Hummusville, hatred, health food, and holding yourself a bit closer.

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selfish celebrity suicide [or not.]

I always thought he'd do it. As though I knew him. Of course I didn't.

When I saw the phrase on Twitter: For Robin Williams, we give thanks. RIP. - my fingertips flew to my lips, and I thought, oh, Robin, no. I googled.

He did it. 

He did it.

I'd always wanted to meet him. When I was younger, I imagined he'd be a completely exhausting dinner date, but as I got older, I came to believe that he'd probably be very quiet. Awkward, without an audience, without a framework, without a catalyst. I wanted to meet him even more; I think I got more joy out of his presence on this earth as I came to understand more and more, simply by virtue of age, how dark his privacy must have been.

I think we would've understood each other a little.

Oh, Robin. 

______

Is it selfish for a person to commit suicide?

I don't know if "selfish" is the correct word.

I half-heartedly attempted suicide when I was in my very early 20s - three times, all overdoses. They were tough times: family stuff, personal stuff, in college and didn't know what to do with myself, deeply depressed and afraid. Two attempts ended in puke and a next-day headache; the third, no ill effects. I was, like many people (particularly women), mostly acting out of desperation at my pain and solitude, rather than actually trying to end my life. I still had hope that life would be better eventually, when I grew up, when I got on my own two feet, when I was fully in control of my own choices and direction.

That idea of eventual control and happiness was chronologically far enough in the future that it seemed there was enough time to turn the ship around; it seemed possible for my life to, eventually, be completely different. That I might be completely different in it; that I might learn to shed myself and emerge with different muscle-memory, different bones, different soul. Like Precious, in the movie.

I put it away, but I couldn't shed it.

People don't talk about it. It can be weird. It's taboo; it's horror, and it's confusing. It can be "triggery" for people who have struggled with it, and it's a hard thing to put on some's radar for any reason. Saying the word suicide aloud makes people hedgy. So I don't know how common it is, but I know that, for me: suicide has never left me. It's always there: not as a desire toward an action, not as an intent, but as the presence of that intent.

Aren't you tired of fighting. Wouldn't it be so much easier to. Wouldn't things be so much better if. 

Nobody likes these thoughts, people. Do they sound pleasant? Do they sound like something people feed, in order to keep alive? They are not selfish. They are not jolly, hello. They are not welcome. They are intrusive. They are utterly exhausting. They garner horror from people, if you share them. They make me feel horribly guilty and shameful. They make me hide.

Mostly because people think they're selfish.

______

At some point, I learned that my great-grandmother committed suicide before I was born. I'm not sure how old she was; I believe my grandmother was a young adult when it happened. According to my grandmother, her mother overdosed on medications, sat resolutely in a chair, and waited to die while her daughter, my grandmother, frantically tried to get medical attention for her (tried to get her out of the chair, tried to call the hospital - their remote locale prevented ambulance care).

I can't imagine what it would be like to watch your mother's life flicker out, right in front of you, hard to the end, in the presence of your tears. I can't imagine whether it might have been any less painful or traumatic if my great-grandmother had committed suicide in solitude.

I know that my grandmother has never been whole; I know that she could not build my mother, and resented her inevitable growth. I know that my mother could not build me, and broke me instead, against all intent I can hope for, on her behalf.

And who knows where it started, but so it goes.

______

The only reason I haven't committed suicide in the past two years is because of my nieces.

And don't freak out at me. The only reason I will put that fact on anyone's radar is because I could never do it. Are you suicidal? It's moot.

I know it would hurt people.

I know that I will not be the person to stamp the notion of suicide on my nieces' life experiences.

I won't be that voice. It is the only drive keeping me here.

I know how persistent that voice is, once it grabs you.

Only he could decide for himself whether it was right. Nobody else can know whether it was right. It's not a wrong decision. I can't always agree with these ideas that everyone's truth is their own truth, and every truth is true, because it's true for someone, somewhere. That reasoning seems really simplistic, to me. It seems belittling to every single layer of the human experience, both individual and shared. And if you call me out on that: I don't have the words for it yet. Only the truth of it, and the questions that surround it.

But what degree of illness must a person suffer in order to allow her child to frantically watch her die? to watch her beg and plead and sob, and remain resolute in - what? Your last memory of earth is your baby's heartbreak.

What madness must a person suffer in order to, like Sylvia Plath, commit suicide in her kitchen, having set the table with her childrens' breakfasts, knowing it would be they who found her dead body in that macabre, jolting position, half-in/half-out of an oven? Was that a thoughtless act?

What degree of darkness could a person carry for sixty-three years on this earth, determined to carry it successfully, whatever that means, determined to try to make good in the world as he suffered the presence of that intent for how long? - to what degree does the presence of that intent eventually overwhelm?

