item to grab and I’ll be on my way.

But as I’m searching for it, I spy some cans of tuna fish.

I grab a bunch of those suckers and throw them into my cart.

Albacore tuna packed in water. Yup, you guessed it. My husband hated tuna fish. He hated everything about it. He hated the smell of it. And he hated mayonnaise because that also made him sick as a child.

To be fair, I clandestinely bought my tuna fish.

I just made it during the day for lunch.

It doesn’t matter.

I am still on top of the grocery store world.

This free woman can buy whatever she wants. She doesn’t have to think about anyone but herself. She doesn’t have to abandon any of her fav things.

I am an unencumbered proudly strutting my stuff divorcee.

If only, strutting my stuff down the supermarket aisle.

Give me my moment, I’ve earned it.

I proudly throw my items down at the checkout. It’s not a particularly pretty weekend night picture. Butter pecan ice cream, tuna fish, and some Cabernet.

Okay, I can’t lie.

Butter pecan ice cream, tuna fish, Cabernet, and chocolate.

Still not a very pretty picture. It’s not the average go-to weekend haul. Well, kinda if not for the screaming can of tuna fish. The other three items are a respectable selection for a married or a single gal.

I’m hoping the checkout guy strikes up a conversation.

I wanna share my exciting frozen dairy news.

But my feminist emancipation is interrupted.

I think to my defiant butter pecan grab. My one part absurdity and one part emancipation moment. And it hits me. The absurdity of my own personality.

My husband never said don’t buy butter pecan ice cream.

He never said don’t make tuna fish.

Well, he did say that because he didn’t want to eat tuna fish. But he never forbade me from buying tuna fish. It was me, the ridiculously make-everyone-happy pleaser.

I stopped buying butter pecan.

I rationalized I might as well buy something my husband liked too.

Plus, there were those references to a couple of things that had made him throw up as a child. No one wants to stare into the continual face of the food that makes them vomit. Do they?

My glorious grocery store excursion wasn’t emancipation.

This wasn’t a half-gallon of divorce breakup butter pecan.

I had broken up with butter pecan in my twenties.

All by my lonesome.

And now, I was rediscovering it again when I was all by my lonesome. The sky wasn’t the limit. I had absurdly been limiting myself. This had nothing to do with my husband and everything to do with me.

During my marriage, I had abandoned butter pecan ice cream and myself.

But now we were making up.