Heartbreak Kitchen

I don’t want you to lose sleep. I want you to sleep soundly after a day of forgetting many things, after a day of three square meals, after the presence of my body has left your memory. I want the two of us to be in our beds apart. 

I want to forget things to and not remember the heaviness of my body. Like the inverse of a love poem, I carry my heart in my heart, I carry my heart, in my heart. It’s not just the loneliness or my body alone in bed, the order of things have dissipated. I feel that you are living in a world without gravity and I am only feeling its force greater, it chokes me. Why do you still see her? You know it will hurt me. Don’t forget that. How could you forget that the potential energy of something raised high only accumulates more force when it falls and I don’t know what to say to myself to feel better except that you don’t know me like you thought you did and shattered blood vessels realign eventually. 

So, I wrote a poem in response:

Everything that is

beautiful is alive.

In a moment, I am

transparent and you

can place your hands

on my skin, trust me

not to dissolve. You

can kiss me on the

cheeks and see me

beautiful, see me

as I am blind to. I

don’t love myself,

but I love the world.

I love you as I am

like you. I hurt and

am not the willow

braches. I don’t howl

at night. But wait for

you to hold me

tenderly, for the vision

of myself, finally

apparent in your eyes,

to hold and make me

tender.

When my family talks to me I am in a stupor. I do a thing that nobody likes where I stare off blankly until a direct question is asked. I am processing every ache of my body every moment of the day. The Lunar eclipse haunts my psyche as change continually nags at my forehead and I wonder, now that I am alone: what will I be like without her? Will I be bitter when I don’t want to be? How many meditations sessions and healing ceremonies do I need before I let go of anger? Will it still be exhilarating to pee with the door open?

So yeah, I wasn’t really listening when my aunt asked me what I wanted to make for dinner. And I still wasn’t listening the second time. It was only the third ask that shook me out of my brain and I was left with the only real answer to any question I had been confronted with: meatballs sound good.

Did they sound good because meatballs are delicious, versatile, and able to transition between seasons? Did they sound good because you can make tarragon meatballs, or meatballs with parsley, or even meatballs with fish sauce and soy? Or that I had a master plan, thought out menu? No, I’m not really that thoughtful.

Meatballs are easy! I forgot half the ingredients I needed at the grocery store and they still turned out fine! Meatballs don’t break up with you (am I projecting here?) or require large amounts of care! They are best handled roughly and as everyone at the grocery store could tell you I am feeling/looking rough. (I never really looked that put together anyway so… ha!)

The care meatballs need is simple: two eggs for two pounds of meat and ½ cup of bread crumbs. They don’t ask for more than that. Season them, mix them with your hands and enjoy on a piece of toast. If you treat them well, they will love you back.

Yesterday was a bad eating day for me.

I was sadder than usual, a little angry. I felt betrayed by my ex, who I saw spending the night somewhere without me. I thought she had been crashing in Phoenix with her parents, yet here she was in my metaphorical back yard, spending the night with someone she met while we were together, someone she wanted to be her friend and not mine. I hope that doesn’t seem cold but those are the facts, and thinking about them I get raw and puffy faced.

It takes me about an hour into my day before I lose the will to eat. When I first wake up, if I can sleep, I feel happy, and maybe I have had a few good dreams. My mind is somewhere else, and head is on a clean pillow. I can enter the kitchen without thinking anything, eat nuts or eggs and feel ok. But if I let an hour pass, nausea starts to sink and I remember the questions that pester me throughout the day.

Without wanting to I have to ask myself: did I fail? And if I did fail, did I do so a little daily, so it all accrued over time? Or did I fail massively, somehow missing the moment I became an asshole? And I figure, if it wasn’t my fault, why the fuck did it happen like this? Why am I more heart broken than I can bear? Why did she do that? Why do I cry sometimes, and other times just let my heart pound in my chest? What do I do with the pain? What do I do with the thought I was hurt willfully by someone I loved, who loved me? Even when we broke up she looked into my eyes and made me tell her that I knew she loved me. What do I do with that? And that. And that.

Well, I have no answers yet. But when people put food on my plate, I can recognize an opportunity for progress. I eat half, sometimes more, before becoming tired by the effort. Throat lined with salt water won’t find much soothing, and my stomach churns and churns.

When we first broke up I have to be honest and admit that I thought I was the only person in the world who had ever been heartbroken. I know that is another cliche, but I felt it true to me and proportional to the magnitude of the relationship we shared. I’ve cursed in a way I never have before and I feel no shame because motherfucking dammit my heart hurts so goddamn fucking bad and holy shit I might just why motherfucker??? why ??? fucking asshole goddamn. I can’t help myself, when it feels right, it feels right.

People have listened to me though and they are kind. I’ve finally learned that almost everyone seems to go through this awful thing of feeling heart broken and abandoned, and rather than cloaking myself in the illusion that this experience is singular to me, I believe them. I am stuck with an image from my childhood, a scene from the movie Crybaby. At one point, the heartbroken lead actress cries while collecting her tears in a jar, waiting for it to filled before she tips her jar back and drinks her own tears. I laughed at this scene when I was child, and now I cannot doubt its authenticity. I shouldn’t dare mock her heartbreak now.

There is one thing that has offered me clarity. Full of anger, I wanted to confront my ex. I would ask: why did you think this was ok? didn’t you know this would hurt me? why couldn’t you see I would find out? don’t you know I am in so much pain already? But I stopped myself. First, because my phone died. Then, because my friends Bre and Katie told me not to. And next, because I didn’t want to feel angry anymore. I didn’t want the anxiety of anger. I would rather take my jarful of tears and my heart broken heart and figure out a way to heal. A way to love myself. This is what I thought to myself in the hour just after I woke.

