Dear Insides

The last few weeks have pretty much rotted.

Rotted? Been rotten? I think it's been rotten.

The last few weeks have pretty much been rotten.

That's better.

Anyways... there has been a lot of crying accompanied with a lot of swearing, both by me. I had a very lovely day in early January and then things deteriorated.

I know a lot of people are depressed in the wretched, evil, dreadful winter times. I detest the Satanic snow and that makes me very sad, but I don't think it's the winter and lack of sun. I couldn't really put my finger on what the problem was. Which just made me feel worse.

In the last day or so, though, the fog has lifted a bit and there hasn't been as much despair. Just as inexplicably as it came, it is leaving. There have been some things to contribute to it, I am certain:

I finally broke my weight loss plateau.  My new three P's of weight loss: perseverance, perspiration, poverty.

I have a new life goal that I am finding to be absurdly fun.

February is next month and that is supposed to be the best time to apply for jobs teaching English in Italy and since that is my new life goal, I am excited to apply with tutta la mia mente e la mia anima for the chance to be somewhere else, doing something else.

Those things have helped to make me feel a little less burdened.

I also realized recently that this is the time of year when my parents separated. I wonder if my insides remember and hold on to that, and if it is part of the reason the sadness descended and then lifted. My insides keep track of the things I don't even recall consciously: the odd silence. The feeling of knowing something but not knowing anything. Of being told. Of feeling relieved and uncertain all at once.

I don't remember a lot from life, frankly. But I am grateful that my body does. I mean, I wasn't grateful for the crying, but I am working on not fighting it as much. I am working on feeling the fear, pain, panic, or memory, and welcoming it in.

I used to be all: "Hmm. This is a feeling. A terrible, dreadful feeling. It is going to kill me. I will not survive it.You cannot stay feeling. You are uncomfortable and I don't know what to do with you. There must be something else I can do so you will go away."

Now, I say: "Hello, awful feeling. Here is a seat right next to my heart. You can stay and we will work it out so I don't have to keep being surprised by you. I get it now. You are part of me. You both do and do not belong here. We will work it out."

Some days are better than other days, but I guess that is all part of it. We are all trying and we are all deranged and at times, there will be a little something that will help you get through. For me, there are always olives. I love me some olives, even in the accursed snow.

Well, as long as I am inside eating them while it rains down hell in the form of white flakes outside.

Dear List

The following is a list of things I understand:

Dear Young Adult Novel

I recently finished a really great book written for the young adult audience. It was about two teenage boys whose lives end up intersecting because they share the same name. It was fantastic and I kept pausing in my reading to write down passages that I loved. (That's kind of my thing; I have a notebook or post-it pad nearby to write down parts from books. This particular book was chock full of all kinds of note-worthy writings.) There were just these sentences or whole paragraphs that summed up exactly how I feel, like, right now, my exact, precise, heretofore indescribable emotions and inner feelings in the form of eloquent phrases on several pages of this lovely novel. And in the midst of my readings, it hit me:

I have the exact emotional maturity of a 16-year-old boy.

Look out, humans. The things, they are about to become from fantasy to what is real.

You know how there's that quote that says, "go confidently in the direction of your dreams?"

I don't really do that. I head to the general area of my dreams, shuffling, with a sort of limp and my eyes shielded.

I feel like that says it all.

Dear Potato Salad

Humans are just the weirdest ever. Well, maybe it isn't humans. Maybe it's just me. I shall now provide an example.

The other day some nice person gave me some pulled pork. It was delicious. It is delicious, I mean, because I still have some, because it was a generous helping and I am like the slowest eater ever and I am still trying to control my portions especially since I have decided to add donuts back into my diet as staples.

So the pulled pork is delicious but what goes with pulled pork? My first thought: potato salad. I guess cole slaw would also go with it, but cole slaw is not as preferred by me as potato salad. I like slaw, but it's not potato salad. And point of fact, I really only ever loved my grandmother's potato salad, but if I am at an event where non-grandma potato salad is being served, I will still eat it.

I always thought at some point I would have my grandmother teach me how to make the potato salad. She is not dead yet, so I should probably still try to make that a thing. Maybe the dementia will take a holiday and she will be in the zone and we will make potato salad and I will have a memory to treasure.

