It was a quiet early spring evening at home. The ever-present rain slid down our windows, our daughter was sound asleep, and my husband and I were unwinding together.
For the first time that week, our child-free, post-bedtime hours weren’t occupied by fatigue, work, or household management—shopping for a new oven, clearing the dishwasher, folding the never-ending laundry. After raiding the fridge, we settled on the couch to dedicate our evening to Netflix and mindless snacking, which is a rarer pleasure for us than you might think.
About 10 minutes into Shadow & Bone, he asked me: “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” I mumbled, my mouth full of truffle salami.
“Ask permission to eat our food.”
“I don’t ask permission to eat our food,” I said.
“Yes, you do,” he insisted, chuckling. “Before we sat down in front of the TV, you opened the ref and asked me if you could have some of the truffle salami.”
“I did? I do?”
“All the time,” he said. He’s been married to me for 14 years, so he must know what he’s talking about.
“Well… yeah. You bought it,” I pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter who bought it! It’s our money, in our house, in our refrigerator. It’s our food,” he said. “We all have a right to it. You don’t need to ask. So why do you?”
When someone stops to point out a quirk or habit of ours that we’ve never noticed before, that’s so automatic to our way of being, it can be amusing or downright confronting. Why do any of us do the weird things we do?
I thought back. Then I remembered.

My university years in Manila were a period of severe financial upheaval for my family. My mom had been blindsided by a string of shady characters and bad investments, forcing us to move around and downsize constantly and rapidly. By my second year, it became clear we couldn’t afford to pay the hefty tuition fees for my private (and elite) Jesuit university, so I applied for a scholarship and got it.
In my third year, I had to apply for a stipend from the Ateneo Alumni Association of California just so I could commute to school and eat every day. If I tell you the dollar amount I had to live off for a whole semester, you might laugh. But I stretched that check for months.
My sister, who is five years older than me, started working as an account manager in a high-stress advertising job. She assumed as much the financial responsibility her first paltry starting salary of PhP 8,500 (EUR 147—yep that’s it, not missing any digits) would allow. She started paying the bills plus the rent on a small but dismal apartment, and giving me whatever extra cash she could spare for school.
I could tell you much more about these trying years (or save it for future essays and newsletters), but all you need to know is that being poor in Manila is very, very tough and we were very, very stressed. My mom, sister and I are close and love each other fiercely, but the stress of poverty is real. Sometimes it felt as though we were constantly at each other’s throats over the smallest things.
One of our tiny consolations—and sources of conflict—was chocolate.

We are a family of sweet-toothed women for whom chocolate has been a lifelong luxury. In our years of plenty, there was always imported chocolate from Mom’s travels, cool and rich and tempting and foreign, in the refrigerator: Godiva bonbons from Brussels, Lindt dark chocolate thins from Switzerland or various European airports.
In our years of famine, we turned to Meiji Dark from Japan and Ritter Sport Praline from Germany, which you could only somehow find in select branches of Mercury Drugstore.
BUT.
Woe be to you if you touched a bar of chocolate that you hadn’t bought yourself. Breaking off a square of a Ritter or Meiji bar sitting innocently in the fridge was enough to trigger World War III.
The unspoken rule formed quickly: DON’T TOUCH MY CHOCOLATE.
In particular, my sister and I would have the most spectacular fights over chocolate. And with good reason. She was 25. That bar of imported chocolate was one of the few joys she had after a long day at a high-pressure job, in a tough life with heavy financial responsibility. I couldn’t contribute to the household income just yet, but I could leave her chocolate the fuck alone and show some fucking respect.
But sometimes, if I asked, I could get a square.
Then my sister and I would nibble on our chocolate together in satisfied silence, reading cheap paperback books in our shitty beds, before another day of the Manila grind on a shoestring budget.
A lifetime later, in which I own my own home in Amsterdam and have a family of my own, I still ask permission before taking food from my own refrigerator.
Especially if I know it’s a treat that someone else loves.
My husband loves his savory snacks—sausages, pates, terrines—and I don’t, so they’re mostly safe. But if I have a craving for anything he likes, I can’t slice a sausage until he tells me it’s okay. My daughter likes to have a piece of fruit with her bedtime story each night; when I take a banana from the fruit bowl for a mid-afternoon snack, I feel a twinge of guilt, like I’m stealing from my own child.
I still need permission.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me it’s okay.
It made me wonder: what else in my life am I waiting for permission for?
I find myself bound by leftovers of old constraints, as if unaware that they no longer confine me. Patterns of thinking and behavior created by conditions that no longer exist. Relics of a time that no longer has any power over me.
Upon closer inspection, I realize I feel I still need permission for a lot of things in my life.
I ask for my husband’s approval for particular outfits (with creative questions that drive him mad, such as: “Does this make me look like a pillowcase? A wrestler? A washing machine?”)
I thought the internet would tear me a new one for admitting that I have both an open marriage and a boyfriend, but the silence was actually… surprisingly deafening. I realize now that I was not only anticipating judgment, but also waiting for permission. Why?
I have a list of Substack topics I’d like to write about, but that feel too… out there. Mostly about relationships, intimacy and sexuality. But whose permission am I really waiting for?
I received a kind reply from a reader about my Zoom sex party essay. It reads:
“I feel the joy and the envy that you allow yourself to flourish and write about everything.”
I do allow myself quite some freedoms, yes. How did I become so free about some things, yet remain so constrained by others? So maybe I’m doing a good job already?
How about you, dear reader?
What are you still asking permission for?
What have you stopped asking permission for?
Whose permission are you waiting for?
Thank you for reading and pondering with me.
My sister’s birthday is on the 8th of June. I love her dearly and am forever indebted to her for carrying us through those most difficult years.
Here in Amsterdam, the endless rain of May has given way to the glorious sunshine of June. Restaurants, bars, cafes, museums, and cinemas are fully open as of this weekend. I get my vaccine today; we have booked a summer holiday in Greece.
There is a vitality and optimism in the air that I, and many of us, have missed and longed for. It feels like… a kind of permission to hope, dream, and roam again. I am living for it.
Eat the damn chocolate. Enjoy it. And see you in two weeks!
I love this, such a great read. Your writing is so peaceful and yet deeply introspective/insightful, it's so refreshing!
Once more a lovely read Deepa ❤️ And Happy Bday for your sister!
I still hide chocolate.. don’t know why, because there is no one to stop me from eating it. A forbidden pleasure I guess?
I don’t ask for permission anymore, it’s more a shoutout to let each other know as in I’m going to do such and such. X