To what darkness would a person have to admit, in order to admit that they wonder at their bad choices and ingrown soul and pain and depression how much better off would my nieces be without me in their lives? 

And to what degree does grace abound? Whether you phrase it as it is unselfish and morally neutral for a person to commit suicide or to the degree a person suffers, so is there also an equal measure of grace for their suffering - I think selfish is pretty much the stupidest word to use toward this issue. Right up there with have some faith! and tomorrow is another day! and find the strength within! and maybe you should just spend more time outside in the freaking flaming-hot Florida sunshine, man! 

That is all.

tensions.

My pastor claims to not be a poet. He published a volume of poetry entitled I Am Not A Poet, which makes me chuckle, and I wonder if he chuckled when he chose that title. Because he is a poet, whether or not he ever intended to be.

I am not a dancer.

But I dance all the time.

Oh, the tension of it all.

*hand dramatically flung across forehead*

_________________ 

In six days, it will have been 2.5 years since big, bad life events began. And I still cannot understand how women survivors manage to use their voices calmly, how they manage to plant their feet and live alongside rapids; how they consider first the life they draw upward into themselves, and not the fact that the rapids erode the ground beneath them: that tragedy is, at any time, imminent. A few years ago (before all this), I wrote that, in the company of strong women, I often felt like a little girl, sitting on the floor wide-eyed, one finger in my mouth as I watched the women go about the business of the world. I feel closer to tantrum than reason lately; bewildered, on the floor, as I watch the women dance in the tensions of whatever brings them to where they are.

I want to learn the Tension again.

I want to understand how to gather the parts of this experience that make pure, objective, critical thought impossible for me right now, and put them in the places where they won't need to burst out, graceless, enraged, snarling and foaming for blood. I grieve hard at the loss of my balance, my grace. I hate the way it cripples.

I want to know how to reconcile my firm belief that women are not primarily their sexuality yeah yeah yeah! with the shame of admitting how this experience has razed me and what I think is a pretty objective observation that I'm probably never going to be the same again.

I want to understand how to not be broken by this. Because I am. And the current goal of my life is to not stay here. Whatever mistakes I may make in processing all this, I cannot hold this close; I can't make it part of myself, to the extent that the value I assign the pain begins to outweigh the promise beyond it.

I get it, for the first time. It has to be okay to let things go. It has to be okay to outgrow the way things have always been. Outgrowing doesn't mean you're abandoning the self-care you invested in the person who experienced things; it doesn't mean you're leaving the four-year-old on the side of the road. It means that the tension of things is at work: it means that the person you've always known is the same, but not: the four-year-old is now twelve, or fifteen, or twenty-five, or fifty-five; it means she lives and needs differently. She's not Sleeping Beauty, holed up in a tower, static for a hundred years; she's Rapunzel, literally attempting to climb things for more.

So you give her more. You re-learn the Tension. And it's hard.

_______________

I've never thought about pain abstractly until people started giving me self-help books. There are some great ones; they're usually the ones I start reading, then say whoa. and set aside for awhile. I glance at them every now and then, and I know there's plenty in there for when I have teeth.

The other books, though? There are some weird, even offensive, ideas out there regarding pain and recovery. I don't know much, but I'm glad I know weird when I see/hear/read/smell it.

I'm not determined to carry pain around with me, and I'm not investing in poking at bruises to remember the ouch, but this idea of pain as something to be overcome, eradicated, left behind as an obstacle to greater things.... I don't know. I can't see the value in pursuing a disconnect from the pain we've experienced; I can't even see it as possible, that I would ever not feel pain regarding painful events.

The idea of not trying to overcome pain kind of flies in the face of most things I've heard or learned about pain. More tension. Glorifying pain, denying pain; making pain an idol, rejecting pain as sinful.

I'm not glorifying pain. Mine is currently debilitating, and I am not content with this. But I think that, if we're careful with it, and with ourselves, our pain is an integral part of the roadmap that propels us forward on a path: what does this mean? why, and in light of what ideas I had before? how has it changed the person I was? what does it mean to God? what will it mean, going forward? And while a tragic experience can be mistakenly processed as merely a framework in which pain can be expressed and made to redefine a life, the pain itself differs from the value we assign it and the ways in which it manifests in a self-image, an image of God, or a worldview. Feeling pain is not the Ultimate of a recovery. But neither is discarding pain as something peripheral, or attempting to eradicate it as a distraction.

I'm thinking that God is most profoundly present in pain: in the transmission of it, the unwilling reception, the burden, the go-forth of it. I don't understand it, but it is. It is witness to the in-between, the tension of all that is God. Sometimes, there's no greater comfort in the world than to hear the words I know how you feel from someone seared by their own branding of the pain you carry. Somehow, in ways for which I don't yet have words, when one draws a deep breath and pushes out those words, wishing that one did not have the capacity to know - I know how you feel - the in-between tension of all that is God is most present in those moments: knowing, not knowing, speaking, being still, recovered by grace, and yet that grace is most present in the sacred Moment of pain in their eyes; and you know you're not alone or without grace as you labor with your own moment.

