Is this it?
There is no dream job.
This is a story about self-sabotage.
And it centers around lunch. Before starting, allow me to offer context: I have Crohn's Disease. This means, for me at least, eating, even “safe” foods that don’t actively disrupt my digestion nor aggravate my intestines, is taxing. It takes hours and necessitates a good deal of speedy bathroom breaks throughout and for a good deal after. Add to that, the condition has caused a good deal of breakdown between the “have to go” and “need to go” and “am going” receptors in my guts. And, let us not forget that I like food. Hell, I even dig on cooking.
One of the coolest things I learned about myself when I moved into a “real” apartment from my “bullshit” apartment in NYC (the BS one being a one bedroom with a walk-in storage closet that was rented as a two bedroom apartment which I shared with four other persons and was (no joke!) in a building we came to learn was condemned by the Health Department for rodent infestation. It was cheap and shitty and fun and dangerous and dirty and chaotic and also super supportive and the friendliest most easy time in my life that complexities of adulthood-whatnot came, as they do, to envelope.
From that rat-pad I moved with a pal to an actual two-bedroom on a block with a serious Sesame Street vibe. My roomie and I had separate schedules. We lived so happily together mostly because we were rarely home at the same time. (She was a bartender and restaurant manager/I was an actor and model up at 4 AM for calls and auditions and such.) She also didn’t cook and, at first, neither did I. Thus, the terminal dirty dishes situation that breaks up so many a happy flatmate romance. But then - I started.
A break up. A financial drought. And here came the choice - the take out and the resturantings and the lunch-on-the-goes were getting tricky to sustain. Credit card debt and extra purchases need to be streamlined.
I come from a family headed by a Mom who is a HELL of cook. A buffet of fantastic food I ate for granted and, stupidly, did not understand the actual technique of creating. Frustrated, humble, and then ever more sternly committed to finding my way. And so, I did! Not my Ma, but fine enough and creative and adventurous and most definitely down with eating a supper of chips and salsa if it got late and I fucked it up and it was too late or complicated to salvage.
Single, strapped, and taking a bit of agency into reclaiming which was, earnestly, a kind of worse-case scenario for the naive and yet to be sullied 20-something self. Joy and community (I actually cooked for people and they came back for more!) and learning - dope, dope, dope.
Well, ‘things’ did hit. Good stuff but also whack shit and my body, related and unrelated to more than a few deeply destabilizing and violent developments, changed. That happens with age. That happens with circumstance. That happens from nature and nurture and neither AND regardless of any of any of it - we become different.
For me, in regards to this conversation here - In my world those that came to pass as a series of ‘mystery illnesses’ that looked a bit like the flu and a bit like a stomach bug matched with a migraine. There was no ‘reason’ per say nor did it last long enough to warrant a diagnosis per say. I just ‘got normal’ again. Well, sorta. I would feel better but food would be an issue. I would get these odd aversions to various foods I had loved and accepted and looked forward to, coveted in times of comfort, indulged with at Holidays and other celebrations - some of my faves would turn my face green just thinking about, or leave me bathroom bound for hours - HOURS - afterwards. That would be followed by weak-kneed fatigue. Add to that mystery food to add to my mystery recovery symptoms: eating a dope meal and being waylaid (like, having to leave mid-social engagement to run home in shame after an ‘accident’ ) to toilet to bed and back and forth and so on and so on and whatnot.
There were nights I slept on the living room floor to be in closer access. No alcohol nites would end with my face exhausted planted into my dinner plate. Weird and embarrassing and then other days and nights it was fine.
As many of you know, most especially readers with chronic illnesses - no doctor knows what the fuck is up. There is no language, you yourself don’t really know how to speak of your needs or concerns or symptoms. It is a wonderland that I ardently pursued when I felt like shit and then kind of forgot about (a/k/a avoided) when well. For there were times when I got 100% better. Could eat all the things and drink all the drinks and others when not.
Deeply destabilizing no doubt!
Flash forward to today - I have a support network and regime. My health is well and all that but still (here comes the self-sabotage) I bring to every eating experience a heavy serving of anxiety. That comes as a side to most every experience in my life, but eating it is ever more hearty. It has been bad, sure, but I am not yet able to shake off the story of those experiences. It becomes a ritual of its own- the excitement and then fear. I get up and down several times during a single meal. Don’t talk and internally check how the food is ‘suiting’ me. My husband ignores me; this whole dance.
But that is only what is observed. On the inside, as much as I still like cooking and food-sourcing and ethics is a huge interest of mine. I look forward to preparation and actual eating until I do. I sit down and I start to start and immediately I go to battle with this wild animal kind of fight/flight energy and legit fear. Barrels on the energies of previous eats that did not digest well.
And, look, that is all real and accurate, but also not currently happening at this very moment and may not happen at this given meal. No, the fear does not invoke a flair up or any kind of Karma bullshit like that. Bad emotions may arise, OK - where I do have agency is in the choice to either run zealously (as I so often do) into the fire of freak out, or alternatively actually supporting myself.
I might think (instead of “Oh my God this is going to be AWFUL and hurt so fucking bad!”) “I have had tricky eating experiences and have done a really good job taking care of myself in those times. This is food I feel good about eating; I have taken the time to make a wonderful meal from foods that, to the best of my knowledge, are going to be not only yummy but good for my body. I can eat slowly thinking of what good care I take of myself.”
Will it make a difference to my body and digestion? Maybe, and too, perhaps not. But regardless of what symptoms arise - or don’t - the actual experience until that information reveals itself will be a lot more enjoyable. And, what if, I can find again the restorative self-nurturing aspect meal time was way-way-back in the tiny kitchen in Manhattan?
Wrapping it up - stories are too many times things, such as mine, things we recite without question. Think “I procrastinate” “I am sloppy” “I’m slow” - all with possible origins in history, but that need not apply today. There is a place for unpacking ills and wounds and whatnot, the beginning of breaking down is this: ask yourself - I'm going to try at supper too - Is it happening now or happened then?
Because you know what? Right now might be different. And, different could be very exciting.
