A Break

Remember that one time where I said I had a shit ton of emails? That number is up to 2024. I can't stay on top of anything. I read blogs from my phone, making it stupid hard for me to comment and I feel like an ass hole. I get text messages at hours that are not appropriate for most adults to be awake. I often don't return them. Emails? I skim them and look for familiar names. I hope nothing important hits my spam filter. I log on to Twitter and I have thousands of new tweets. 

It feels like social media is stabbing me in the face.

Don't get me wrong, I am not giving it up. I am not throwing in the towel. 

There are people who read this blog who have come to mean something to me. Some of them I think have already given up, which is fine. I am not going to hold that against anyone. The content here has been, well, less than adequate. But, this space still means something to me. And those of you that are still out there...I am hoping you'll stay. 

19 weeks until I go on my externship. 19 weeks until classes end and my culinary career begins. I promise to share all of that with you. I promise to tell the hilarious stories that are my life. I promise not to let this die.

So, I took a one post break from my 30 days of truth (ha - gotcha!) to tell you that.

Happy Halloween and trick or treat or some shit. If it weren't for Facebook, I wouldn't even know it was Halloween. And that is just plain sad.

Someone who has made my life worth living.

Here's the thing about me - I don't feel this way about people. I love the people in my life more than I can explain, but I know that I can live without them. I realize that nobody truly thinks they will die if they lose someone, but that's not what I mean. I would be fine. Sad, yes. Heart broken, in fact. But, over time, fine. 

This is what bothers me about romance novels, love stories (ahem, Twilight), and chick flicks. That kind of "love" to me is kind of pathetic. Maybe I am jaded and the fucked up one here. I am fine with that. I really am. I just do not think it is healthy to have your entire self wrapped up in someone else.

Let me back up a little bit to explain why I feel this way.

When I first moved to Ohio, Krackle and I became very close friends and were roommates for years. When we first met, I wouldn't go to the grocery store by myself. I wouldn't do anything by myself. I was the neediest person in the world, but I probably had some form of social anxiety and was chronically shy as a child. Sometimes she humored me, sometimes she didn't. But, mostly, I learned something from her independence. 

Skip forward a few years and a long term relationship of mine ended, leaving me living alone. In fact, alone for the first time in my life. I had no one to go to the grocery store with me, no one to be there for every little thing. I was forced to get over it and found out that, for a long time, I wasn't very true to myself. I hid facets of my personality that I thought were uncool. I did a lot of things for other people's approval. I never really did anything for myself. 

So, I got to know me. Just me. I spent a lot of nights in tears, lonely. I spent a lot of nights on the phone with people making small talk and keeping them from their own lives. But, I also spent a lot of time doing the things that I really love. Like, reading books about dragons and elves. I dove into politics, finally finding a voice for what I believe. I became me. At least the me I am today. 

There are people in my life that I want there, that I choose to love and, hopefully, they choose to love me back. And, I suppose, in some sense of the word I need them, but I prefer to think of it as wanting them. I don't want to be needed, I want to be wanted. Therefore, I feel that way about the people I love. 

In answer to the question at hand, I make my life worth living. I need myself. I want everyone else to be there with me, laughing, crying, and going grocery shopping. But, in the end, it's just me making it all worth living. Everyone else is just a really fucking awesome bonus.

Something I hope I never have to do.

There are a lot of things I hope I never have to do.

Eat a cockroach.

Hug a clown.

Meet Ryan Seacrest.

Kill a hobo.

To name a few. But, my biggest fear, the thing I hope I never ever have to do is to take someone off of life support. I know that it is unlikely that will ever happen. But, the thought of having to make that decision paralyzes me. I am a very pragmatic person, so I would make a decision based on what the doctors recommended. I know that I could do it. And I would be able to handle making the decision. I wouldn't sit and think what if, it's just not the way that I am. I would be more than capable of deciding and would probably be the best person in my family to do it. 

But, I do not ever ever ever want to. Ever. I cannot emphasize that enough.

Something I hope to do in my life.

I want to go to Italy. And Paris. I want to eat at El Bulli (although, it is closing in two years and it takes at least that long to get a reservation) and The French Laundry and Frontera Grill. I want to go to Napa Valley and walk amongst the vines of Chateau Montelena. I want to travel and eat and drink and see the world.

But, most of all, I want my own restaurant. I want to design the menu, the bar, the chairs, the logo, even the front door. I want to create beautiful food from local, sustainable ingredients. And pair that food with the perfect wine. I want people to remember my food as their favorite food. I want regulars, that come in every Thursday for the pork chop special and a glass of sauvignon blanc. I want people to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries there. 