Somehow, God lives in those most sacred Moments, which still rumble and smoke from the depths; to eradicate them? deny them?

Impossible.

gluten, booger-fruits, Twinkies, and frying people.

So I went to the doctor. You know it's real when Lisa goes to the doctor.

'Cause I hate going to the doctor.

I love you, pizza crust. 

But I'm getting older. And getting older comes with the need to make sure things are still working the same way they did when you were, like, seventeen. [Spoiler alert: when you're thirty-three, they don't work the same as when you were seventeen. I've heard the best is yet to come.]

So, for a few reasons, we decided that: it might be beneficial for me to abstain from gluten for awhile.

I love you, cheesy crackers.

Yeah, you heard me: I'm going gluten-free. Get your potshots in now. I've earned them. I've flung them around myself, O Thou Abstainers Of The Wheatberry: I know, I know: you're not celiac (neither am I), but you have a sensitivity, or an allergy (I might, too). I'm not making fun of you, seeing as how I'm on a little trip to figure out whether we might have this in common. I'm learning that there are many more legitimate reasons to avoid gluten than just celiac, or IBS, or whatever else, so I really need to be less judgy/mocky than I used to be. Especially as high-horsey as I can be about people judging or mocking my own choices. I've been a little hypocritical, I'll admit. So there's that.

But there's also this: I'm a chef. I manage one kitchen, work my badonk off in another, and personal-chef as much as I can, often for people with health issues who require special accommodations. So I have plenty of opportunities to interact with special dietary needs and diverse culinary preferences. I don't begrudge any person their right to eat whatever the heck they want or need to eat. Twinkies? VASTLY inferior to Butterscotch Krimpets, but have at 'em, if that's your thing. Lentils? With you. Lamb? Marinate with lime, and yay for dinner. Avocado? Avocado is, and always will be, a disgusting booger fruit, so you, I judge (actually, I'm just jealous that you can choke it down).

The Gluten Thing is a thing that I hate, even as I begin this experiment. There is a special place in Hell's Kitchen for people who play gluten-free games. People who play gluten-free games for no reason make my job harder, and they make life harder on people who legitimately suffer, and they make me want to stuff baguettes down their gullets before dredging them in flour (you know, the gluten kind) and flinging them headfirst into the fryer.

I love you, gnocchi, but I hate making you.

Por ejemplo: Customer strolls in, sipping a beer (gluten), munching a mini-bag of pretzels (hello), and I clearly hear her chomping into her iPhone about her study dinner of Bagel Bites and Sam Adams the previous evening (of course). And she asks:

"Do you guys have GF bread/croutons/crackers/babies/oxygen/chairs/restrooms?"

Sigh...... yeeesssss, we dooooo. [In my  head, I've said it like Napoleon Dynamite; in real life, I'm a professional, so I've said it like Napoleon Dynamite with a big friendly smile.]

"Okay, I want that. But I want the gluten-free crackers on top of the gluten-free bread, and the gluten-free  babies on the side, and I want the gluten-free restroom served cold but the rest of it just a little bit warm."

[Still smiling; eyes glazed over.] No problem.

"Yeah. And can you make it on a gluten-free grill that you've just pulled out of an unopened box made from gluten-free cardboard which as never been in the same gluten-free room with any gluten-free fertilizer which may or may not have been used to stink up a gluten-free wheat field?"

...Sure. I have one of those In The Back. [There is no Back, in that it's like Narnia and filled with magical things, like gluten-free grills.] [And I'm still smiling.]

"Great. But I don't want the obviously-GF potato side dish; I want extra flatbread on the side instead, but with gluten-free oxygen for dipping instead of whatever it normally comes with."

[I stop smiling.] The flatbread is made with wheat flour.

"Oh, it is?"

Yep.

"Oh. Well... Eh, that's okay. I love flatbread. It's fine. Just make sure it's grilled on a separate grill from anything that touched gluten."

The insides of my cheeks are bleeding because I'm chewing on them right now.

"What?"

Nothing. ["Idiot." Napoleon nails it again.]

(I know, I know, #notallGFpeople. But #yesallchefs. So.)

_____

For me... After talking with my doctor, I realize that I suffer from a variety of little tics, either mild enough that I don't pay them much attention, or have crept up with enough subtlety that I don't recognize on a daily basis how much they impact my life. But I've always dealt with depression that meds don't always alleviate. But I'm an overweight chef who's on her feet all day long, and I'm getting older; aches and pains are normal, right? But I've figured out so many of my migraine triggers and I manage them pretty well, even though I still get them, so never mind. 