I realized that I cannot choose when and how I will be hurt. But I can choose how I hurt others. I can stop the pain I feel and let it end with me. In asking Dani to confront the questions that I cannot escape, I would be redirecting the pain onto me, making myself a victim, and I would be holding on to the hope that there was something she could say that would make me feel better. I don’t think there is. A part of me accepts that Dani is on her own journey with her own pain, and while feel injured I don’t need to saddle her with mine. I need to do the harder more important work of loving myself and trusting the person that I am.

EVERYTHING IS FINE, is a mantra I say to myself when I cook. Quiche crust absolutely falls apart while being rolled out? Fine. Tart pan falls apart and custard runs out of quiche? Fine. Rapid mounting smoke in the kitchen as quiche custard burns itself into the bottom of the oven? I guess that’s fine too.

This was my internal monologue 24 hours before I finished the preparations for my cousin’s baby shower. Most of the true catastrophes of the event resulted from the quiche, but cooking for a crowd is never as uncomplicated as one might hope.

So I try and emulate my zen mother and intersperse expletives with the mantra everything is fine. While I cooked in a somewhat harried manner, realizing that everything might take a little bit more time than I thought it might, I was happy. You can never be truly upset while cooking for a joyous occasion, the food ultimately for people you love. I felt like I had barely finished in time, but by the time we had made it to Prescott, where the shower was hosted, I felt serene.

Since the baby shower, Eileen has given birth to her child, Eren Can. I felt so happy to be with my family on that day and I was not only surrounded by their warmth, but also by their humor and generosity. We all took turns massaging one another, rubbing shoulders and feet, addressing whatever ailment needed tending to. While my family chated and cared for one another, I accidentally set fire to the marinated lamb I had prepared, and with my mantra I remained surprisingly calm while flames rose two feet in the air. I figured out eventually how to work the electric grill and returned inside to find my family undisturbed by my commotion outside. Eileen’s husband Cihan appeared to be the only one who noticed.

“Are you ok?” he asked.

I laughed a little too much, “I (and the lamb) are ok now!”

Haha!

Eren Can is lucky to have his parents. Eileen and Cihan are the two gentlest people I know, and I love them dearly. My first memories are of being unnecessarily shy of Eileen because of how beautiful she was. I hid behind my mother's’ legs.

Over the years I have gotten to know my beautiful cousin and her gentle heart. Eren Can has two kind parents, and a mother with the best smile in the world.

Sadness like a syrup slipping down my throat. It happens all day and I wait for its dull sting to pass. My girlfriend broke up with me and now I am the cliches of all cliches, not eating, not sleeping, all the while agonizing about where it all went wrong.

Enough about that. Let’s talk about ravioli. Sometimes all my body wants to do in response to lethargic sadness is use itself up, so that I can finally be exhausted and fall back tired into bed. Kneading dough always helps with this feeling, something I learned after Newtown and my mother and I baked bread all day to assuage the total sadness we felt. It feels good to punch something until it is tender while not hurting anything or anyone.

So yesterday mid morning, still feeling an ache in my heart, I assembled a mix of durum flour and cake flour (my no fuss substitute for the traditional 00 flour) and made a well right in the middle of my mound. I cracked some eggs into the empty space in the middle and slowly whisked with a fork, incorporating the flour gram by gram. It hurt my arms to be honest, the repetitive motion of moving my forearm back and forth, back and forth. But in many ways, pain is the goal here so I continue on. Oh, if only the world recognized what a perfect martyr I am...

Once half of my flour was incorporated I began kneading the mixture, slowly working the dough until it became soft and pliable. This was not easy and I had to add more moisture to the dough. How did I know the dough was under hydrated? Besides the ache in my arms moving upward in exhaustion, the dough was not developing a gluten structure, remaining close textured after five minutes of kneading. I am looking for beautiful pliable dough here, ok...

So yes, I added an extra egg yolk and water, even though the commentators on my recipe called out the already inauthentic number of yolks in the best. Well, I ain't no Nonna am I? I’m a heartbroken 21 year who would very much like to take the easy way out. I continued. C’est la vie. (my ex spoke french, isn’t that cursed?)

Finally, I became happy with the texture of the dough and let it rest for four hours at room temperature. In case you haven’t bought into my case about me being a perfect martyr yet, I’ll inform you yesterday clocked in at over a hundred degrees and after the labor of assembling the dough I was sweating profusely. My aunt told me I smelled “ripe” but I took this in stride. People should know I’m in pain, especially at a distance.

The rest is easy. Using my aunt’s KitchenAid attachment I rolled out the dough carefully, following through with both of my hands. The dough which had seemed unglamorous was transformed, thinning out, becoming soft and delicate. I loved the cool feel of the dough passing through the KitchenAid and the way its sheets became slowly transculescent. In an effort of healing I tried to imagine my own self like those sheets, evening out, becoming better, somehow softer and stronger. It was the best part of my day to see something so simple and beautiful. To see something beautiful I could smell and taste.

I worked on my feet all day. I let my body work. I assembled a walnut and kale pesto, noting the changes I would make next time. I made a bright lemon and fresh oregano filling for the ravioli, whipping mascarpone and ricotta together. I tasted everything I touched, added more salt, capers, and followed my heart.

And if I’m honest it hurt because I’m heartbroken.

And the person I loved to cooked for was gone.