I know that most of these things will never happen. But, if you asked me two years ago if I would be in culinary school working 50 hours a week and falling more and more in love with food, I would have told you to fuck off. I never would have guessed I could pull this off. I never would have guessed I would have the balls to do what I did. Sometimes I still don't believe it. Some days I wake up and in the haze of sleep, think I am waking up to go sit in a cubicle for 8 hours. I always smile when I realize that I will never sit in a cubicle again. 

So, one day I hope to own my own restaurant and to travel the world. A year ago I hoped just to get into culinary school, before that I hoped to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I hope in a year I can knock one more thing off the list.

Something I have to forgive someone for.

There are a handful of people that I put in the category of kill on sight. People that I hate for things they did to me. People that have hurt me in a way that I will never forget. I am not sure if I have forgiven them or not. I don't want to ever see them again and if I did, I would likely avoid them. I wish them no harm. I don't think about them or the incidents surrounding them. At least not often.

The first is my stepfather growing up. He was violent and mean. But, there was good in him too. He loved my mother and he loved my sister and I. When I think of him and the turmoil that surrounded my life when he was married to my mother, I only have pity for him. I don't forgive him or not forgive him. I feel sorry for him and for the life that he has. I feel sorry that the whole situation happened.

The second is an old friend who betrayed me and used me. He lied to me and to people I love. He is an alcoholic and a drug addict and a pathetic human being. Again, I just feel sorry for him. And maybe I need to forgive him a little, because that incident was much more recent in my life. 

There are some ex-boyfriends and the boy who sang "Fido the Wonder Dog" to me everyday on the way to elementary school. 

But, I don't hold grudges. If you do something I need to forgive, you are probably no longer in my life. And if you are, it's a pretty safe bet I have both forgiven and forgotten. Life is too short to spend it resenting people.

Unless we are talking politicians. Then, holy crap, I have a lot of grudges out there.

Something I need to forgive myself for.

I am very hard on myself. I often run conversations over and over in my head, trying to think of ways that they could have gone different. Things I should have said. Things I shouldn't have said.

There is one conversation that haunts me. I have gotten in a lot of fights with people and said some awful things. But, I have always apologized, I have always done my best to make it better.

I was living with Krackle at the time and working with her as well. Things were tense, we were spending too much time together and I was frustrated. She would spend the night at her boyfriend's house (now her husband) and not tell me. Or come in at 4:00 am and wake me up. It was all stupid. I had no right to be mad, I was just being a 21 year old who didn't have the maturity to sit her down and talk things out.

So, one night we went out drinking and I blew up at her on the way home. I don't even remember the exact words I said, but they don't matter. It was a long time ago. She left and my boyfriend and I got into a huge fight because he took her side. Everybody did. I was out of line and drunk and immature and an asshole.

I tried to talk about it later and she just brushed it off, saying obviously I needed to get it off my chest. I never got to tell her that I didn't really mean it. I never got to tell her that I have no idea why I said those things the way I did.

We are, obviously, still close. And we have never spoken of the incident since. But, I have never forgiven myself for almost ruining a friendship that has lasted over a decade. She is my oldest friend.

I know she has no idea I still think about this or that it affected me that much.

I regret saying those things to her and am so happy that she was able to forgive me. I love her with all my heart and my life would not be the same without her.

Something I love - AKA I already suck at this

Something I love about myself is my passion for food and my love for discovering new food. I know it sounds obvious, seeing as I am in culinary school, but it's really not as common as I thought it would be. I love to try new things. I have eaten more new foods since starting culinary school than I thought I would and will continue to do so. I love that my palate is changing so much and how I can taste the tiniest nuances in seasoning now. I don't really have hobbies. Food is my hobby. And that sounds lame because who wants their hobby to also be their work? This kid does. 

Some of my best memories are of food, a pork chop before seeing Wicked. Chipotle mashed potatoes paired perfectly with beer. Eggs Benedict with amazingly creamy, tangy hollandaise. My first bite of free range, grass-fed bacon. 

I have several people in my life who eat because they have to. They don't love it, or hate it. It is sustenance, it is life. It is not about taste. They make a sandwich for lunch and are satisfied. I put herb aioli on my sandwich. And arugula. I try different kinds of cheese and toy with the idea of smoking my own turkey. I dream about crusty, toasted sourdough bread that is warm enough to just barely melt perfectly aged smoked Gouda over home smoked turkey.

I spend hours staring at cheese and reading magazines on food. I marvel at perfectly plated food and strive to make every plate I make perfect. When I see chicken on sale, I think of the hundreds of ways I can prepare it, plate it, and who I can have over to eat it. 

I love my passion. I love that I love food the way that I do. I thought that being surrounded by food day in and day out would make me lose some of that passion, but the fact that is has only grown makes me know I am exactly where I should be. I love that too.