There's also the brain fog that gets so intense sometimes that I truly can't think. There's the fact that, sometimes, I'll bump into a doorframe or catch my skin on the edge of a table, and within minutes, it's spread into a foot-long welt resembling a huge, hot, red bugbite. There's the fact that any prolonged contact on my skin - socks, bra, bobby pins, even a bandaid - results in huge, painful, itchy hives that take weeks to clear. Migraines. Other headaches. Girl Weirdness. Physical weakness.

So, for now; goodbye, pasta. Love you so much, miss you already, mean it like crazy.

like. crazy. 

People who are GF for a legit medical reason - celiac, allergies, IBS, whatever - I'm more than happy to accommodate. I can nearly always tell, anyway, when someone is legitimately Gf, because they make it clear that they're appreciative of the special treatment they wish they didn't need. I'm not looking for anyone to apologize for their needs; I'm just a curmudgeony person when it comes to dumb things. It's real easy to say things like if you're gonna be stupid, just stay HOME and cook for yourself when you're a chef.

Maybe gluten causes my curmudgeonism.

We'll see.

That is all.

adieu.

hopeless hope.

Some days, the idea of God makes me roll my eyes and full-on scoff, with the noise in the throat and everything, the head-shake, the eyeroll. The scathing whatever of put-upon teenagerdom.

Some days (most days) (every. damn. day.), I cannot deal with the illogic. All the doubts that I've always had. The questions have always lead to more questions; they only stopped when I stopped asking, and they built up in my bloodstream like a lining of secret madness, acid shame. Some call it going deeper; most days, lately, I call it circular and with every time my lips form the word, my throat relaxes and the madness lifts. I wonder if I'll ever call it anything else. I was born with these doubts; they'll never go away. I wonder how they nourish my Faith To Come, nestled deep somewhere, feeding on the warm, river which blooms within she who was born acid-lined with lead.

Some days, I need to be in silence, and my breathing deepens against the ache in my center as tears leak all day long, into the dark.

Almost every day, I am distrustful. I eye God from across a room, my legs crossed at the knee, foot working in the air like a metronome, my double-timed heartbeat. You. Hey YOU. This? It is not okay with me. It will never be okay. I don't care if you have a problem with that. I don't care if it's okay with you. I don't know if you'd call it a standoff, or a time-out. Or none of the above. Or if I'm just riding the rage, my one grownup-lady foot beating the hell out of the air while my soul kicks and screams and wears itself down like a righteously-enraged teenager-toddler.

Most days are sadness and anger. All days are fear. What keeps you from moving forward? Fear. What else can happen. What else are people capable of. Who do I already know; what is in them toward me. More importantly: What else am I capable of. What will I do from here. To what lure toward destruction might I succumb. What might finish me.

Most days are exhausting.

Many days, I think about giving up hope. And I say so. While driving home from work (because if I'm being honest, all of these days, rages, silences are prayer) (and because car-time is where I solve all the world's problems and tuck all the babies in), I bite my lips and consider - not with investment, but with dread at the reality - how frighteningly easy it might be. Genuinely frightening.

Those moments when God speaks: when it's so fast, and so few words, followed by waves that build on the event of it, that continue to transform the landscape in its wake. The infusion of holiness in my messy, messy car, inside me and out. In a millisecond.

give up your hope. 

Almost ran a stop sign.

And then, the sense that that presence is gone. But not.

give up my hope?

give up your hope. 

And I understand, more than I did.

The hopes that sustained my faith before: hopes that I could be good enough. Hopes that I would find meaning in all the tragedy. Expectation that I should be able to turn all the horror I carried into something pleasing. That I could be further along in all this, whatever that means, if I could just figure out how to Do It Right. The hopes that such stunted growth, so many mistakes were something that weren't really real, if I could just figure out how to Do Them Right, too.

give up your hope. 

It's not up to me to make the terrible things that happened to me into something that will please God, whether by trying to understand them or remake them into something good or even really try to use them for anything. The sins committed against me will never, on any scale, ever be anything but evil. Even to God. [The same is true for my own sins, but we'll get to that.]

I always knew that God knew what had happened; I always felt that God wanted more out of me; I always believed that I fell short of what God could do with my experiences; I never knew how misplaced my hope was. I never knew that God knew the pain those misplaced hopes created. I never knew that God saw, and maybe even grieved, how hard I was trying, even as I refused to move, even as I fell flat on my face.

I still don't understand it. It's still not okay. We're still not okay.

But we're more okay than we were.

There is much hope in the absence of hope.

The tongues of grace resound, ever clearer.

And thank God that there's car insurance for when he's feeling chatty.