My dad taught me how to make his lasagne, but it was over the phone. I still have my multitude of index cards with ingredients and the steps to follow, even to make my own sauce. I have never made my own sauce. I have made the lasagne and it is delicious. He told me he had a secret ingredient; it turns out that ingredient is actually in every lasagne. You mix it in with the ricotta and egg and cheese. For a long time I guarded it like it was a real secret. Then I started reading recipes online and everyone says to use it. It's nutmeg. You're welcome. 

That is actually a classic story about my dad. He would tell me something and I would believe it and guard it and much later find out that none of what he had said was true. Since he is no longer living and since I no longer wish to, I do not become angry about this. It is now just part of what I remember.

Since I have taken this detour, I have recently decided what I really gained from his death.

See, people always say this total crap about how you learn from everything in your life and I hate that. Like, this horrible, terrible thing happened to you, but you learned from it. I feel like I could have still had a perfectly sound and pleasant life without that horrible thing and it's all important "lesson." But the reality is that bad things do happen and if you do not find some way to process it, it will kill you, emotionally, if not literally. So, instead of thinking of the terrible things as teaching me lessons, I am viewing it as giving me a gift. I mean, who doesn't enjoy a gift and when there is a surprise one! Even better. And even though it is exactly the same as a lesson, something terrible giving me a gift makes me feel better than it teaching me a lesson.

This supports my opening sentence regarding being weird.

Anyways, my  gift (read: lesson), from the death of my father is a greater compassion and understanding for others when someone in their life dies. My relationship with my father was crappy and dumb, but he was still my father. I look exactly like him-like, exactly like him- and his health was awful, but it was still a shock when he died. And I remember everything about finding out he'd died and telling my sister and my mom and kind of ruining my friend's graduation after-party, and lying in bed that night feeling like this heavy, thick, rectangular box was lying on my chest and driving the next day and not knowing at all how I arrived at my destination. I remember how my brain was a mess for a good year afterward. I remember how isolating it felt. None of that was the gift; the gift was that when I see that look into the eyes of someone else who has had someone they care about die, I understand. I know what questions to ask and how to better listen. I know to send a card and say you are sorry, even if they insist the person wasn't that close to them or that they are fine. The gift was a depth of understanding.

He said some crazy things, like nutmeg is way super secret, but when he left, he gave me that. 


So, back to pulled pork. 

I bought three different kinds of potato salad to go with my grand pulled pork. I served it up on a place. A dollop of each type of salad to accompany the yummy pork and, in combination, potato salad tastes exactly like nothing. And so then, I ate it separately. And separately, potato salad still tastes exactly like nothing. I still eat/ate it because I apparently like the taste of nothing. Honestly, my grandmother's potato salad tastes like nothing, too. I love it and it is literally just cold potato.

Lots of things taste like nothing, frankly. Take bread. I love me some bread, but it tastes like nothing. It is primarily a vehicle for butter or jam or brie or something else. Yet, I will be picky about my bread. I want a good quality bread. I want fresh bread, so the nothing will be lighter, softer, and more delicately carry to my lips the delightful other item I have slathered upon it.

I feel the same way about cake. Cake is a vehicle for frosting. Who even cares about cake unless it has frosting? I made a chocolate cake once, like, from scratch. With Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate and the whole stinking nine yards. You were supposed to sprinkle powered sugar on top. This was fancy-times cake, humans. And the cake was good, and the powered sugar looked really pretty like, but you know what else I did to that cake? I made some cream cheese frosting and coated that cake in it and then? THEN THAT CAKE WAS THE CAKE OF THE LORD OUR GOD.  Bland until frosting.

I kept eating that bland old potato salad, even though the one variety I brought had eggs in it and I am allergic. Do  you know why I did that? Because I had paid for that potato salad. And since I had spent money on it, it had to be eaten. And I do that with almost everything in my life. If I paid money for it, it will be eaten, it will be worn, it will be watched. Otherwise that money had been wasted. Who cares if I am ill or ill-dressed? Who cares that the time I spend refusing to leave the theater because I paid for this movie so I will watch the whole thing is time that could have spent doing something I actually like? I. PAID. FOR. THIS.

What a great, big, bunch of weirdos the humans are. We eat bland foods and rave about it, and we suffer through the bad when we think we should for no other reason than that we spent money on it, and we have to make ourselves enjoy the good things that we actually enjoy because we are so accustomed to the sufferings, and we don't figure out most of the other important things until they end.

Well, like I said. Maybe it's just me. If so, then perhaps all of this long windedness made you feel less like a chump. And if it did, then that is my gift to you.

LESSON!